OLYMPIADES

— Creation June 2024

When Paris was chosen to host the 2024 Olympics, eight spaces devoted to the development and showcasing of performing arts in Seine-Saint-Denis wanted to collaborate on a project envisioning a Cultural Olympics, an event that could be artistic, festive, and federative to reflect the area’s rich artistic offering. Working as the collective La Beauté du geste, the eight spaces, with their various approaches and artistic identities, are all ambassadors of contemporary artistic projects. They share the same ambitious vision for the area, which is to educate the public and pursue a cultural mission to bring artists into contact with the inhabitants of this ever-evolving department that symbolizes a France at once open-minded, imaginative, and primarily embodied by its young people. Beginning in summer 2022, the collective launched a long-term participatory creative process with circus, dance, and theater artists. In June 2024, these projects—led by associative, educational, and social partners and created by locals—will constitute the various groups in a large parade bringing together thousands of young people.

ON VA PAS SE DÉFILER, AN AMBITIOUS PARTICIPATORY PROJECT REFLECTING THE AREA.

In her work, Dalila Belaza attempts to delve into the intimate relationship between

physical movement and the spaces it creates.

For the parade, she will be collaborating with young women working professionally in the areas of rugby, gymnastics, and athletics in addition to a choir and a group of young jazz dancers to create a performance leading to heightened emotional states such as those found in sports, music, and dance. This will be a shared experience with the audience, like the Tarab found in Arab culture.

“The MC93 commissioned me to choreograph a segment of the parade On ne va pas se défiler. I will be leading a group of fifty people. This is a long-term hybrid project combining a production and workshops with a group of amateur performers. I view this project as a large-scale opportunity to invent a way of coexisting. Since 2022, we have been on a long journey to come up with a unique event. The journey is as important as the destination. Connections have been forged, and values have been shared. I have a high regard for this project, which seeks to highlight and celebrate the diversity of this area.

I would like to invite four professional performers to be a part of the whole process and blend into the group. Their presence will make it possible to facilitate and make the group’s movements more fluid from within in order to maintain the musicality and various dynamics (acceleration, slowing down, shift in rhythm, change in the direction of different gestures, etcetera) among the ensemble.

The first year has allowed me to work with an initial group made up of young women studying jazz dance as part of classes and dance competitions. 

I am enjoying working with the vocabulary of jazz dance, which focuses on a very precise sense of rhythm and technique resembling jazz music. It leads to a a very distinct musicality. It is truly enriching to confront my work with these young woman who are so enthusiastically devoted to this dance form. There is a gradual shift in the paradigm of dancing and how it is used.”

Dalila Belaza

© Dalila Belaza