2015中法文化之春拉开序幕
The well-known and multidisciplinary Croisements festival 2015 is officially launched today in South China at Xinghai Concert Hall, 15th April, 2015, celebrating its 10th anniversary at the same time. Starting from 10th April to 10th July 2015, the festival is centred around 10 disciplines: visual arts; architecture and design; new media; classical and contemporary music; jazz and contemporary music; dance; theatre, new circus and street arts; cinema; literature; young audiences.
Coordinated by the French Embassy and consulates in China, the Croisements festival of culture has attracted more than 8 million visitors since its creation in 2006 following the end of the Années Croisées France-China festival. It was designed on the initiative of the President of the French Republic and the President of the People's Republic of China.
With more than 100 programmes and 400 organised events taking place over 3 months in 30 cities throughout China, Croisements is a festival of exceptional diversity. The festival is a platform showcasing the best of cultural exchanges between China and France, including retrospective exhibitions of cinema, as well as concerts and performances.
“It is my first year with the Croisements festival, yet I am surprised by how rich, beautiful and creative it is in content. I sincerely wish each audience of this great festival will be greatly rewarded from all aspect.” Said Mr. Bertrand Furno, consul general of the French Consulate General of Guangzhou.
For its 10th anniversary, Croisements is offering an exceptional programme, which will take the public on a voyage of discovery to meet new, surprising, intense, popular and prestigious projects.
This year once more, the festival will highlight the best of cultural dialogue between France and China. The celebration of the thirty-year collaboration between the Chinese national Ballet and the Ballet of the Paris Opera will work in harmony with contemporary French and Chinese artists around the theme of light, by way of the pop conversation between the young group from Rennes, ‘Juveniles’ and the electrifying singer Helen Feng (leader of the group ‘Nova Heart’).
At the forefront of contemporary creation, Croisements is a showcase of French culture today. Once again, Croisements highlights the creativity of the young French art scene in the fields of dance (with the advent of choreographers Kader Attou, Thomas Lebrun, David Drouard etc.) and the field of music. Here there is a focus on contemporary music centred around Tristan Murail, father of spectral music and Frédéric Durieux; spring jazz with the Sylvain Rifflet Quartet – Alphabet; the winners of the “Victoires du Jazz 2014” competition, Vincent Peirani and Emile Parisien - Belle Epoque; the living legends that are MAGMA, and the fascinating duo of Ballake Sissoko and Vincent Segal. There are also lots of young pop and electro bands at the Strawberry Festival and Midi Festival, as well as the Fête de la Musique festival.
The festival also promotes the discovery of unknown territories and creation modes and new or hybrid artistic forms. These include small formats of new circus (8 m3, île 0), a dance performance conceived as a film (Hors-champ), a piece of theatrical comedy-ballet with singers, dancers and musicians (Le Bourgeois gentilhomme staged by Denis Podalydès), workshops and a concert played on instruments created partly from waste material (Lutherie Urbaine), the poems of Rimbaud and Antonin Artaud read by Denis Lavant over a musical background and aided by a computer (Machine rouge), or even a show where the main character is a plastic bag (L’après-midi d’un foehn - Version 1).
Always looking to the innovative, the Croisements festival loves to surprise! Shows, installations and performance are fed by new technologies, exploring the interaction between man and machine at the crossroads of science and art. With Télofossiles, an installation put together at a residence in the artistic district of Caochangdi, visual artist Grégory Chatonsky and sculptor Dominique Sirois explore future archaeology and the traces of technological objects from our daily lives that coming generations will keep. An interactive installation mixing drawing and video animation where the visitor can interact with an imaginary city (Extrapolis), a concert of mobile phones (SmartFaust), numerous tableaus of pixels that are live and constantly changing (Visual System) and more. Croisements strives to achieve an awakening of the senses and the spirit to better question our relationship with a changing world that over the last few decades has undergone a deep technological revolution.
The Croisements festival, however, is also about helping the Chinese public to discover and rediscover French cultural heritage. From Molière to Beckett, from the inescapable architect Le Corbusier to the great thinker and writer Roland Barthes, from New Wave filmmaker Jacques Demy to comedian and jack-of-all-trades Denis Lavant (fetish actor of the director Leos Carax), by way of the legendary publishing house for young people, L’Ecole des Loisirs and the great actresses of French cinema (Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche, Simone Signoret, Emmanuelle Béart, Jeanne Moreau, Isabelle Huppert, Charlotte Gainsbourg etc.). So many French cultural icons are represented at Croisements. But it's also about comparing the past and the present, to revisit and not fossilise French cultural heritage. The thought of one of the great intellectuals of the 20th century is put to the test of social networks (Roland Barthes), baroque music meets contemporary poetry (La Double Coquette), and the themes of the romantic era are revived by choreographer Thomas Lebrun (Lied Ballet).
Finally, in 2015, Croisements proposes, for the second consecutive year following its success in 2014, a new programme specially designed for young audiences. Events include: Paris as described in song through the eyes of a young mischievous girl (Les ballades enfantines); a highly poetic adaptation of a famous Hans Christian Andersen tale told through shadow theatre (COUAC); around the world in sounds - babbling, scat jazz, percussion (BLBLBL); a piece of contemporary dance specifically designed for young children (Tel Quel); festivities related to the fiftieth anniversary of the children’s publishing house L’Ecole des Loisirs; workshops and “visual concerts” with comic designer Mathilde Domecq, and more. These are programmes that are just as much designed to awaken a young Chinese public to art, as to open their eyes to the world.
For detailed information of program and agenda, please visit http://croisements.faguowenhua.com/en/
Guangzhou
Culture
