a season full of polyphony

For three days, from September 9 to 11, the Paris Autumn Festival offers a free showcase at Espace Cardin. Shows, concerts, debates, performances or cinema will be on the program – and accessible to all – for the opening of the 51^e edition of this major cultural back-to-school event. Fifty years after its creation in 1972, the event, past master in the art of multidisciplinarity, remains faithful to its commitments: supporting artists over the long term, bringing the Europe of culture to life, opening up widely to world – as evidenced by the presence of several Japanese artists – and to create ever closer links with artistic and cultural education. “The Fall Festival is an incredible megaphone”observes the Italian Francesca Corona, new artistic director of the event, in charge of theater and dance, thus emphasizing the role of both scout and spokesperson for these four months of shows and meetings. .

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This year, the festival will make us hear accents coming straight from Portugal as part of the Franco-Portuguese season chaired by Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota, also general manager of the event. This involves a great “portrait” of the dancer and choreographer Marlene Monteiro Freitas, i.e. twelve years of creation and eight productions on display to discover a hybrid work made “of folds, twists, superpositions, invasions and strangulations”, as she says herself. Tiago Rodrigues, new director of the Festival d’Avignon, for theatre, Vera Mantero and Tânia Carvalho for dance, Emmanuel Nunes, Vicente Lusitano or even Manuel Cardoso for music, as well as visual artist Ana Jotta, complete this program in the form of bridge between the two countries.

Uncertainties and changes

Discovery therefore, but also, as every year, known and recognized artists, whose work the festival makes it a point of honor to follow and support. Théo Mercier, Christoph Marthaler, Philippe Quesne, Milo Rau or Angélica Liddell will once again be there in one of the 64 partner locations for this new edition, in Paris and Ile-de-France.

But, like the world of culture in general, hit by the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and by the new habits of the public, the festival opens in an environment full of uncertainties – how the spectators will respond present? – and changes – ecological in particular. In order not to know the crisis of fifty, the festival is therefore obliged to move, to open up new horizons by registering even more in the societal field (university, hospital, associations…): 2022 or the first year of the rest of Autumn life.

This article was produced as part of a partnership with the Autumn Festival in Paris.

Guillaume Fraissard