HERE’S ANOTHER THING for the Paris dance-performance experience bucket list.
It’s true I wrote hopefully about Spring not long ago, in an essay about that wonderful flamenco dancer Paula Comitre.
But in that essay I meant “Spring” in the moral, allegorical or metaphorical sense and pertaining to Comitre’s refreshing talent.
Since it’s now possible to actually enjoy a Paris Spring again. I would like to bubble about, as Karine calls it, true Spring – about running sap, shoots, buds, lilies and iris, all, all unburdened of frost; about robin redbreasts and hapless worms, barking dogs and rollicking brats – about all the real things behind those figures.
It’s cold in my apartment, but too warm for the furnace to kick in automatically. Outside my window, a slate-grey sky jets down freezing rain. A brave magpie dogfights a raven as big as a chicken.
Yes. But here, inside, I’ve turned on the heat. On my table, I have the advance dance-performance program for the Atelier de Paris’ annual June Events festival. It’s back!
June Events 2022 features mostly work I haven’t yet seen by creators whose quality I already know.
Pieces range from solos to eight-performer extravaganza. They type largely across the movement arts, from performance to performance-dance to dance. These find their places in the big theater, the studio, the Bois de Vincennes and the Marais. There’s a global, Europe, and France contemporary culture dimension to it, too.
Daniel Linehan, US born, working from Belgium, Listen Here: these woods, Listen Here: this cavern; Christos Papadoulos, Larsen C; Ann Van den Broek, Joy, enjoy; Vania Vaneau, Nebula; Ikram Benchrif & Paul Girard, Cherche forêt; Smaïl Kanoute, Yasuke Kurosan; Joanne Leighton, Corps exquis; Catherine Gaudet, L’Affadissement du merveilleux; Mathilde Rance, Black bird.
For the rest, I can trust the eye and ear of the Atelier’s artistic direction – if I don’t always like what I experience there, I do quite definitely always experience it.
The name “June Events” always tickles me. I like being – theoretically, metaphorically, allegorically, mind – tickled. It’s not the historical allusion to the famous Journées de Juin workers revolt of 1848 that brings the true theoretically-metaphorically tickled smile to my lips, though, even if I do like a good historically-distant worker’s revolt.
It’s the dates of the festival that actually move me: 30 May to 18 June 2022.
Barring some meteorological equivalent of a surprise barbarian invasion by a wacky fascist with a testosterone-poisoning issue, the weather’s likely to be bearable if it isn’t absolutely splendid on those dates. And splendid weather always augurs well for a good time, whatever the dance performance on offer.
There are few places where you can so casually and pleasantly experience dance and performance as you can in the Atelier’s share of the Cartoucherie, just behind the Parc Floral de Paris, just up the avenue from the newly renovated Château de Vincennes.
I can easily ride my bike from Panthéon to the Cartoucherie and environs in 30 minutes. If I have time, I can walk and look at the plantations in the flower park or walk around and have a good look at things along the paths of the Bois, some of which are still unexpected after all this time. On the grounds of the Cartoucherie itself, in the lingering afternoons and evenings, the lawns and trees are soft green, not too tended. I – and you, too! – can most always get a drink or food before or after performances or lop around in the grass with a picnic.
See you there.
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Author: Paul Tracy DANISON
