Les Démêlées
- Debates
Inventing futures with dance criticism
Two days of meetings, exchanges, and roundtables
While traditional media spaces dedicated to criticism are shrinking, new ways of sparking reflection through aesthetic experience are emerging. By reimagining established habits and roles, these practices challenge and shift power dynamics within the cultural sphere. How can we activate the emancipatory potential of critical activity? At the invitation of the Les Démêlées – Critiques locales de danse, chorégraphie, performance team, these two days of exchange offer a space to share ideas, questions, and tools, and to experiment with collective critical practices to co-invent desirable futures for, and with, dance criticism.
Cultural professionals, artists, journalists, students, and the general public: these two days of collective reflection are open to all, upon subscription!
Program:
June 18
- 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM: Welcome by Marie Glon and François Frimat
- Introduction: Criticism Today: An Overview of the Field and Practices by Philippe Guisgand, Marie Pons, and Charlotte Imbault
- 3:30 PM – 5:30 PM: Roundtable: Freedom of Expression, Censorship, and Self-Censorship: Vigilance and Tools for Intellectual Self-Defense
Moderated by Aïnhoa Jean-Calmettes
Speakers: Belinda Mathieu, Grégoire Schaller, Soazic Courbet (…)
Registration for June 18 afternoon
- 9:30 PM: “Cœur critique” workshop coordinated by the Démêlées team, centered around the performance Tout doit disparaître by Stéphanie Aflalo.
June 19
- 9:30 AM – 12:30 PM: Critical Workshop by the Salve team (Mylène Lauzon, Arnaud Timmermans, Raissa Alingabo Yowali M’bilo)
Registration for June 19 morning
- 1:30 PM – 3:15 PM: Roundtable: Criticism for Whom and by Whom? Rethinking the Role of the “Public.”
Speakers: Eliane Dheygère, Vincent Jean, Mylène Lauzon, Sanjoy Roy (…) - 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM: Roundtable: Inventing Critical Futures: Criticism as a Tool for Mediation, Education, and Creative Support
Moderated by Soan Garlatti and Marie Philipart
Speakers: Philippe Guisgand, Hélène Malet, Valeria Gonzales (…) - 5:00 PM – 5:30 PM: Collective Workshops: Projects for dance criticism over the next two years
- 5:30 PM – 6:00 PM: Summary and Conclusions
Registration for June 19 afternoon
This work received state aid managed by the National Research Agency under the France 2030 program (reference ANR-23-PEIC-0001).
Biography(s)
Les Démêlées is a publication dedicated to local dance, choreography, and performance criticism, born in the Lille metropolitan area and its surrounding regions.
It is an eight-page print publication, distributed free of charge through a network of partner organizations that co-founded the project. We believe the digital presence of the publication on this site—offering the possibility to consult each issue in PDF format—is a valuable complement. It allows us to circulate the work produced here and share our writing with spectators, readers, companies, and organizations beyond our immediate territory.
This project was born from a desire to create a critical space that allows us to exchange ideas, reflect, and write criticism exactly as we would like to read it. It is about taking a moment, away from the heat of the news cycle, to give an account of what we see and how it moves us. Beyond this significant focus on criticism, **Les Démêlées** also serves as a platform to explore creation in the making and the movements taking root within a territory—engaging with those who play an essential, and sometimes invisible, role in the manufacturing of future choreographic forms.
