Season 2021/2022

Since it was established, Chaillot on the hill has been passed around from one vision to the next, building the more than necessary connections that can help us navigate our diverse and multifaceted selves.
The art of Chaillot - Théâtre national de la Danse is one of gathering. We will gather this season and enjoy this art of meeting, which builds social cohesion through the respect for others and their difference and adds a needed dreamy undertone to the beautiful word “humanity”. Society expects art to share the complexity of the world while creating a desire for discovery. Art only exists in the answers it contributes to our society. All the gestures that we have missed in the last few months – touching, hugging, carrying one other, colliding, lunging forward, supporting one another – will come back and remind us of what dance is to life.
Thank you Didier Deschamps for curating this last season, heading Chaillot with dedication for ten years and giving us pioneering choreography.

A Word from the director about the 21/22 season

Scheduling shows means planning how time will unfold and events flow together. It means working out agreements with companies, marking dates on the calendar, making travel arrangements, booking hotel rooms etc. It involves getting the theater’s machinery up and running so that we can host you with dignity.
Covid 19 came along, imposing its own agenda of multiple cancellations and postponements.
For 15 months, we went to great lengths against challenging odds to support the artists and their works and imagine new content, new forms to share with you – particularly through digital tools and workshops – our love of and passion for dance.
With vaccination came the time of hope and the reopening of theaters. Now is the time to pick up this essential connection to creative work.
Once again, the 21/22 season will be profuse as are the colors and moods of our time, here or there.
Major companies and international ballets and independent companies – sometimes called emerging – will bring large and small pieces to the spaces and stages of Chaillot.
There will be 39 shows and 246 performances which will particularly showcase the significance and relevance of women artists in contemporary dance productions.
Nineteen foreign artists will set up shop at Trocadéro, including Lia Rodrigues, many times associate artist and lined up as part of the Artist Profile curated by Festival d’Automne in Paris.
Other international acts include Brazil, India with Aakash Odedra and Bollywood, Cuba with the phenomenal Acosta Danza, and Australia and its festival.
Spain will be featured 4 times, particularly with the latest work by Rocío Molina, another associate artist, La Veronal, who will be back after enthralling audiences at Festival d’Avignon, and finally a dazzling 5th edition of the Flamenco Biennale.
England, Norway and Japan will complement this choreographic journey, along with Israel and the inevitable Batsheva Dance Company which has consistently thrilled audiences at every appearance. In terms of new interpretations of repertoire, The Malandain Ballet Biarritz will present two international productions, The Rite of Spring choreographed by Martin Harriague and The Firebird by Thierry Malandain. The Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon will present a program consisting of two pieces by William Forsythe and one piece by Fabrice Mazliah, and the company KOR’SIA will give us an astonishing Giselle.
A host of French artists will also be featured, including Thomas Lebrun, Maud Le Pladec, Josette Baïz, Phia Ménard, Jonathan Pranlas-Descours and Christophe Béranger, Système Castafiore, all of whom will give us the pulse and vibrations of our times.
More vibrations will come with Mathilde Monnier, Ayelen Parolin and our associate artist Jann Gallois. Finally, we’ll “bug” with the international production by Etienne Rochefort and cross Europe’s borders into North Macedonia with Skopje’s contemporary ballet and its director Risima Rimsika.
The season will kick off with Planet [wanderer], an international and in-house production by associate artist Damien Jalet and designer Kohei Nawa, which is an eagerly anticipated event of the season start. At the end of the calendar, two shows will explore the sports and dance worlds each in their own way. These include Archée by Mylène Benoit and Corps extrêmes by Chaillot’s new director Rachid Ouramdane, who is taking over with a new project and vision for dance.
Of course, our outreach department will welcome you with a plethora of happenings to let you discover the works and creative processes of the artists.
As Rimbaud sang: “Ah! let the time come”.

Bon voyage!

Didier Deschamps