Valérie Lanciaux (Val-Vale-Valeria...depending on the place :-) !) - globe-trotter/actor/performer/film director/sound and music maker
Very early Valérie was fond of singing… she explored voice through musicals (Starmania as Sadia, Les Misérables as Mrs. Thenardier, The French Revolution as Talleyrand, etc...) in which she performed at school; traditional Turkish songs, and improvisations. She studied languages and trained as an actor in France.
She has worked with children and teenagers ages 4 to 20, on voice, movement, and poetry, since 1994, in different contexts, in schools, or during events...among them, she ran theater workshops at Denain High school in northern France in a technical section, for 7 years; she led voice and singing workshops with dancers and theater students, at HÜZ (Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin, Germany), also mentoring with the Bachelor of Arts students; with the young dancers of the Biennale College at Venice Dance Biennale, in the context of the workshop lead by Canadian dancer and choreographer Benoît Lachambre. She ran film workshops in primary schools in Paris, France, creating short films with the students...
A collaboration with ASSITEJ Sri Lanka run by Kaushalya Fernando and Chandana Aluthge is planned for the near future.
In the ’90s, Valérie discovered the contemporary dance world. From 2001 to 2007, she programmed the “Lignes de Corps” festival, an international festival for dance and performance, in northern France, and was later an artistic adviser for "Next Festival" (Espace Pasolini Valenciennes) in 2009 and 2015.
In 2003, getting more and more interested and involved in the dance world she started creating documentaries, especially about the work of choreographers (in Spain, Germany, France, and the USA); she sometimes presented her documentaries in a performance style. She discovered filming in 1992 in Rostock, Germany, where she filmed, as a volunteer, the everyday life of international youth camps with the NIG association, making interviews. What drives her most is meeting and exchanging with people.
She took part in the elaboration and organization of the event called “International Meeting of Children’s Theatre” happening in Valenciennes, between 2002 and 2006. Her main mission was to search for and meet the different Youth Theatre/Music/Dance groups and prepare them for coming to France. She was also following the daily life of the event, filming the work of the different guests and all the exchanges happening in schools or public places, creating, thus, the memory of it. The camera quickly became a necessary and vital tool for her and never left her since. Her youth theatre network spreads to Italy, Romania, Colombia, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, and The United States… She is currently considering the creation of such a festival in collaboration with professor Xan Johnson from the University of Utah.
She worked with film director Frédérique Ribis (Paris) for 7 years on a project dedicated to women in the business world. In 2008, she got trained at CIFAP video school in Montreuil (Paris) with the director of photography Guy Chanel.
She also accompanied the projects of several international choreographers and dancers as a company tour manager and sometimes as a performer (Benoît Lachambre/Montreal, Hooman Sharifi/Oslo...). As a tour manager, she positions herself as a witness of the work, as an external eye, sharing also the rehearsal moments.
She worked with choreographer Nathalie Collantes (Fanfare Blême Company, Paris) on image and sound for the LeProjetRobinson website (interviews made by N. Collantes with choreographer Jacqueline Robinson). She regularly films her pieces, creates trailers, and designs original music for her performances.
Since 2008, she has been developing her own projects in theatre/performance and film. She created ‘Amordobleamor’ at Galeria Menos Uno in Madrid,
a solo always in construction talking about her own life through different elements such as voice and singing, text, movement, and video.
Her long-term and life documentary film project 'The Faces of…' started in 2011 and premiered with 'Los Rostros de Madrid' (The Faces of Madrid) in 2012 at La Casa Encendida/Madrid in the context of In-Presentable Festival and 'The Faces of Lake Wisconsin' in 2017 at The Zona Gale Theatre and the Museum at the Portage-USA. The next versions which are already on their way are Berlin, Mallorca, French Brittany, and New York City. Future versions to come are Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais state, and Istanbul.
She is a photographer specializing in portraits, landscapes, cities... and sometimes events (weddings, family pictures...). She loves wandering in cities and taking pictures every minute enjoying every change of light and focusing on every detail a place can offer.
She has created electro and techno music for the past three years under an alias, Sunny Wis. Her music is on streaming platforms. She has also designed sound/music for dance projects and starts doing the same for theater. She sometimes DJ's and is working on a project with musician and creator LODVE based in Auvergne, France.
She is a lifelong traveler, polyglot, and passionate about life!