November 20 to 29
The Festival de Danse de Cannes celebrates its 20th edition this year. Opened in 1985, the Festival de Danse de Cannes is a privileged witness to the evolution of the art of choreography, and has become, over the years, an unmissable artistic event in the Ville de Cannes, which has succeeded in making people love dance in all its different aspects. I would like to pay tribute to my predecessors, in particular to the extraordinary commitment of Rosella Hightower, who so successfully combined her passion for dance with the Ville de Cannes by creating her École Supérieure and then presiding over the birth of this Festival, which presented the art of choreography as she loved it, in all its diversity. Jean-Luc Barsotti, who was the first director, and in particular Yorgos Loukos, who directed the Festival for sixteen years, then Frédéric Flamand, who succeeded him, have continued this open-minded approach to dance, and it was only natural that I should accept the offer to run this edition and the next in the same spirit as in the early days. This means welcoming companies of different nationalities, the greatest choreographers and new talents, bringing together masterpieces and daring to create new works for the Cannes public to discover.
In this way, I hope to enable the public to travel poetically and aesthetically through the nuanced territories of today’s dance in all its vivacity. This program is a way of evoking the fluidity and strength of intersecting trajectories, which travel to different parts of the world, and meet here. Just as the sea lingers for a while on the rocks, before setting sail again to expand our breathing space and enrich our dreams. I’d like to thank all those who have offered me this wonderful adventure, and in particular David Lisnard, Mayor of Cannes, who has given me the opportunity to forge these links in order to make life more beautiful.
Brigitte Lefèvre,
Artistic Director
