Performance pieces devised by established and emerging artists and choreographers will go on show in various courtyards of the Louvre museum this autumn as part of a new festival organised by the Fiac fair (Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain, 20-23 October).
The Parades for Fiac project, which encompasses contemporary dance and poetry readings, launches 17 October (until 23 October) with Corbeaux, a 2014 work by the Moroccan dancer and choreographer, Bouchra Ouizguen, in the Cour Carrée of the Louvre. The French choreographer Boris Charmatz and the New York-based artist Maria Hassabi will also present live art pieces at the museum.
The new initiative builds on Fiac’s existing performance project, Ouvertures (openings), which was launched in partnership with the Louvre in 2008.
Participating in Parades for Fiac reflects the Louvre’s growing interest in the discipline of dance. A new exhibition entitled Body in Movement opens this autumn at the museum (La Petite Galerie, 6 October-3 July 2017). The show, which is co-organised by the Louvre’s director Jean-Luc Martinez and the high-profile choreographer Benjamin Millepied, will include more than 70 works from antiquity to the early 20th century focusing on the body in motion.
The new festival also includes evening performance sessions at the Palais de la Découverte, the science museum located on the west side of the Grand Palais where the Fiac fair is held. Visitors will access the Palais de la Découverte through the Salon d’Honneur, an exhibition area on the first floor of the Grand Palais.
“This is an exciting new development as people are not always aware that the Grand Palais and the Palais de la Découverte are part of one and the same architectural ensemble, opening on to each other although access has been closed for decades,” says Jennifer Flay, the director of Fiac.
“Performance art, with pieces focusing on language and poetry or that of an oniric 'promenade' through the different spaces of the museum, will interact with the environment of the science museum, creating a dialogue between art and scientific realities," she adds.
The Italian poet Alex Cecchetti will conduct a tour of the Palais de la Découverte after dark, leading visitors through the laboratories, offices and planetarium as part of a “guided tour through heaven and hell”, say the organisers of Parades for Fiac.