- Besançon in Eastern France (EU)
Exhibitition: “Chorégraphies. Dessiner, danser (XVIIe-XXIe siècle)”
The Museum of Fine Arts and Archaeology of Besançon and the National Institute of the History of Art (INHA), in collaboration with the CND – National Center for Dance and the National Library of France (BnF), present the exhibition Choreographies. Drawing, Dance (17th-21st century).
Just like painting or sculpture, dance is invented through drawing. Whether it is a tool for choreographic creation, for transmitting a choreography to performers or for teaching, for disseminating or even preserving the trace of a choreography, drawing is a practice that has long been associated with dance.
This exhibition will highlight a wide variety of works and documents created by dancers and choreographers: drawings, notebooks and scores. These works offer both aesthetic pleasure and an invitation to dance a gavotte, foxtrot, rumba with Fred Astaire, an excerpt from Giselle, a choreography by Beyoncé, or a solo by Anne-Therese de Kiersmacker.
Through more than 250 works, visitors will be immersed in the processes of creation and transmission of dance, whether it is social dance or stage dance, classical ballet or contemporary dance.
Divided into six sections, both chronological and thematic, the exhibition will combine ancient and contemporary works. It will examine the different ways of writing dance through the development of notational systems, such as Raoul-Auger Feuillet’s “Chorégraphie” (1700) – which at that time referred to the writing of dance and not to the creation of a work – or Rudolf Laban’s “Cinétographie” (1928). It will place graphic and choreographic practices in their context, connecting the history of art with that of science and technology, as well as with social and political history. Marie-Antoinette’s dance collection and that of a baker from Versailles, which contain the same scores, will thus bear witness to a shared dance culture at the end of the 18th century. The exhibition will also explore how masters exercised their power and moralized certain dances through design.
April 19 – September 21, 2025
