September vacations are one of the advantages of our palsied, trembling, yet surprisingly mobile and cheery, old age: cooler weather, fewer convinced tourists.
Karine's and my pretext this year is Festival Cadences, L’Art Chorégraphique en Mouvement, dance, performance, circus, from 16 to 23 September 2025, in Arcachon, an Atlantic beach town tucked into a shallow bay, and environs, including Bordeaux, about 35 miles east and north, on the Garonne, water the color of yellow ochre, well away from the estuary of the Gironde, wineries behind it, wineries to the left of it, wineries to the right of it, Médoc, Margaux, Pomerol on the quays, ready to ship!
A lot of the Cadence festival is to be held outside – urban space, Place Thiers, place des Marquises, on the beach, Théatre de la Mer, the Jetée, Andernos-les-bains.
There’s room between shows for free-style walkabouts.
In Arcachon’s layout, its housing, public buildings, economy, even in its transport, a body can trace the lineaments of contemporary global capitalism.
The Frères Pereire, who built the railway line from Bordeaux and provided more than seed money for Arcachon’s rise as a destination for the well-heeled unwell, were a big part of global capitalism’s France débuts. Tight with Emperor Napoléon III, innovative in public-private-projects, railroad building, maritime transportation, insurance, real estate promotion, press manipulation and market shenanigans figure both in the imperial decree that created the town as a “free municipality” just as the rail wrapped up, in the street plan, the train station and of course, the bigger houses.
Experts said at the time that the Arcachon area was too exposed to wind and sea for patients with respiratory illness. But the Frères Pereire had better experts, but also a pretty good development plan. Today, 175 years on, Arcachon has long ranked with Biarritz and La Baule as a classy Atlantic coast destination.
With some ten thousand souls, the little town boasts “villes des quatre saisons“, a town for every season within its confines. That bit of boosterism may be part of an original 1870s-something marketing campaign, but there’s not a trace of hype in today’s functioning pleasure and fisheries port, casino, theater, l’Olympia and TGV station (four hours from Paris, once a day). Arcachon oysters are justly prized.
The culture offer of Cadences is part of the mix – a public good and a citizen’s right, of course, but also part of the luxury trade that has set France apart as an economic power from the time of the Frères Periere.
Arcachon was an economic success from the beginning. Still is today.
I may be able to imagine the links of past and present in an Arcachon walkabout, but I pretty clearly see the lineaments of France today in Festival Cadences: mixed identities, individual identity.
Speaking for herself on her homepage, Ana Pérez, a flamenco-inspired dance performer from Spain who will feature at the festival, speaks the whole performance content and tenor of Cadences 2025:
My steps are rooted in the Flamenco, my ethnic mix reminds me where I come from and my tastes are simply the reflect[ion] of my generation… Today my dance is not restricted to a single [genre] and … I feel the need to stay away from reductive labels. This freedom is the fuel to my quest […] to find myself. By creating my shows, I allow myself to explore these imposed cultural differences, and that in order to create my own language.
For their part, Cadences organizers say the goal of the festival is to “expose its public to different esthetics and dance forms through new and critically-acclaimed work”.
To fulfill their mandate and give spectators a sense of where Ana Perez and her fellow acts are, the Cadences program, very, very roughly, puts together •established draws in classic and contemporary dance and music (viz., Malandain Ballet Biarritz, Théâtre du Corps Pietragalla-Derouault, Les Arts florissants Guillaume Nouaux Trio, Ana Pérez), Cie Grénade; • critically recognized, national and internationally hyper-contemporary (emerging) acts (viz., Amala Dianor, Leïla Ka); • international and popular new-type national acts on tour (viz., Collectif Komono, Cie NDE Nicanor de Elia, Collectif Hedo, Cie C’hoarl, Daniel Ramos) • international seasoning (viz., Balé de Cidade de Sao Paulo, part of the national cultural exchange program, Saison Brésil-France 2025); • and youth and (local) talent performances (viz., 2025 Sobanova Dance Award performers along with local dance-school presentations).
But, though it is not mentioned anywhere in the brochures, the program does more than show how performers are skipping around and mixing things up. It is mixing up spectators, self chosen, chosen and accidental.
Cadences is in on the formation of 21sth century taste.
For Gesualdo Passione, a renowned Baroque orchestra and a fusion contemporary-hip hop dance troupe join on stage to perform a Passion of Christ, must needs bring together a cocktail of wildly different experience and sensibilities on stage. In the audience, meanwhile, those who understand Baroque madrigals will find themselves next to those who understand a Krump-style stomp. Leïla Ka’s Maldonne, energetic, sexy, feminist, costume drama, hip hop musical comedy, contemporary ballet-romance, excites and invites audience participation. But which audience? When? At what level? Clapping along as for gospel or not at all as for contemporary dance?
Théâtre du corps will produce a Don Quichotte with an AI Dulcinea: among the spectators, who likes variations on Don Quichotte (as I like variations of Faust), who likes a comedy, who is intrigued by AI and who just loves the Théâtre du corps? Xuan Le of cie Xuan Le is a champion roller skater. His new piece, Reflet, combines skating, contemporary dance, hip hop and visual art around themes of duality and balance…
When we are not sitting next to people with quite different outlooks and expectations in dance performance, we’ll be staying in Arcachon’s Ville d’automne – near the oyster stands and where the white wine is in call range. But we’ll also be at the Olympia, on the beach and in the squares, too.
With different experiences and expectations.
Featured artists at Festival Cadences, L’Art Chorégraphique en Mouvement, 16 to 23 September 2025, Arcachon, France. A complete program, with dates, titles and venues appears below. Click on the name for more information.
Malandain Ballet Biarritz//Cie Leila Ka//Balé de Cidade de Sao Paulo//Ana Pérez//Cie NDE Nicanor de Elia//Théâtre du Corps Pietragalla-Derouault//Collectif Komono//Cie Xuan Le//Guillaume Nouaux Trio//Collectif Hedo//Cie Lauréatedu Concours, Sobanova Dance// Daniel Ramos//Cie C’hoarl//Cie Tiara//Cie Grenade//Les Arts florissants//Area Jeune Ballet//Yoann Bourgeois