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French Festivals: World Fare
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10467 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1993 |
2,050 Words |
| Author
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Bruce Merrill
Bruce Merrill, currently based in Paris, is a dance writer,
critic, and teacher. |
Dance festivals have been an important part of the French dance scene for the past twenty years. In the early years of this "dance invasion," resort cities in the south of France, along with Paris, were the places for French dancers and the public to come into contact with foreign companies--and new ways of viewing dance. It was especially in Modern Dance that these foreign companies served to give the French audience a whole new outlook.
Modern Dance Troupes
Troupes such as Merce Cunningham, Alwin Nikolais, Murray Louis, Paul Taylor, Alvin Ailey, Martha Graham, Louis Falco, and the Landon Contemporary Dance Theatre brought their established systems of Modern Dance technique and style. Pina Bausch brought the conception of dance theater. International ballet companies such as the American Ballet Theatre, the New York City Ballet, and Russia's Kirov and Bolshoi ballets brought works by new choreographers and another conception of style while still using a classical vocabulary. These influences have now been assimilated into French dance while still keeping a uniquely French style.
International dance companies visiting France continue to be part of the ever-changing dance scene and give festivalgoers a real panorama of international dance. A prime example was the festival at Chateauvallon, which is situated on a hillside about twelve miles from Toulon. Gerard Paquet, director and organizer since 1980, presented an outstanding event last August, reuniting such international dance companies as choreographer John Neumeier's Hamburg Ballet; important French Modern Dance choreographers such as Angelin Preljocaj, Karine Saporta, and Myguy Marin; and young talents such as William Petit, Gyorgy Arvai, and Yvette Bozik.
The center at Chateauvallon includes an impressive outdoor amphitheater seating twelve hundred, a smaller indoor theater, two rehearsal studios, ten rooms for housing dancers in residence, and a restaurant. Each winter, two companies are provided with a residency of several months to work on a new creation.
The Hamburg Ballet presented two programs, the first of which took place in the theater and included three very different works by Neumeier: Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn, Dvorak's Spring and Fall, and Mozart 338. The second program, the Mozart Requiem, was to have been held in the amphitheater, but it was unfortunately rained out. It was the first time in ten years that bad weather had caused a performance to be canceled.
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