Between dance and sport, a new pas de deux

All occasions are good. As the 2024 Olympic Games loom in Paris, which for the first time are hosting breaking, acrobatic hip-hop style on the ground, dance and sport are more than ever common ground. Surprise, Saturday, June 10, at the Roland-Garros tournament, the ladies’ final offered a choreographic intro with eight performers bursting on music by Bizet, played by the Divertimento orchestra under the baton of conductor Zahia Ziouani.

This joyful ceremony was signed by Grichka Caruge, a figure of the hip-hop scene. “What a challenge to pay homage to tennis through a choreographyhe exclaims. Evolving with rackets while trying to divert the movement of the tennis player is fascinating. There is only a small step, finally, between dance and sport. » And hop, again the next day, for the Djokovic-Ruud men’s final, on the Bolero by Ravel, with the ball boys’ corps de ballet entering the arena.

This ” little step ” generates effervescent encounters. Launched on 1er June, the Cultural Olympiad, under the direction of Dominique Hervieu, announces hundreds of events placed under the umbrella of art and sport. Since June 23 and until September 17, the Olympic Forms event, led by the Paris City Hall, offers 50 free performances while, from June 28 to July 2, the third edition of the Jogging festival, at the Carreau du Temple, hybrid dancing with football, rollerblading… “During the first edition, I had to pick up the shows one by one, laughs Sandrina Martins, director of the place. This year, I received a hundred files. Dance and sport are two poles that magnetize each other, creating a magnetic field on which new artistic forms can be born. »

If the dancer, who frequents more and more gyms, is often considered an athlete and the sportsman sometimes compared to a dancer with electric legs, it is because they have many points in common. In the rehearsal studio, the stadium or on the tatami, the bodies face the same challenges of technical learning, virtuosity, resilience… “A large number of constraints are identical, including the difficulty of trainingsays sociologist Patrick Mignon, head of the sociology laboratory at the National Institute of Sports and Physical Education, from 1998 to 2015. Among the differences, the objective of the performance changes. In sport, it is the result to be achieved; in the show, it serves the purpose. Moreover, a regulation dictates the first, while it is transgression that operates in the second. » As for competition and excellence, sharpened in both, they do not end in the same way. “We win or we lose on one side; on the other hand, the artistic content prevails”, he adds.

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