There has been a veritable explosion in contemporary dance in France over the last two decades. A pivotal event was in 1989, when the Gallotta-choreographed film Rei-Dom opened up a whole new range of possibilities. Humour, everyday actions and obsessions, social problems and the darker shades of life find expression in the myriad current dance forms. A multidimensional performing art is created by combinations of movement, mime, ballet, music from the medieval to contemporary jazz-rock, speech, video and theatrical effects. Indeed, many of the traits of the modern epic theatre are shared with dance, including crossing international frontiers.The regional contemporary dance companies – including Régine Chopinot's troupe from La Rochelle, Jean-Claude Gallotta's from Grenoble, Mathilde Monnier's from Montpellier and Karine Saporta's from Caen – easily rival the Paris-based troupes, though the exciting Californian choreographer Carolyn Carlson is now based at La Cartoucherie in the Bois de Vincennes. Other names to watch for are Maguy Marin in Rillieux-la-Pape, near Lyon, and José Montalvo in Créteil. There are any number of contemporary dance festivals in France, but the major event is Lyon's Biennale de la Danse (next held in September 2003) in which groups at the cutting edge combine dance with all manner of contemporary art forms. Dance also features strongly in the Parisian Festival d'Automne (mid-Sept to mid-Dec). For classical ballet, one of the most renowned companies is the Ballet de l'Opéra National de Paris at the Opéra-Garnier and the Opéra-Bastille, whose dance director is Brigitte Lefèvre. Outside the capital, the Ballet du Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse, Bordeaux's Ballet de l'Opéra National and the Ballet National de Marseille, under the artistic direction of Marie-Claude Pietragalla, are also highly regarded. In recent years a number of companies, such as the Ballet de l'Opéra National du Rhin, based in Mulhouse, and the Ballet de l'Opéra National de Lyon, have broadened their repertoire to include more contemporary works. Though French mime has evolved since the incomparable Marcel Marceau, his influence, and that of his contemporaries Etienne Decroux and Jacques Lecoq, is still felt through the famous schools they each founded in Paris. Not that there's any shortage of creativity among companies such as the Théâtre du Mouvement and Compagnie Cacahuète, nor among the huge diversity of artists you'll encounter on the streets and at festivals such as Périgueux's excellent Mimos (early Aug). Combining elements of dance, mime, music and theatre (particularly street theatre), French circus arts have undergone a tremendous revival over recent years. France now boasts a dozen circus schools, the most famous of which is the Centre National des Arts du Cirque at Châlons-en-Champagne, east of Paris, and a great diversity of troupes. While you still find "classic" circus troupes, where technical skills are paramount, modern performers are more likely to stress artistic expression and present an "acrobatic theatre", in other words a unified dramatic event rather than a series of virtuoso performances. Cirque Plume, for example, often includes poetry in its presentations. Other names to watch out for include the trapeze artists Les Arts Sauts, acrobats Que-Cir-Que and the clowns of Les Nouveaux Nez. In Zingaro's magnificent "equestrian theatre" horses are transformed into dancers, and the Théâtre du Centaure, based in Marseille, combines theatre and circus riding to create a unique art form inspired by the half-horse half-man of Greek mythology; in 2002 the "centaurs" performed an adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth. The two main events in the circus calendar are the Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain (Dec) in Paris and the Festival International du Cirque de Monte-Carlo (Jan).
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