Petites Joueuses

The Festival d'Automne continues, for the third year in a row, its partnership with the Louvre Museum. Together, they have been building up a collection of new contemporary performances dedicated to the museum and its works. On the occasion of the 'Figures du fou. Du Moyen âge aux romantiques' exhibition, which explores the subversive value of the foolish or the nonsensical in medieval society, the dancer and choreographer François Chaignaud brings us Petites joueuses. In this piece, an immersive and uninterrupted journey through the medieval Louvre, mutant and resonant creatures take over its fortifications, giving rise to a somewhat disturbing carnival. 

'Petit joueur' finds its female equivalent in the term 'petite joueuse'. In this piece,  the choreographer François Chaignaud reappropriates this pejorative term, synonymous with cowardice and lack of ambition, in order to subvert its meaning. He affirms, via the uniqueness, insolence and lightness of moving bodies, different ways in which we can take up the public space. In doing so, he blurs the semantic field of grandeur which is attached to places devoted to art. We are confronted with petites joueuses - female 'lightweights' or 'amateurs' - performing in the Grand Louvre. They invent their own rules, and go against the different codes. By creating confusion, playfulness, and equivocation, they undermine the effects of authority that this immense exhibition machine carries with it. By approaching the Louvre in this way, at its opposite end, this community of performers brings to the surface the archaeological layers of its medieval elements. Each visitor takes it in turn to discover its foundations, gaining access to a living, breathing, restless organism populated by figures ranging from the serious to the comical. Petites joueuses acts as a counterpoint to the 'Figures du fou. Du Moyen âge aux romantiques' exhibition. A singing nave, then, which affirms the centrality of the margins.