The Avignon Festival opens tonight in the Cour d’Honneur of the Palais des Papes as it should be, with a show by the Spanish performer Angelica Liddell who pays tribute to the Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergmann. But the opening also takes place at the end of the afternoon in a football stadium where the choreographer Boris Charmatz mixes nearly 200 amateurs and professionals, a show open free of charge to the public and which is called Circles.
It is a generous spectacle that Avignon offers at this opening of the festival on the eve of the first round of the legislative elections in France. Free, with nearly 200 performers, but in a climate charged with the rise of an extreme right that the artists fear. Obviously, there are professional dancers, then amateur dancers who come to live a collective experience too, facing the world, facing adversity, we have to stick together, be together, in movement. I think it’s not bad to raise our fists together.”
A show called Circleschoreographed by Boris Charmatz: “ The circle, is it a closed community? Or is it a circle that can talk to people who watch? ? I feel, when you look at them, that it is also a gift. And whether you go to the Cour d’honneur of the Palais des Papes or here on our football field or elsewhere, the Avignon Festival is typically something where the public and the artists, together, make Avignon. That is what is magnificent. »
The dancers run, embrace, turn in a circle as one body. We are on the ground, we are in the air, we make big gestures, shuffles, tumbles, it’s a really intense experience… »
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