Centre de Développement Chorégraphique

Cour Sainte-Anne © Photolosa

Galerie donnant sur la cour Sainte-Anne © Photolosa

The CDC has suggested to the Town Council of Toulouse and to its partners a new project for the development of dance. This project is called Cité de la Danse, a name expressing the ambition to gather on a single site several departments of the choreographic activity.

This project carries a notion of transversality so as to spread, in a simple as well as perennial way, all the arts associated with dance.

The Cité de la Danse lies on five fundamental principles

An international interdisciplinary dance education :
The objective is to create a training program unique in France, the fundamental idea of which being an intensive training of the dancer during one year followed by theatre courses, text and voice, accompanied by different performing experiences during the second year. Indeed, in the close future, the employment offers will concern multidisciplinary interpreters in priority. This two years training program will bring together high level external contributors and participants from all over Europe.

A permanent exhibition about dance objects :
These objects, collected among international choreographers, will “colonise” the future Cité de la Danse, notably the gallery around the Sainte Anne courtyard. This permanent gallery will also be used as a space for the promotion and the mediation of contemporary dance. The commissionership and the setting up might be entrusted to the visual artist-choreographer Christian Rizzo.

An Academy of popular dances :
It will help to preserve the popular dances of the second half of the twentieth century, from twist to tecktronik, and run permanent dance workshops for everybody. The idea is to reconcile amateur practices with more erudite learning.

An Associated Artist and a permanent residence for choreographers :
The Cité de la Danse will be able to host a high level choreographer associated to the centre for a two year term. And as a place of permanent residence, the centre will also host for short or mid-term stays choreographers or artists close to choreography for specific projects linked to research or creation.
The project includes accommodations for artists on the premises of the centre.

A new theatre :
On the same site, a new 400-seat auditorium will enable to present contemporary dance shows during a consistent season. This complex could possibly be shared and used for contemporary music events or plastic arts installations, according to a new seasons rhythm still to be created.

The location

After years of research, the Cité de la Danse could be established on the site of the old Hôpital de la Grave on the banks of the Garonne, within the framework of a larger cultural project which would include other equipments and boost the left bank area of the Garonne.

The particular story of this location leads to a reflection on the evolution of medicine in relation to dance. The emotional strength of this location encourages to rely this project to the suffering bodies who have stayed there for centuries. The Hospital Headquarters and the CDC are reflecting together on how this new dimension can be applied to the project. Indeed, dancers, who are the true possessors of body knowledge, have a lot to transmit and to exchange with the medical profession. As far as architecture is concerned, the project implicates the rehabilitation of an ancient wing, currently being the Sainte Anne courtyard, and the construction of the theatre on the location of a pavilion constructed in 1975 which has been condemned for several years. This “body centre” will therefore concern everybody, dancers, members of the audience, sick persons and healthy persons, professionals and amateurs. Everyone will be able to find one’s own appropriate time and space there. From 2009, the CDC will be the Cité de la Danse in anticipation.

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