2019 festival edition

FROM NOV. 29 TO DEC. 15

After being the daughter of water and air, this new edition of the Festival de Danse Cannes – Côte d’Azur France is under the sign of fire. The poster is by Cristina De Middel, a talented artist whose photography caught my eye at an exhibition. For me, this red cloth facing the ocean represents hope and openness, the appeal of distant horizons and the power of the elements that make up our universe. In many ways, it corresponds to this program, which is poetic, open to the world, sensitive and attentive to humanity.

A new name, a broader scope and new partnerships with the region’s major cultural structures: this is the Festival’s new deployment. This is the first time that the event, now known as the Festival de Danse Cannes – Côte d’Azur France, has brought together so many partners who have demonstrated their desire to showcase dance in all its different aspects and to invest in the Festival. Beyond technique, styles and forms, it’s about encounters, privileged links between different structures, a meeting of people who value each other and want to work together on the same project, listening to each other. These bridges that link us are a way for us to bear witness to the vitality of dance in the region, in France, and throughout the world. I also wanted to pursue and intensify our ties with the Pôle National Supérieur Danse Provence Côte d’Azur – Rosella Hightower, directed by Paola Cantalupo, whom I’d like to thank here.

As with every year, the Cannes Dance Festival is set to be a lively affair: from Giselle, the masterpiece of Romantic ballet, to Mickaël Le Mer’s refined hip-hop writing and the world premiere of his Butterfly. Opening with the Béjart Ballet Lausanne, now directed by Gil Roman with remarkable energy and loyalty, this edition will close with the commissioning of a creation by Marie-Agnès Gillot, Andrés Marín and Christian Rizzo.

With 21 performances, including 15 in Cannes and 6 in partner cultural structures, 15 2019 creations, 3 world premieres, 2 French premieres, 1 European premiere and 1 Festival creation commission, the program takes on its full scope, with the same concern for eclecticism and internal coherence that is so dear to my heart. These imperceptible threads that weave correspondences from one work to another, but also between artists, or between different structures, are very important to me, and this is what underpins this programming, the matrix of which could be Giselle, a ballet intended by a poet, with its madness, its links between the visible and invisible worlds, a masterpiece of Romantic ballet but very much of the moment in the purity of its 2nd act…

At the same time, I wanted to offer the public a cinematic journey in connection with our programming. It’s an opportunity for spectators to deepen their knowledge of major dance figures such as Maurice Béjart and Sasha Waltz, or to gain a better understanding of the ballet creation process, for example by viewing Titicut Follies, a documentary by Frederick Wiseman, who created the ballet of the same name.

This theme is an invitation to go back in time to dance and question the complex and sometimes obvious links between these two arts of movement.

I would like to thank the Ville de Cannes, the initiator of this Dance Festival, and today David Lisnard, for renewing his confidence in me and for supporting the Festival’s opening dynamic, as well as the directors of the partner structures, without whom this development would not have been possible.

I would also like to thank Claire-Anne Reix, President of the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès, and her teams for their support, as well as the work carried out by the Direction de la Culture and all our partners, who work to anchor the event in the region.

Brigitte Lefèvre,
Artistic Director