Paris l’Été festival — dance keeps the French capital alive

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Some festivals are better equipped than others to weather the current storm of rising costs and stagnant arts funding. Paris l’Été may be one of them: this offbeat multidisciplinary festival, founded in 1990 to serve Parisians who don’t flee the French capital over the summer, has generally avoided costly, high-profile premieres in large venues.

Instead, it focuses on bringing back successful recent productions and restaging them outdoors or in quirky settings. This year, directors Laurence de Magalhaes and Stéphane Ricordel hit the nail on the head with Marina Otero’s Fuck Me, one of the sensations of the past season, performed here in the courtyard of the Lycée Jacques-Decour.

Its starting point is most dancers’ greatest fear: a grave injury, here to Otero’s back, following years of daredevil performances. In Fuck Me, Otero recounts this from the side of the stage as five men take her place: naked (save for knee pads), they contort their limbs into hyperextended poses, jump and land into the splits, and fling themselves to the ground at full force.

Behind them, archival images show the younger Otero, who narrates the performance with pained frankness. “What used to save me now condemns me,” she says. “What will I be able to give?” At several points, the choreographer shuffles, slightly hunched, among the men as they unleash the physicality that she was once capable of. It’s an arresting contrast — a show of vulnerability that singles out Otero as an artist to follow, and one who, it’s hoped, is on the path to healing, based on a short postscript she has added to the show.

A different kind of physical vulnerability was on display the same night, courtesy of Finland’s Wauhaus collective. In Fluids, performed indoors at the Lycée, five dancers slide, splash around and occasionally slip on a treacherous stage covered in transparent lube. Co-created by Juni Klein and Jarkko Partanen, Fluids has potential: of the performers, the deadpan Joonas Tagel plays up the absurdity of the situation. Yet without much dramaturgical structure, the result proved slow-moving, and not just because of the risks involved.

Stronger choreography came from Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company (in the courtyard venue). Directed by Rami Be’er for close to three decades, this Israeli company may not be equal to the better-known Batsheva, but it deserves greater exposure — not least because Be’er is a very fine dancemaker.

In Asylum, from 2018, a man with a megaphone opens and closes the show, leading the 18-strong group through scenes that blend military and choreographic discipline. Their shuffling entrance, each with one shoulder popping forward to the beat, sets the scene for the fluid, virtuosic solos that come later, feeling like a cry for individuality in a hostile world. Paris l’Été may be a low-key festival compared to Avignon or Edinburgh, but its audiences are hardly short-changed.

★★★★☆

Festival runs to July 30, parislete.fr