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The End Of Danse A Aix Festival After 29 Years


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The April 2006 issue of Dance Magazine has a report that the city government of Aix-en-Provence has cancelled funding for the Aix dance festival. Funds will be absorbed by Ballet Preljocaj, whose new dance center (soon to be opened) is also based in Aix.

Among the American companies which have performed at this festival are Cunningham, Ailey, Trisha Brown, and Alvin Nikolais.

The author of this piece, Karyn Bauer-Prevost, comments: "As Ballet Preljocaj futher defines itself as a beacon in this touristy university town, 'Danse a Aix' will disappear. One can only wonder: Is this the first in a long series of budget cuts that mark the beginning of the end of diversity in French contemporary dance?"

We in the States tend to envy the Europeans for their extensive government subsidies to the arts. It seems like those policies are being questioned, revised, and threatened now.

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The April 2006 issue of Dance Magazine has a report that the city government of Aix-en-Provence has cancelled funding for the Aix dance festival. Funds will be absorbed by Ballet Preljocaj, whose new dance center (soon to be opened) is also based in Aix.

I don't buy French magazines any longer, so don't follow closely what happens in French modern dance, but had heard about the end of that festival a few months ago.

It seems that there had been quite a lot of tensions between the festival and Preljocaj's company

(the "ballet" in its name doesn't mean at all that it's a ballet company, it's a modern dance one) since the latter settled in Aix ten years ago (before that, Preljocaj was in Chateauvallon, but had decided to leave that place in 1995 when there was a far-right newly elected mayor of the neighbor city of Toulon, one of the major sponsors of the Chateauvallon theater and festival).

The author of this piece, Karyn Bauer-Prevost, comments: "As Ballet Preljocaj futher defines itself as a beacon in this touristy university town, 'Danse a Aix' will disappear. One can only wonder: Is this the first in a long series of budget cuts that mark the beginning of the end of diversity in French contemporary dance?"

We in the States tend to envy the Europeans for their extensive government subsidies to the arts. It seems like those policies are being questioned, revised, and threatened now.

Actually, it's not at all "the first in a long series of budget cuts" in French dance- but some of them were for ballet companies transformed into modern ones (e.g. for the Ballet de Nancy, Ballet du Rhin, Ballet du Nord...)

In that particular case, the decision to transfer the funds from the festival to the Preljocaj company came from the mayor of the city. The region and the département, which were the other public sponsors of the company, disagreed, but the festival, having lost 80% of its subsidies, couldn't

survive (actually some of the money came from the casino of Aix-en-Provence: the casinos are obliged by the law to use some of their benefits to subsidize cultural activities in the neighborhood, and the festival used to get some part of it, which will now go to Preljocaj's company).

Here are a few articles (in French) I've found about the closure of the Aix festival, dating from November 2005:

http://www.humanite.fr/journal/2005-11-15/2005-11-15-817934

An interview of Patrice Poyet, director of the festival.

http://www.humanite.fr/journal/2005-11-15/2005-11-15-817935

An article by Muriel Steinmetz.

http://www.humanite.fr/journal/2005-11-21/2005-11-21-818350

A reply by Angelin Preljocaj.

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Thanks for those Links, Estelle.

The statements by Patrice Poyet (director of Danse a Aix -- or former director, I guess) in Humanite, and the rejoinder by Preljocaj, in a letter to the Minister of Culture, are interesting.

Poyet pretty much suggests that the Mayor and others in the city administration, decided to cut the funding as early as the summer, and that representatives of the municipality did not attend the 2005 festival as they had in th past. He says that the tensions began with the arrival of the Preljocaj company, which wished to monopolize the dance scene in Aix. As far as I can understand what he's saying, there's an implication that Preljocaj was involved in the mayor's decision to cut funding, in some way, at least in the sense that one often suspects the one who benefits from a change.

Preljocaj's statement that he was not really aware of what was happening -- and barely aware of the Festival itself -- is quite interesting in itself. Your information about his previous disagreement with the idea of a festival at Chateauvallon seems rather a propos this new story.

All these machinations!

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Thanks for those Links, Estelle.

The statements by Patrice Poyet (director of Danse a Aix -- or former director, I guess)

From what I understood, Poyet is the present director.

Preljocaj's statement that he was not really aware of what was happening -- and barely aware of the Festival itself -- is quite interesting in itself.

Actually I found what he said not very credible- he's been working in Aix for years (and while very active culturally, Aix isn't a huge city), the Aix festival has been known for years as one of the main French festivals of modern dance, so saying more or less that "if this festival is good, then it must continue, but I have no opinion about that festival, I was too busy elsewhere" sounds a bit despising for the festival (or not saying negative things by politeness ?)

Your information about his previous disagreement with the idea of a festival at Chateauvallon seems rather a propos this new story.

Oh, I'm sorry what I wrote wasn't clearer. Actually, there is a theater in Chateauvallon (actually a outdoors amphitheatre and a indoors theatre), "Théâtre National de la Danse et de l'Image", founded in 1965 by Gérard Paquet and Henri Komatis, and which organized a dance festival every summer. Preljocaj's company was associated with that theater (and its festival) in the early 1990s. But in 1995 a new mayor was elected in the city of Toulon (Chateauvallon is a place in the city of Ollioules, but the closest big city is Toulon, and it brought much of the subsidies of the theater) and he was from the Front National party, a far right party often accused of racism and xenophobia. Preljocaj disagreed strongly with that party and decided to leave Chateauvallon at that moment. And after a lot of complicated political and legal things, the theater closed and its association was dissolved- so the dance festival disappeared around 1997 or 1998. Since then, a new association was created, with different sponsors (not the city of Toulon, but the département, region, the city of Ollioules, etc.) and there are some cultural activities in Chateauvallon, but no dance festival any longer (and also there was a new mayor in Toulon since 2001, from another party, so the situation has calmed down - but well, let's say the politics in this region are very complicated...)

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I'm always sorry to see a dance festival closed -- from the outside it always seems easier to maintain somethiing that already exists than to start from scratch. This seems to bring up the larger issue of the difference between presenting touring artists and developing a local company or community. Lately, with the growing emphasis on "cultural tourism," the focus seems to be on bringing the audience to the company rather than the opposite. For me, they both have their drawbacks -- I think a healthy dance community has resident groups and room for visitors, but I'm not sure how many arts agencies/funding policy makers share that point of view.

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