For 10 years, the Freestyle festival has been celebrating urban and popular culture at La Villette. And from October 4, 2025, street culture will take up permanent residence in the heart of the 19th arrondissement park, with the Maison des Cultures Urbaines! Freestyle Villette is a permanent venue designed to promote street practices, whether in dance, music, street art or sport.
Housed in the former Pavillon Villette, a renovated 1,000m2 showcase on the north side of the park, the house is open to all and is designed to recognize and support urban cultures, with an artistic program and a spotlight on other cultures such as electronic music and the clubbing scene.
The program includes multi-disciplinary events produced by la Villette or designed in conjunction with invited partner venues (dance battles, showcases, listening sessions, freestyles, frescoes), as well as introductions to artistic practices and carte blanche for dance companies, battles and parties organizers, street artists and more.
It's an opportunity to spot new trends and top talent in a single space, like a large residence, but also to support spontaneous practices in the park with new features to come, such as dance floors.
As part of the Feel in vogue event, by Kiddy Smile and Frédéric Fontan, which will transform the Grande Halle de la Villette into a veritable temple of the ballroom scene on November 29 and 30, 2025, advanced workshops will be organized with key figures in voguing and whacking: Sofia Stanic, Godmother Matyouz Gorgeous Gucci, The Legendary Supreme Gorgeous Madame B Gucci and Fanny Figols.
The RappeuZ project, backed by CallMeFemcee, is the first musical springboard dedicated to discovering and spotlighting emerging female rappers across France. This unique scheme organizes castings in several cities to spot female rap talent, often under-represented in the music industry. At the end of the regional castings, a grand national final brings together the selected artists for a final performance before a professional jury. The aim: to elect the best among them and offer her increased visibility as well as concrete opportunities to develop her career.
NADIA "NADÉEYA" GABRIELI KALATI - Sawata: Between heritage and reinvention, at the crossroads of house dance and African traditions, dancer and choreographer Nadia Gabrieli Kalati invents a space of resonance where forgotten gestures are brought back to life, carried by the memory of bodies.
JULIA ORTOLA - Nexus: When two locking figures meet, their paths and passions intertwine. With Nexus, Gemini, a pioneer of locking in France, and choreographer Julia Ortola aka Funky J bring together two generations of locking dancers.
CHRIS FARGEOT-3h33 in my room (through the window): At the crossroads of breaking and improvisation, 3h33 in my room (through the window) is a sensory journey, a suspended space where the body's memory is reinvented through sounds, silences and impulses.
VIOLA CHIARINI - Furiosa: With Furiosa, choreographer Viola Chiarini gives shape to an ancient, visceral anger, inspired by the figure of Medea. With three performers, she explores the feverish physicality of waacking, between tension, pulsation and liberation.
EMANUELLE SOUM -EVE88: With EVE88, dancer and choreographer Emanuelle Soum rewrites this founding myth through a liberated physicality, nourished by yoga, somatic practices and the fem vogue.
Kiddy Smile & Friends, a voguing festival turns the Grande Halle de la Villette into a ballroom
Ready to strike a pose? A voguing festival headlined by Kiddi Smile awaits us at the Grande Halle de la Villette on Saturday and Sunday, November 29 and 30, 2025. With waacking, lip-sync, drag shows and DJ sets, the event promises an XXL ballroom atmosphere. [Read more]
By bringing together a plurality of viewpoints, this symposium invites us to decentralize our narratives by considering postcolonial and (post)migratory dynamics, cultural hybridizations and polyvocal and multisituated histories. It highlights the importance of practice-based research and proposes a reflection on the place of participation, co-construction and shared authority in dance research. Today, attention to hip-hop bodies and souls is revitalizing dancers' initiatives in oral transmission, public history, documentation and notation. This symposium is also in line with the history of hip-hop dance in France, during high points such as the Rencontres nationales de danse urbaine at La Villette in 1996, the creation in 2003 and subsequent worldwide influence of the "Juste Debout" competition, and the inclusion of break dance in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
A cultural center dedicated to hip-hop, located in the heart of Paris under the canopy of Les Halles, La Place is a lively venue whose mission is to promote all the aesthetics and artistic practices of this cultural movement. Through its distribution, transmission and support activities, La Place promotes and encourages creation in all its forms: music, dance, graffiti, image and audiovisual. On December 13, 2025, La Villette invites La Place to imagine a carte blanche house party for Tijo Aimé with Kapela, Sofia, Mab'ish and Tijo Aimé.
CARMEL LOANGA - L'Effet Mère (The Mother Effect): In a choreography tinged with hip-hop and traditional dances, Carmel Loanga explores the invisible traces of maternal transmission. In this sensitive and powerful solo, she questions her African origins, her experiences as a black woman and as an immigrant mother in France.
MARLÈNE GOBBER - Mantra : In Mantra, Marlène Gobber uses dance as a space for healing, resistance and revelation. Inspired by her family history, her deep emotions and the memories that run through her, this solo draws on her practices of hip-hop, yoga, martial arts and somatic techniques.
MICHEL "MEECH'" ONOMO - Immersive Movement : Immersive Movement is a choreographic manifesto in which Michel Onomo aka "Meech De France" summons up twenty years of dance and movement exploration. Carried by an organic breath of beatbox, strings and percussion, he invents Ghôst Flow: a spectral, raw and precise gesture.
VALENTINE NAGATA-RAMOS - MukashiihsakuM: Carried by the energy of breaking, popping and krump, choreographer Valentine Nagata-Ramos reinvents ancestral tales to question our instincts, our fragile link to the living and the shifting boundary between the human and the monstrous.
Created in 2015 as part of the Villette Street Festival and since become a highlight of La Villette's hip-hop programming, Golden Stage presents three collectives of different generations each year, forging links between the emerging scene and hip-hop legends.
LÉA CAZAURAN / CIE LADY ROCKS - Insectes : In Insectes, Léa Cazauran compares break dancing and insect behavior, two forms of physical resistance in a hostile environment. Five dancers give body to these often rejected but tenacious beings.
CIE BOY BLUE - Gray: British company Boy Blue has created a dense, hard-hitting piece in which hip-hop becomes a language of revolt, memory and liberation. Taken from the Blak Whyte Gray triptych, this manifesto unfurls a powerful, visceral dance.
Location
Freestyle Villette
30 Avenue Corentin Cariou
75019 Paris 19
Prices
Free
Official website
www.lavillette.com
