This weekend, November 11 and 12, 2023, we're off to the Musée d'Orsay to enjoy shows and musical entertainment. Dive into the world of hip-hop with Mourad Merzouki's Cultural Olympiad.
In the run-up to the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, a host of events are on offer for the people of Ile-de-France. These include a major Cultural Olympiad, combining sport and culture in a variety of venues. Street art in a swimming pool, dance in a theater or museum, trampoline and circus, a show around a racing cyclist... The two worlds meet and mingle to create a unique and unforgettable event.
In Paris, the Musée d'Orsay is taking an active part in this Cultural Olympiad, with several events scheduled to run from September 2023 to June 2024. The next event to mark your diary is fast approaching: book your weekend of November 11 and 12, 2023, when hip-hop invades the Musée d'Orsay.
During these two days of festivities and dance, you can admire"impromptus chorégraphiques", hip-hop performances imagined by artist Mourad Merzouki and his troupe of dancers. In every nook and cranny of the museum, from the Fumoir to the Salle Degas, from the Great Nave to the Salon de l'horloge, you'll be able to admire unique choreographies, set to music that establishes a new dialogue with the works that surround us.
But that's not all! Music and dance can be shared. That's why visitors are also invited to dance (whether you've mastered the art of hip-hop or not) at a grand ball open to all, in the museum's nave. It's sure to be a festive and artistic occasion!
Here's the detailed program for the hip-hop weekend:
- Folia
Duration: 15 minutes
At 2pm & 3:30pm - Salle des Fêtes (level 2)
At 3:10pm - Salle 31 (known as Degas) (level 5)
With Folia, created in 2018, the challenge is to explore the rhythms of a popular culture present in southern Italy: tarantella, a traditional Neapolitan dance and song little known to the general public. In a fascinating spiral, the bodies forcefully seize this dance, linked in the collective imagination to a phenomenon of trance and madness, and provoke it further by confronting it with the richness of the reception hall's 1900 decoration.
- Boxe Boxe
Running time: 10 minutes
At 2.50pm - La Shadow - in front of Le rut de Printemps. Combat de Cerf by Courbet. Galerie Seine (level 0)
At 3.10pm - Solo at the back of the nave - above the model of Paris (level 0)
In 2010, Mourad Merzouki struck a major blow with Boxe Boxe, bringing the classical musicians of the Quatuor Debussy - an eminent French string quartet - face to face on stage with hip-hop dancers who play on the contrasts between these two movement arts of dance and boxing. Playing on the differences and similarities between the two disciplines, he thwarts their clichés. To highlight other ways of telling a story, and to emphasize the lightness and quality of movement of the performers, Mourad Merzouki has them confront each other in a space at the back of the nave, redesigned and renewed by the museum around the model of the Paris Opera district.
- Phénix
Running time: 15 minutes
At 2.25pm and 3.55pm - Salle Coupole 58 (level 2)
More than three centuries separate them, but with Mourad Merzouki, viola da gamba and hip-hop become one. Under the dome of the museum's Salle 58, four male and female dancers engage in a dialogue with architecture and large-format paintings in two selected pieces from the show Phénix. Accompanied by a soundtrack of electro music created by musician Arandel and pieces from the Baroque repertoire, Phénix created quite an event at the Festival d'Avignon 2023, taking the audience on a journey through a light, singular form and bringing together disciplines that everything opposes.
- YO GEE TI
Duration: 10 minutes
At 4:20pm - Salon de l'horloge (level 5)
Born of the encounter between French and Taiwanese dancers, this performance is a fusion of genres and cultures in a mystical atmosphere. Bodies twist, melt and exhaust themselves under woollen costumes that encircle them and magnify their plasticity and technique. Two extracts, a trio and a duo, take over the Salon de l'horloge as a story of open lines.
- Vertikal
Duration: 15 minutes
At 4:45pm - Middle of the nave (level 0)
In the great nave of Orsay, we discover Vertikal, a dance-escalation device that presents the illusion of lightness and the dream of flight, that of Icarus, of Trisha Brown... Various performances highlight the talent of dancers and acrobats who defy gravity in a poetic moment.
- Free duets by Compagnie Käfig
Duration: 5-10 minutes
2 and 3:30pm - Salle des grands formats - Galerie Seine
2:25 and 3:55pm - Salle 72 (level 2)
2:50 and 4:20pm - Fumoir (level 2)
Three duets by six dancers from Compagnie Käfig bring the museum's works into dialogue with performances that give pride of place to innovation and experimentation.
- Participatory dance
Duration: 30 minutes
5pm - Nave (level 0)
At the end of the first day of Impromptus chorégraphiques, which took over various areas of the museum, the public is invited to a participatory dance in the heart of the Nave, from a playful perspective: hip-hop is above all about belonging, fraternity, a way of living, moving and feeling. In the nave, transformed into a dance floor, history, art and life come together, guided by the sculpted group La Danse by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux.
Please note: this hip-hop weekend is free of charge (i.e. all activities are included in the museum entrance fee), but you'll need to reserve your ticket in advance to gain access to the art center.
