The pioneering Montpellier Danse festival, launched in 1981, has transformed contemporary dance in France and beyond. In 2024, the festival underwent a leadership change, with a four-person directorship comprising Hofesh Shechter, Jann Gallois, Dominique Hervieu, and Pierre Martinez succeeding long-term figurehead Jean-Paul Montanari. The programme continues its ethos of spreading dance across the city, blending the recherché with the popular.
Jann Gallois' Imminentes: A Dynamic Dynamo
Gallois' Imminentes targets a general audience with an hour-long dynamo for six women that is never abstruse and always striking, if not always subtle. The signature device, the long build-up, begins with the women leaning into each other in tender pairs, gradually melding into a dynamic group bonded by linked arms and synced energies. A crescendo of sound and a bank of lights that glows as if powered by the dancers' voltage back them. Some scenes shift tone with convulsive solos caged in a cone of light, machine-like sequences of whipped arms and pumped torsos, and gestures suggesting cleansing or purging. The overall feel is of fierce women working vibrantly together, burning through their own energy. While sometimes blockbuster—more stimulant than substance—it engages its audience.
Collectif XY's Le Pas du Monde: Concrete Physical Poetry
Landing in a sweeter, deeper spot is Le Pas du Monde by Collectif XY, a large-scale circus company that reached a vast audience via the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony. The performance is spectacular—human towers, vertiginous dives, headlong tumbles, breathtaking aerial flips and catches—but never just spectacle. The spires of bodies in the opening section evoke people collectively reaching for the sky and the ephemerality of such aspirations as constructions topple and collapse. Another scene, where performers carry others on their shoulders while others lie on the floor, is metaphorical: we support some while stepping over others. The imagery goes beyond the human, with surreally segmented creatures, a forest-like scene, and actions feeling windblown or sea-tossed. The piece becomes concrete physical poetry that reaches past the mind to touch body and spirit.
Tempest and Twama Paradise: Baffling and Human
Every contemporary dance season has baffling works. In Montpellier, Tempest by Belgians Lisbeth Gruwez (dance) and Maarten Van Cauwenberghe (music) begins with Gruwez slicing around a glacial stage like a battery-powered toy to persistent drumbeats, but ends with a stunning set-piece of flashlights, rotating shadows, and saturated sounds that compel surrender. More human in aim, scale, and story is Twama Paradise by Tunisian-born, French-raised Héla Fattoumi, a duet with Tunisian actor-dancer Sondos Belhassen. Recalling scenes from their separate but parallel lives, it sets the two ageing women as twins, accomplices, rivals, ghosts, or reflections. Melding Arabic chant and French chanson, undulating curves with balletic lines, it builds a nuanced portrait of lives twined through popular music, design, womanhood, ambition, and ageing. A mature work on many levels. Montpellier Danse festival runs until 4 July.
