Spring always arrives early here in southern France with an explosion of golden blossoms on the hills of the Tanneron. This heralds the Fete de Mimosa in Cannes, soon followed by the Fete de Citron in Menton and the centuries-old Carnival de Nice. The Cannes Film Festival is presently in full-swing and, for the first time in years, it has not rained bringing an extra sparkle to the action on the red carpet. However, there has been a dearth of...

The best news has to be that Here Today, Gone Tomorrow- A Life in Dance was recently listed in the top twenty of Amazon’s Best Seller List for Ballet Biography. (The list is updated every day, I know !) Otherwise this has been an on-off summer season with the annual festival performances often disrupted by the technicians’ strikes and open-air performances by the weather. However, we did see two performances given by the Ballets de Monte-Carlo...

Following a bumper dance season here in the South of France Christina’s reviews of several performances  appear in the June edition of Dancing Times and other reviews can be found on www.dancetabs.com. We are now looking forward to the regular summer festival season in the region which continues to expand each year. If the Avignon Festival continues to include little dance in its programme, the dance festivals in Marseille, Montpellier...

    The New Year promises to be an enjoyable one in the south of France with several visiting companies presenting unusual programmes. Three of these are not dance companies at all, but could only be performed by trained dancers, all are a mixture of dance, mime, acrobatics and all sorts of magical and illusionary images. Philippe Genty visits Grasse with Forget Me Not in February, Aurélia Thierrée presents her magical performance Murmurs...

Our long, hot summer is finally drawing to a close and it was a particularly interesting one, including a long trip through southern and south-western France, visiting towns which once featured regularly on our tours with ARLBT. Nimes, Beziers, Narbonne, Albi and Carcassonne, once sleepy southern towns where we performed in dusty, run-down theatres now boast brand new theatres, cultural centres and museums, as well as restored and renovated...

Performances in Bordeaux and Monte-Carlo are on the schedule of a busy summer dance season in France. Christina will review Charles Jude’s version of Coppelia for the Ballet de l’Opera National de Bordeaux in July and see, with interest, how the Royal Ballet’s performances of Manon are received in Monte-Carlo at the end of June. Both performances will be reviewed in the  August issue of Dancing Times. Read more