LA CASE BD – In her second album, selected in Angoulême, Maurane Mazars, the 29-year-old designer, gracefully illustrates the dance world. Luminous.
The Angoulême Festival hailed a true hymn to life and freedom by selecting Dance! for the race for the Golden Fauve. Maurane Mazars’ second album, his school project, celebrates daring youth, the one who bends and does not break. It features Uli, 19, studying modern dance at a prestigious German school. His appetite for musical comedy earned him bitter mockery from his classmates, who considered the genre to be devoid of any artistic value. Without giving up his passion, he dragged his dismay until he met Anthony, a young black American dancer advising him to try his luck at Brodway.
Entirely produced in direct color, this moving initiatory story immediately enchants the reader with the watercolor line of its author. Fluid and delicate, the graphics of the 29-year-old designer gracefully illustrate bodies in movement.
Partly located in the vibrant New York of the 1950s, the work brings us back to life the cultural abundance, the avant-garde scene, the beat generation, the political and social effervescence with the premises of the recognition of civil rights for blacks. and homosexuals.
«As I researched 1950s America, I realized how rich it was. I had an image of those conservative times when there were more liberated universes. I wanted to show that it was a very modern time », Explains the author.
This abundant context offers a dream setting for young Uli to reveal himself, free his body and his mind. Bubbling with joy and optimism, the hero delivers a salutary message. “Listening to yourself and looking for a form of authenticity is part of an approach where you cannot be wrong”. These pretty words from Maurane Mazars echo in the background throughout the album. Like an enchantment carried by a symphony of colors.
The BD box: decryption of Maurane Mazars
“This plate is in the second part of the book, the one that takes place in New York, after Uli’s formative years in Germany. We are one in what I would call the plateau phase. Uli has found his place in New York, life is in full swing, and he agrees with his roommate and friend Paty a moment of grace, apart from the vicissitudes and turpitudes. A moment of joy and serenity which alone would sum up a good part of the album which celebrates youth and the courage to make the right decisions for oneself. This moment of liberation imbued with lightness, Uli owes it to his temerity, to the unwavering desire to follow a path motivated by his own desires.
This board is intended as a moving passage. It is part of a series of large silent pages intended to give the feeling of time passing
Maurane Mazars
I was inspired by a scene from the movie Frances A by Noah Baumbach, who portrays the journey of a young artist with incredible accuracy. I was touched by this sequence which illustrates the deep friendship between two people.
Like the film, this plate is intended to be a moving passage. It is part of a series of large silent pages meant to give the feeling of time passing. Silence always gives an impression of length. The reader takes a little more time to look, to wander. It’s like looking at a series of photos and guessing what binds two people together, in the atmosphere of a particular era. Here in the 1950s in the United States where the bubbling of cultural life allowed these beautiful encounters.
I did a lot of research for this album, right down to the costumes. Paty’s iconic pants are truly vintage and the stage decor a “fire escapeTypical of the city, was taken from a photo from the 60s / 70s taken in Harlem. Finally, concerning the colors, to illustrate the New York part, I used red, blue and yellow in abundance, bright colors evoking the vibrant atmosphere of the time. Unlike the sequence in Germany where I used more melancholy tones of green. “
– .
