Choreographers Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and Némo Flouret take over the Louvre Museum with dance performances in front of the works of art.

The museum offers performances by a dozen artists whose movements enter into dialogue with the masterpieces of David and Leonardo Da Vinci and also to allow different forms of art to crossover.

SOUNDBITE 1 – Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, choreographer (female, French, 19 sec): “I think that here, the great challenge that we have set ourselves is not to have an experience in the museum, but to stay on what is the essence of a museum; that there are works of art that are exhibited… there is so much activity, that we no longer look at the paintings.”

SOUNDBITE 2 – Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, choreographer (female, French, 14 sec): “It’s also somehow a +statement+ against the spectacular and against +entertainment+ in terms of the gaze, in terms of auditory consumption, all of that.”

SOUNDBITE 3 – Némo Flouret, choreographer (male, French, 34 sec): “We work on formats, we’ll say, that are flat, that are 2D, immobile, silent and that leads us, I think, to understand a little how this dance can become an extension of these formats, projecting itself into three-dimensional space, compared to the sculptures with which we had worked on Auguste Rodin and Arp, where we already had a body that was dimensionalized. Here, we have formats that are frames and flat images.” ©AFP