The French regional
contemporary dance companies
- including Régine Chopinot's troupe from La Rochelle, Jean-Claude
Gallotta's from Grenoble, Mathilde Monnier's from Montpellier, Karine
Saporta's from Caen, and Joêlle Bouvier and Régis Obadia's from Angers
- easily rival the Paris-based troupes, though the exciting
choreographers Jean-François Duroure and the Californian Carolyn
Carlson are both based in or around the capital. Other names to watch
for are Maguy Marin in Créteil and François Verret in Aubervilliers.
Humour, everyday actions and obsessions, social problems and the
darker shades of life find expression in the myriad current dance
forms. A multidimensional performing art is created by combinations of
movement, mime, ballet, music from the medieval to contemporary
jazz-rock, speech, noise and theatrical effects. Philippe Genty's
company in Paris combines dance, drama and marionettes to astonishing
effect while the Gallotta-choreographed film Rei-Dom opened up a whole new range of possibilities.
Many of the traits of the modern epic theatre are shared with dance,
including crossing international frontiers.
Though the famous Lecoq School of Mime and Improvisation in Paris still turns out excellent artists, pure
mime
- as practised by the incomparable Marcel Marceau - hardly exists,
except on the streets and at Périgueux's international festival of
mime.
For
classical ballet (again well
represented in festivals), the two most renowned companies are the
Ballet de l'Opéra National de Paris at the Opéra-Garnier and the
Opéra-Bastille, whose dance director is Brigitte Lefèvre, and the
Ballet National de Marseille, whose artistic director is Roland Petit.
Other classical ballet companies are based in Avignon, Bordeaux, Lyon,
Toulouse and St-Etienne.
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