I had originally intended to put in a good word for “woke” with a chat about diversity, inclusion and living with the natural world (rapport au vivant) with Anne Sauvage, director of Atelier de Paris and chief programmer for the season-closing June Events dance festival. The Atelier is a “CDCN”, centre de developpement national chorégraphique, a national dance development center, one of 15 spread through the different regions of France and part of a much larger culture-services network set up from the 1990s.
June Events is the goldilocks of the dance programs that dot the Paris season, at least for me. It happens in the right month in the right place – deliciously warm and mostly in greenspace. June Events even has a right name. “June Events”, Les Journées de juin,1848. The reference recalls both meaningful historic drama: barricades, massacres, deportations as well as the reality that Historical Moments or not, we never stop navigating the sublime and the ridiculous. The fact is, it’s hard to tell the sublime and ridiculous, the historic and quotidian, important and not, apart.
But the idea that hilarious Fun and bloody History are joined at the hip made me reflect that cracking a snook in favor of “woke” might be dangerous. After all, the sublime and ridiculous doctrine dictates that “woke” is both a way of saying a body understands the evils of racial bias and doesn’t have the philosophical outlook of an SS guard. A damnable, cloudy look, you’ll agree. Cloudier yet, “woke” has become an acceptable term of abuse. Cloudiest of all, I’ve heard and read otherwise sensible people excusing themselves for sounding woke. So. No cracking snooks.
Also, my conversation with Anne Sauvage changed my attitude about the questions I had in mind: What has dance to do with diversity, inclusion and living in the natural world? And what can a mostly visual, mostly un- or non-narrative art form such as dance performance do with Big Issues such as who gets a voice, who gets access or how do we stave off mass species extinction?
I think it was when she was telling me that, for her part, dance was a passion that I understood that she assumes that culture – dance, music, visual art, words, the way people do with each other and with the rest of the world around, concerns with beauty and truth – is a human thing, a fact about people, not necessarily a production. Somebody dancing with joy in the street is of equal culture with the Rockettes or Dr Strangelove. Culture and humans an exclusive and primal entanglement. Dance is a part of that. That is also what I believe.
When Ann answers What can dance do? she cites what Atelier de Paris does: helping the widest variety and largest number of people who want it to access it, to learn it and to do it: outreach, education, dance performance, which correlate pretty much to this year’s festival theme of diversity, inclusion and the natural world: in short, access and public interest.
Broadly, access helps people optimize personal interest – Anne cites the Atelier’s long-time involvement with deaf children as a specific effort at inclusion in dance, but also in diversity of those who can participate in it. Dance performance programming is the public face of optimized public participation. Among other things, dance performance shows both the range of individuals involved and the way the public values dance.
For many, for example, if dance performance is entertainment, both dance and dancing have therapeutic and educational value. Anne cites choreographer, dance performer and chiropractor Julie Nioche, whose Qui est outsider – around teen sexual violence – and Une Echappée – “Escape!” around building the imagination. Both pieces straddle therapy, education and performance.
Dance and dancing can be, like writing or sculpting, part of a toolkit for addressing concerns and expressing opinions. Anne cites Rosalind Crisp, a choreographer from Australia whose legendary Crocodiles interactive performance – focuses on improvisation. Joanne Leighton, who is a longtime associate of the Atelier, pursues her Les Veilleurs, “The Watchers”, participative performance project. Les Veilleurs calls attention to community solidarity. Anne also notes that the Atelier takes an interest in Leighton as an independent operator.
And, as we talk, I remember the “right to culture”:
Loi d'orientation du 29 juillet 1998 relative à la lutte contre les exclusions : Article 140 : L'égal accès de tous, tout au long de la vie, à la culture, à la pratique sportive, aux vacances et aux loisirs constitue un objectif national.
… “Equal access to culture for life” …
Culture has been part of education since Jules Ferry founded the current education system – that’s why the “for life”. Basically, this law defines culture, and dance with it, as a public good, essentially, like water, to which everyone has a right. Culture and water both are private goods in the United States. In other words, in France, the things of people, productions such as music, dance, art and gym are an integral part of education, not an (burdensome) “extra”, even when everybody whines about how expensive they are.
A restaurant or café has to give you a glass of water if you want it. In the same way, Anne Sauvage’s job is to ensure everybody who wants it gets access to dance performance. Atelier is part of a system deliberately put in place in the post-war period onward to make culture in general and dance in particular accessible to everyone.
Looked at this way, Anne and the institution she runs look a lot more like products of one of those less flashy but no less profound revolutions of ’68. Veteran choreographer-entrepreneur such as Josette Baïz (“Ulysse” – Josette Baïz and the gifts of today’s un-classic ballet) doesn’t just run an organization that teaches kids to dance, she embodies a whole new way of understanding children and their social role. Similarly, the “diversity, inclusion and living with the natural world” that Anne Sauvage calls the themes of June Events 2025, through public culture institutions such as the one she runs, echo 1968’s founding vision of a world where the right to culture goes without saying.