Heritage in motion

Founded in 1989, the James Carlès Choreographic Center is a pioneering institution in dance education in France, with a transmodern approach that values the diversity of choreographic cultures. It promotes Afro-descendant, academic, urban, and social dances, without hierarchy between styles.

The Center advocates for inclusive, humanistic, and universal dance that is capable of recounting the struggles, legacies, and hopes of Afro-descendant peoples, a dance that seeks to transcend cultural boundaries through emotion, memory, and the beauty of movement. These are all issues that resonate with the works of Mickalene Thomas, which affirm the place of bodies in space and their dialogue in acts of love, joy, and pleasure.

It was from these echoes that a proposal was conceived at the crossroads between the exhibition and the Danse & Continents Noirs Festival.

The Festival Danses & Continents Noirs, initiated by James Carlès, is unique in Europe. For 27 years, it has celebrated Afro-descendant choreographic cultures and forgotten or marginalized figures in the history of dance.

This festival is both an artistic and activist endeavor, seeking to rewrite the history of dance by incorporating all the voices and legacies that have shaped it.

For 27 years, the Festival Danses et Continents Noirs has been working to restore an essential place to voices, cultures, and figures that have long been marginalized in the history of dance. By choosing the theme “Héritages en mouvement(s)” (Heritage in Motion), it affirms that traditions are not fixed: they live, transform, and nourish current creation. This 27th edition is marked by gratitude and living memory.

Paying tribute to the great figures of dance—from Alphonse Tiérou (Franco-Ivorian choreographer and researcher) to Rick Odums (visionary dancer and teacher who shaped jazz and contemporary dance in France with the soul of the African-American diaspora) – is to recognize the founding role of African artists and the diaspora in the construction of a universal language of the body. These exceptional pioneers have opened up new avenues, combining roots and innovation, transmission and freedom.

This approach resonates with the work of the artists exhibited at the Musée des Abattoirs. As in dance, their work evokes memory, gesture, heritage, and the reaffirmation of multiple identities.

Faced with contemporary challenges—whether cultural, economic, or political—the Festival, like contemporary African art, reaffirms a conviction: to create is to resist; to transmit is to build. Between dance and visual arts, a common movement is emerging: that of creating dialogue between continents, disciplines, and generations, so that legacies remain alive and in perpetual motion.

On November 6, one of its chapters will unfold in three parts in the rooms of the exhibition “Mickalene Thomas: All about love.”

Evening program:

FOCUS POÉTIQUE DO-KRE-I-S

Created in 2017 and distributed in Haiti, France, overseas territories, and elsewhere, the artistic and cultural magazine DO-KRE-I-S brings together more than a hundred contributors from more than twenty islands and countries, including Haiti, France, Réunion, Guadeloupe, Mayotte, Trinidad and Tobago, as well as Senegal, Cape Verde, Norway, Tunisia, Mexico, Brazil, etc. Designed above all as a space for the development and affirmation of Creole languages and cultures, the magazine celebrates “this dense forest where we intertwine, intersect, intermingle, where vines flourish: a maelstrom of imaginations that stirs the world.”

On the occasion of this special event at Les Abattoirs, the magazine will present a poetic performance based on texts in Creole and French, selected by Jean Erian Samson, co-founder of the magazine.

MAM6K

Drawing on a family heritage linked to the cult of Hévioso—the voodoo god of lightning—and nourished by the music of the diaspora, MAM6K constructs performances like electronic rituals. Delay, feedback, field recordings, and samples become forms of sound archaeology: her music glitches memory, questions history, and invents another future, one that is Afro-futuristic and poetic.

HERE COMES THE SUN... THE NEW WORLD IS COMING

Charlène Convers will present an original work created as a final choreographic project at the James Carlès Choreographic Center in 2022. Based on Nina Simone's principles of empowerment, the piece has been rewritten as an ode to anti-racism and the reappropriation of power by women. This choreographic piece is also a means of comparing and discussing the figure and anti-racist artistic career of Josephine Baker with that of Nina Simone, an African American who left the United States because of racism. Villeurbanne, in collaboration with Burkinabe choreographer Sigue Sayouba.

The full festival program can be found here: jamescarles.com/festival 

James Carlès is a French choreographer, dancer, teacher, researcher, and lecturer of Cameroonian origin. He is recognized for his artistic, cultural, and activist commitment to Afro-descendant dances and choreographic diversity.

Initially trained in African percussion, modern jazz, and classical dance, he continued his studies in New York (Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, Limon Institute) and London (London Contemporary Dance School). He developed a unique approach combining African dance, modern Western techniques, and identity research. He is the author of more than 50 choreographic pieces, some of which pay tribute to figures such as Katherine Dunham, Pearl Primus, and Rick Odums. Also an associate researcher at the University of Toulouse Jean-Jaurès, he works on issues of memory, identity, and heritage in dance.

In 1988, James Carlès founded the Centre Chorégraphique James Carlès in Toulouse, a place for training, creation, and transmission, as well as the Festival “Danse à Toulouse,” focused on promoting choreographic forms derived from social and popular traditions in the West. In 2007, he created the Danses & Continents Noirs Festival, which promotes Afro-diasporic dances and forgotten figures in the history of dance.

The James Carlès Danse & Co company works to promote choreographic forms derived from social and popular traditions in the West. In 1998, James Carlès created the dance center and festival “Danse à Toulouse,” a showcase for this unusual approach, which was followed by the festival “Danse et Continents noirs” in 2007. In its creations, the company seeks to bring together diverse choreographic cultures with other art forms. It also conducts activities related to research, conservation, transmission, dissemination, and public awareness.