Never before has the Centre Pompidou portrayed the relationship between dance and art so comprehensively: its multidisciplinary “Danser sa vie” exhibition combines painting, sculpture, installations, video and live performances (from 1900 to today), to explore the founding movements of modernism and show how dance was a constant source of inspiration for the world’s leading artistic figures. The exhibition is split into three sections – “Dance as Self-expression” (from Vaslav Nijinsky to Matthew Barney); “Dance and Abstraction” (which examines the birth of abstraction through the choreographic inventions of Loïe Fuller); and “Dance as Performance”. It offers pure, unadulterated entertainment with shows by the likes of Trisha Brown, who will present ten performances of her 1968 ‘Planes’. Young contemporary artist Davide Balula also gives a one-off performance of his conceptual 'Mechanical Clock for 60 Dancers' in which sixty dancers personify the passage of time.
Alongside the exhibition, you’ll also find the Vidéodanse festival in which the works of 150 choreographers are represented in 250 films that retrace the history of modern and contemporary dance. All in all, this is a rare and wholly enjoyable opportunity to get to grips with a little-understood relationship between two forms of modern artistic expression.