Branching Out

Laying the groundwork is what we do best: with love and urgency, we put art and artists at the heart of the world. Their gestures, their use of language, their interpretations of reality make up this year’s festival program. At FTA’s 19^th edition, 200 choreographers, directors, and performers from 23 countries will create new paths branching out from the panicked course of the world.

We know that everything’s burning, but we continue lighting flames all the same. Amid fire alarms and burnt toast, Pompières et pyromanes by Martine Delvaux and the artists’ collective Bureau de l’APA speaks to the duality of extinction and ignition. The 20 shows we are presenting this year, along with no less than 40 conversations, workshops, parties, and free dance shows in public space, will kindle passionate, candid discussions in spaces where transformation and metamorphosis are celebrated.

Collectively, we have spoken up about the critical situation of the performing arts, taking our concerns right to the doorstep of government ministers. We have let ourselves be guided by a sense of responsibility, perhaps more than by the desires that drive us. Who will we turn to now? This year’s FTA will stimulate new conversations, expand our horizons, and renew our bond with the living. We will connect with our ancestors through masks, songs, or making animal-shaped loaves based on Andean traditions with Tiziano Cruz. In HEAVEN FM, radios will tune into wavelengths we would otherwise never hear. You think we’re making things up? Wait till you see the unicorn...

The past is ahead of us; the future is behind. How do we prepare for it? The Iranian choreographer Armin Hokmi recreates a legendary Levantine festival on stage. Dorothée Munyaneza’s dancing forges links between genealogies of women who were erased from history. The theatre director Caroline Guiela Nguyen brings the beauty of forgotten gestures out of the shadows. The busy hands of lacemakers in Alençon and embroiderers in Mumbai in her play seem to echo the whirling movements of choreographer Louise Lecavalier’s hands. The smallest mirrors the largest.

This Festival that has thrived for 40 years thanks to the outstanding contributions of individuals and communities is now in our care. FTA’s co-founder, Marie-Hélène Falcon, often tells us incredible anecdotes from its history. We share this legacy every day with our inspiring team, to whom we are deeply grateful, along with the members of the board of directors, our partners, our donors, and all of FTA’s friends. Together, let’s branch out and make a new path to the future—there’s no time to lose.

— Co-directors Martine Dennewald, Jessie Mill, and Sandra O’Connor

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