What could be more delicious, when the June rain puts your spirits down or the heat wave in the city exhausts you, than going to take shelter in the evening in an opera, theater, dance hall… Summer , the continuous live performance, and to the cultural establishments of the big cities, whose places are often more accessible at this time of the year, are of course added, everywhere in France, the innumerable open-air festivals. Here, in Paris and elsewhere, is an obviously somewhat arbitrary list of ten unmissable shows starting in June. Book now, then!
Philippe Découflé returns!
Do not miss this opportunity under any circumstances. Shazam, the marvelous show created in 1998 by what is undoubtedly the most iconoclastic and brilliant of our contemporary creators, returns to the Grande Halle de la Villette. Combining videos and optical illusions with the usual fantasy of Découflé’s choreographies, Shazam is an iconic piece from his repertoire, full of references to magic and crazy poetry. At the opening of the Montpellier Danse festival, the creator also unveils a new show, around his passion for rock, entitled Stereo…
Stereo, by Philippe Decouflé. From June 17 to 20, Montpellier Dance.
Shazam, by Philippe Decouflé. Great Hall of La Villette, Paris. From June 30 to July 10.
She has already staged two very successful plays with the Comédie-Française troupe, Vania and Fanny and Alexandre… the stage in the Salle Richelieu. In Jean-Baptiste, Madeleine, Armande and the others, a text freely adapted from L’École des femmes, La Critique de l’École des femmes and L’Impromptu de Versailles, it is the rowdy and intimate daily life of the troupe of Molière, during the years 1662 and 1663, which Julie Deliquet recounts: the loves and births on the court side, the success, but also the quarrels with Molière’s detractors on the stage side, a troupe life which obviously produces, played by his distant descendants, a fascinating mise-en-abîme effect…
Jean-Baptiste, Madeleine, Armande and the others at the Comédie-Française, after Molière, directed by Julie Deliquet, from June 17 to July 25.
A frog at the Opera Garnier!
Composed by Jean-Philippe Rameau, this “buffoon ballet”, whose repulsive heroine, half naiad, half frog, was a thinly veiled allusion to the ugliness of Princess Maria Theresa of Spain, was given for the first time in Versailles in 1745. Here he is at the Opéra Garnier, in a whimsical and crazy staging by Laurent Pelly, a huge and breathtaking spectacle guaranteed!
Platée, from June 17 to July 12 at the Opéra Garnier.
Dancing in the air at Chaillot
An extreme climber, a world-record highliner, aerial acrobats… You won’t recognize the stage at the Palais de Chaillot! The choreographer Rachid Ouramdane launches a poetic challenge to the fear of emptiness and questions the beauty of these bodies of athletes who seem to dance in the air. A wonder !
Extreme bodies, by Rachid Ouramdane, at the Palais de Chaillot, from June 16 to June 24.
Pina Baush at the Châtelet
Fans of the German choreographer have the opportunity this summer to see one of her major works again at the Châtelet, Barbe Bleue, which she completely revisited in 1977, giving Perrault’s tale strength, violence and beauty ever since. never equaled… In a decor strewn with dead leaves, the dancers recount with sublime brutality the tyranny of love and desire. Unforgettable.
Bluebeard, by Pina Bausch, from June 18 to July 2, at the Théâtre du Châtelet.
Flamenco in Mont-de-Marsan
A Lewis Carroll daydream, a whimsical delirium danced flamenco version… Accompanied by seven other dancers, the very great Patricia Guerrero promises to open in style, with the world premiere of her show Deliranza, the Festival Arte Flamenco de Mont-de- Marsan. Created in 1989, Arte Flamenco is now the largest international festival, outside the Spanish borders, of contemporary flamenco.
Arte Flamenco Festival, Mont-de-Marsan, from June 27 to July 2 in Mont-de-Marsan.
Monday, June 27, Deliranza, by Patricia Guerrero.
The dissident Kirill Serebrennikov in Avignon
We discovered his splendid film The Woman of Tchaikovsky in Cannes. Here is the Russian director in Avignon, opening the festival with Le Moine noir, an adaptation of a fantastic short story by Anton Chekhov which promises to be gripping. The one who played his Tchaikovsky, Odin Lund Biron, is among the actors.
The Black Monk, based on the short story by Chekhov, by Kirill Serebrennikov on July 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14 and 15 in the main courtyard of the Popes’ Palace.
The masterpiece by the master of the absurd, which, after causing a scandal in its first staging in 1953, has never ceased to be translated and performed around the world, has been staged, in the part of the Nuits de Fourvière, by one of our greatest French directors, Alain Françon. Unmissable.
Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett, directed by Alain Françon, from Thursday 16 to Sunday 19 June, Odéon, Les Nuits de Fourvière in Lyon.
The return of Benjamin Millepied
Obviously, the very “woke” choreographer and ex-director of the Paris Opera, now director of the LA Dance Project, couldn’t help but revisit the ballet Romeo and Juliet by giving it an inevitable LGBT version. It is therefore no longer a couple, but three couples, a man and a woman, a man and a man, a woman and a woman, who evolve in the streets of Los Angeles… But this contemporary politically correct version of Prokofiev’s ballet, mixing dance, theater and projected videos, promises to be spectacular all the same.
Romeo and Juliet, suite, choreographed by Benjamin Millepied. July 28 and 29, Grand Théâtre, the Nuits de Fourvière in Lyon.
Éric Ruf had the good idea of entrusting The Forced Marriage to the brilliant madness of Louis Arène, former resident of the troupe and now director of the Munstrum Théâtre company. Sensitive souls go your way. As for the others, a theatrical slap, the kind you probably only get once a decade, will be dealt you bluntly, and you’ll leave the Studio panting and laughing, absolutely flabbergasted by what you’ve seen. Performed masked, this short piece is given here in a totally neurotic, trashy and absurd version, the satire of the patriarchy once imagined by Molière donning the violently vengeful and “gender fluid” trappings of our contemporary era without ever losing the comic power of the text of origin is hindered. And the audience, stunned and a little frightened, laughs out loud.
Forced Marriage, by Molière, directed by Louis Arène at the Studio Théâtre, until July 3.
