the essential
This is the end: Contemporary Traces will no longer take place. After a cancellation in 2024, the artistic director of the Cadurcien festival officially announced it to Dépêche du Midi: there will be no other editions. The main reason is economic.
Contemporary traces, it’s well and truly over. After the cancellation of the 2024 edition, Nora Turpault, the artistic director of the festival, announces that the event will ultimately not resume. “It’s the end of a story and it’s not sad,” reveals the Lot choreographer. The lack of money got the better of this dance event which took place in September in Cahors. “We started fifteen years ago with a budget of 4,000 euros. The last edition closed with a budget of 170,000 euros when we needed double that. We grew so much that we had to hire and the budget was no longer keeping up, we were forced to negotiate the prices of service providers excessively and we reconfigured the festival on Place Bessière with one day less and therefore a reduced program,” explains the artistic director. In 2023, Traces welcomed more than 4,000 people in three days. “We held this edition at arm’s length, with a source of financial stress. I was no longer having fun. We all lost our hearts and it bothered me to have to reduce the format,” remembers Nora Turpault. The subsidies did not increase proportionally. “Some were so weak that they could barely pay for a company,” points out the dancer.
“I cleared the air to make room for something else.”
This is why she made it known, at the end of 2023, that Traces would not be renewed in 2024. “This essential step will allow us to take stock of the situation and begin gestation to give birth to a new vision that is in phase with the current of life”, she revealed to us then. A year later, therefore, the decision is made: there will be no follow-up. The organizer fully rediscovers her terrain as a choreographer. “Thanks to the festival stopping, I have an extraordinary space to transmit and research,” she observes. And because she is not a woman to sit idly by, Nora Turpault is already teeming with ideas for what comes next. “I am currently researching to build a choreographic project that links France and Algeria, my roots,” she says. Of course, dance classes continue at the choreographic center. At the same time, the sessions also continue with the Traces contemporains association, another structure, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The choreographer is already planning to celebrate the 10th anniversary of her choreographic center from April until April 2026. Finally, she is not closing the door to another project, in any form whatsoever. “If I rebuild an event, it will be concerned with nature and life, around respect for the earth. Let’s say that I cleared the air to make room for something else,” she concludes.
Dates to remember
On Saturday February 1st, electro dance workshop with Myax from the Mazelfreten company. From 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday February 2, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. On February 15, from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., an ecstatic dance workshop with Lot DJ Tom Nikso. After a warm-up, participants are invited to dance freely to the music. Another session is scheduled for April 6, from 2:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday March 29, from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. intense “organic dance fusion” module around the sacred masculine. On Saturday April 5 at 8 p.m., unison concert with Kelly Aura at the Château du Roussillon then, on Sunday April 6, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., voice opening and medicine singing workshop with Kelly Aura. The weekend of June 28 and 29, presentation of the creation of the choreographic center by the students at the Auditorium.
