Festival de Danse Cannes – Côte d’Azur France

from November 24 to December 10, 2023

Open-mindedness, transdisciplinarity, discovery: under the leadership of its new artistic director Didier Deschamps, the Festival de Danse Cannes – Côte d’Azur France 2023 asserts itself as a sensitive witness to the world’s impulses and beauty.
The entire program is in itself an invitation to travel, a period of celebration and gathering where the works of the 27 guest companies, as well as the encounters, exchanges and reflections proposed by choreographers, dancers, company directors, researchers and teachers, will be as many fertile stops

Published on 5 April 2023

Youth in the spotlight

Like the visual created with young talents from the Pôle national supérieur de danse Rosella Hightower by photographer and visual artist Grégoire Korganow, youth is in the spotlight at this year’s edition, with the summit meeting in Cannes of five national superior dance schools: Conservatoire national supérieur Musique et Danse de Paris, école supérieure du Cndc d’Angers, Jeune Ballet contemporain CNSMD de Lyon, pôle national supérieur de danse Cannes-Mougins and Pôle supérieur d’enseignement artistique Paris Boulogne-Billancourt.

Over the course of a week, in partnership with Cannes-Mougins’ PNSD Rosella Hightower and its director Paola Cantalupo, 70 students will share classes, workshops and repertoires before presenting, at the festival’s opening, a collective performance orchestrated by choreographer and director of the Norwegian national company Annabelle Bonnéry.

With the participation of the Centre national de la danse (CND) and the Délégation à la danse of the French Ministry of Culture, the problems of training and insertion will be the subject of a roundtable, in the presence of the directors of the structures that train these future professionals.

In addition, around a hundred middle-school students from Cannes who have attended workshops run by the compagnie Mouvimento as part of its 2022-24 artistic and cultural education residency, will go and discover Wendy Cornu’s piece Volutes, or how the link between individuals and music brings out the dance and the sensitive.

Audience development is at the heart of the Festival de Danse’s concerns. As part of the 100% EAC policy implemented by the City of Cannes, travelingshows will invest all of Cannes’ schools to raise awareness of dance among more than 1,600 young people, in the run-up to the Festival. During these in situ tours in October and November 2023, choreographer Amala Dianor’s solo WO-MAN will be presented in middle schools, high schools and university campuses. Elementary school will host Marion Levy’s Et si tu danses.

The entire Dance Festival program

Download the press releaseCannes 2023 Festival de la danse

Creations that echo the world's impulses

During the Festival, three creations will be given their world premiere: Les Saisons by Thierry Malandain to the music of Antonio Vivaldi and Giovanni Antonio Guido, the piece DUB by Amala Dianor in complicity with Grégoire Korganow, a piece for 12 young urban dancers auditioned from all over the world, presented at the end of a creative residency at le Palais des Festivals in Cannes. On the outside wall of the Cineum, a cinema complex designed by architect Rudy Ricciotti, choreographer and façade dancer Antoine Le Menestrel will propose an original performance in homage to Harold Lloyd, a great figure of cinema.

The audience will also be able to applaudthree French premieres: BIRGET; ways to deal, ways to heal, an important piece for Norway’s national contemporary dance company Carte Blanche, which invites sámi artists Elle Sofe Sara and Joar Nango to shed light on the culture of this indigenous people silenced for so long.

Mont Ventoux by the Spanish collective KOR’SIA, awarded the Fedora 2023 Prize, confronts Petrarch’s “Ascent of Mont Ventoux” with the issues of our contemporary society, putting the humanist and nature back at the center of concerns with a message of hope and appeasement.

David Coria, Flamenco’s new rising star, will reserve for the Festival his latest piece Los Bailes Robados created at the Bienal de Sevilla 2023.

Among the many other offerings in this edition, let’s also point out the first appearance in the Southern Region of VÏA by Fouad Boussouf by the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, which also reprises Skid by Damien Jalet ; but also Into the Hairy, a new opus bySharon Eyal and Gai Behar; a creation by Noé Soulier for the iconic Trisha Brown dance company. The creation Sous les fleurs by Thomas Lebrun will evoke questions of masculine femininity through a little-known genre: the Muxes. With her proposal aimed at a teenage audience, Michèle Noiret, who excels in the art of confronting dance and new technologies, poetically sketches out her concern about environmental issues.

Discover the entire program on video

New MOV'IN Cannes event

an international dance film competition

Referring to the English terms “movie”, “move”, “moving”, which echo film, movement and emotion in French, MOV’IN Cannes is a competition around short films that celebrates dance brought to the image.

This highlight is jointly piloted by Didier Deschamps and Eric Oberdorff, choreographer and director who is a stakeholder in its conception and implementation.

To take part in this competition, a call for dance films open from December 1, 2022 to April 30, 2023 allows the entry of works where aesthetics, writing form and content are absolutely free.

The only constraint is to respect a duration of less than 10 minutes. Works pre-selected on the one hand, by the Centre national de la danse and partner international film festivals (Tel Aviv, Lisbon, San Francisco, Reykjavik, Montreal, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin, Limerick – Ireland), and on the other, by viewing panels made up of students from BTS audiovisuel Cannes Carnot and Université Côte d’Azur courses (ESRA, Villa Arson, PNSD Rosella Hightower, Licence Arts du Spectacle), will be screened in public before a jury, made up of dance and film industry professionals, chaired by Mathilda May.

Different prizes will be awarded (Grand Prix, Prix du Ministère de la Culture, Prix des étudiants, Prix du public) and will thus highlight international short film production, its topicality and new creations. The winning films will be broadcast on the platform numeridanse.tv. The Ministère de la Culture – Direction générale de la création artistique (DGCA) – Délégation à la danse will reward its prize witha creation grant and the Grand Prix will offer a residency at Cannes Bastide Rouge, a cluster dedicated to the creative economy and image professions, within the Georges Méliès Campus in Cannes.

All about Mov'in Cannes

Teaser Mov'In Cannes

Transdisciplinarity and discovery

Programmed Companies - Festival de Danse 2023

Openness and the crossover of performing arts disciplines are an important axis of the creation and of the festival.

Recirquel, a Hungarian dance and circus company, will take over the stage and the air, with Solus Amor choreographed by Bence Vági.

Also from the circus world, Belgium’s Alexander Vantournhout tries in a hilarious duet to adjust his body and movements without succeeding with those of his smaller counterpart.

Young Flamenco dancer Paula Comitre will push back the boundaries of her ancestral traditional art with the complicity of contemporary dancer Lorena Nogal, member of the La Veronal collective.

Fantasy again with the delightful and bluff Salle des Fêtes by Swiss choreographer Philippe Saire.

In a whimsical, theatrical mode, Brussels-based Lara Barsacq evokes the great artist Ida Rubinstein, for whom Ravel created the Bolero, a pretext for traversing a large part of the dance history of the first half of the 20th century.

>Lara Barsacq is the choreographer of the Bolero.

Alternative forms of the choreographic scene will be on the program of the Plateforme Studiotrade proposed by Eric Oberdorff and will illustrate the dynamism of international creation and cooperation with: Eman Hussein (Egypt), Marie Gourdain and Felix Baumann (France / Germany / Czech Republic), Silke Z (Germany), Sveinbjörg Thorahallsdóttir (Iceland), Kossivi Sénagbé Afiadegnigban (Togo).

The electronic notes of Angelos Liaros Copola will dialogue with Johann Sebastian Bach’s Magnificat in the latest creation by the powerful and delicate Michel Kelemenis. In the public space, choreographer Jann Gallois, will offer an all-encompassing, generous, spontaneous “choreographic pastille” to step out of theater sets and experience a suspended moment.

The Taiwanese repertoire will be represented by two companies: the boisterous artists of B. Dance will showcase their virtuosity in ALICE, choreographed by Po-Cheng Tsaï, while Cloud Gate Dance Theatre will present Thirteen Tongues, a major work in which Cheng Tsung-lung summons up his childhood memories and blends them in a ballet imbued with dreamlike refinement to close this 24th edition.

The subtle art of Etay Axelroad, virtuoso dancer of the Batsheva Dance Company with his astonishing performances, will punctuate the entrance to the event’s shows like a choreographic soap opera and introduce the Gaga dance developed by Ohad Naharin during a Gaga class open to over 250 participants at the festival’s closing.

Finally, the Festival will offer everyone the chance to practice dance thanks to master classes, led by guest choreographers and dancers, as well as workshops specially dedicated to schools, stage-side encounters, round table discussions and film screenings. All of which promise to be full of surprises and emotions.

All about Mov'in Cannes

About us

The Cannes Festival de la danse - Côte d'Azur France

Located in the region since 1985, the Festival is a key player in the choreographic vitality of the South-East region. Since its creation, the Festival has always sought to defend dance as a major art form in the region, and to offer high-quality, diverse and accessible programming. A biennial event since 1993, it is now recognized as a benchmark choreographic event at national and European level, and continues to expand internationally.

Under the impetus of Brigitte Lefèvre, the event expanded considerably in 2019 and changed its name to Festival de Danse Cannes – Côte d’Azur France, the first cultural event to be labeled Côte d’Azur France in partnership with the region’s major cultural theaters: Anthea (Antibes), Forum Jacques Prévert (Carros), Scène 55 (Mougins), Théâtre de Grasse, Théâtre National de Nice, Théâtres en Dracénie (Draguignan), Théâtre Le Forum (Fréjus) and Théâtre La Licorne (Cannes La Bocca).

The Festival is part of a multi-disciplinary program produced and directed by le Palais des Festivals de Cannes, with invitations, particularly in non-biennial years, to major dance companies on the national and international choreographic scene, while ensuring an appropriate and accessible pricing policy. Within the framework of this programming, structuring actions are carried out throughout the year to pursue the link with the public.

Discover the festival

SOME KEY FIGURES

Pre-opening the Festival from November 20 to 26, 2023: the Rencontres des Ecoles nationales Supérieures de danse
27 guest companies from 13 countries
- 3 world premieres
- 3 French premieres
- 12 2023 creations
32 performances including 3 school sessions
10 programming venues: Anthéa, Antibes / Forum Jacques Prévert, Carros / Le Forum, Estérel Côte d’Azur, Fréjus / Palais des Festivals, Cannes/Scène 55, Mougins/Théâtre de Grasse /Théâtres en Dracénie, Draguignan/Théâtre La Licorne, Cannes/Théâtre Palais Stéphanie, Cannes/Théâtre national de Nice
1 choreographic soap opera with Etay Axelroad’s solo danced in the different halls of the theaters
1 round table on the integration and training of young dancers
4 film screenings
5 master classes including 1 Gaga class
2 traveling shows in Cannes schools
1 new feature: MOV’IN Cannes, an i competition

About the

Didier Deschamps Festival

After serving as director of Chaillot – Théâtre national de la Danse until April 2021, Didier Deschamps will succeed Brigitte Lefèvre as artistic director of the Festival de Danse Cannes – Côte d’Azur in January 2022, with the aim of articulating and linking different lines of action:

Present a panorama of choreographic creativity on a national and international level, with the development of partnerships with international festivals and venues dedicated to dance (the Mercat de les Flores in Barcelona, the International Exposure Festival in Tel Aviv and the Flamenco Biennial in Seville)
Support creation and develop creative residencies
Investigate external venues for performances in the city, reaching out to the public audiences
Continuing to anchor the event in the local area
Renewing initiatives to raise awareness of choreographic art
Participating in the construction of dance research in association with the Université Côte d’Azur – EUR CREATES – CTEL and in training teachers and educational teams in partnership with the Rectorat de Nice.

All about Didier Deschamps

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