IETM will come to Luxembourg for the first time with the support of Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg (28-30.11.2023). As a performing arts professional from Luxembourg, this is a unique opportunity to discover this network and engage with your international peers.

This Focus meeting will address the one topic we all have to face –  the climate crisis. Although the cultural sector is far from being the one that has the most impact on the environment, each and every one of us has to face reality and deal with it. This second edition of the Focus meeting will be the final event in IETM’s first year of environmental transitioning, and will bring members and professional guests together for a joint brainstorm. Participants will benefit from the targeted programmes and accumulated knowledge gathered by the network through all its activities in 2023 and work towards co-creating an eco charter for the entire network.

In addition to the networking opportunities, Luxembourg’s dance scene will be showcased, with the TROIS C-L – Centre de Création Chorégraphique Luxembourgeois presenting a panorama of the local contemporary dance scene.
Detailed program HERE

To better support Luxembourg’s dancers and choreographers, Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg, the Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg and TROIS C-L – Centre de Création Chorégraphique Luxembourgeois, in partnership with the National Dance Centre in Lyon and Le Gymnase CDCN in Roubaix, offers grants to a creative team based in Luxembourg to develop a dance project.

This grant runs over two years (2024 + 2025) and will support all aspects of the creative process: project development, promotion and international networking. The grant will also provide direct financial support for the production, residencies in Lyon and Roubaix, presence on international platforms, and funding for the development phase.

Following a call for applications, five proposals were received and the jury unanimously decided to award the EXPEDITION grant to William Cardoso.

Winner Statement
For William Cardoso, this grant represents “an extraordinary, unmissable opportunity (…) which will be the perfect occasion to create a new choreography in the perfect conditions. It will allow me to consolidate and further strengthen my relationships with cultural stakeholders at international level. The high-quality residencies offered by prestigious institutions such as the CN D in Lyon, Le Gymnase CDCN in Roubaix, the Grand Théâtre and TROIS C-L in Luxembourg, will allow me to develop a new work titled Deadline.

Deadline will explore and present the theme of rupture, a frequent occurence throughout our lives. This work seeks to disrupt the system to make a fresh start, rupture for rebirth. ”

Jury Statement
The jury, composed of representatives from the five partner institutions (Bernard Baumgarten – TROIS C-L; Tom Leick-Burns and Anne Legill –  Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg; Davy Brun – CN D Lyon; Laurent Meheust – CDCN – Le Gymnase in Roubaix) commended the relevance and urgency of the theme of the project which demonstrate both the choreographer’s creative flow and the notions of our times. The jury noted William Cardoso’s unique approach to the body and the relationship between genders and praised the young choreographer’s maturity. The EXPEDITION grant will support the artist’s consistant career development, giving him the opportunity to take his research further, explore larger forms of choreography, and connect with international production and distribution networks.

About William Cardoso
William Cardoso is a choreographer and dancer based in Luxembourg and Portugal. His work celebrates everything that is a contradiction, unpredictable, creative and committed. It addresses intimate, personal issues that affect everyone. His performances point the finger at a heteronormative, patriarchal society. Hungry for change and filled with anger at injustice, his work often focuses on a fight and a physical effort as it defends various issues.

With his three works to date (Raum, Dear Mum, Baby), William Cardoso has developed his own identity using a unique language. A dialogue between bodies in conflict with their minds. His work echoes contact improvisation, yet goes against the flow with non-fluid, short, sharp movements.

The 2023 edition of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe welcome Luxembourg productions for the first time among the 3,553 shows from 67 countries. The Fringe, is an arts festival inaugurated in 1947 taking place every August in Edinburgh, Scotland, for three weeks. It’s currently the largest arts festival in the world. The Fringe – whose name refers to fringe theatre – is a non-juried festival with no selection committee, allowing any type of show to take part, and often featuring experimental work that would probably not have been presented at other festivals of its kind.

The Fringe is a recognised festival by international programmers who are looking for international creation. The festival is the ideal platform for showcasing contemporary work from the UK and 17 other countries in 2023, including the Luxembourg selection, which has been set up with the support of Kultur | lx.

Four Luxembourg productions took center stage at some of the festival’s most prestigious venues: stark bollock naked  by Larisa Faber and Shoot the Cameraman by AWA – As We Are at Assembly, Lovefool by Gintare Parulyte at Summerhall and This is a scam. by Anne Klein at The Space UK.

This enabled them to confront a whole new audience and reach out to their peers from all over the world, as the festival registered 1,359 professionals from 49 countries. In the light of the public, professional and critical feedback, the Fringe should prove to be a career accelerator for the shows presented and their creators.

Kultur | lx will therefore continue its efforts in the years to come to support other companies as they explore the world’s largest platform for the performing arts.

Luxembourg productions and co-productions were strongly represented at the 77th Festival d’Avignon and the 57th Festival OFF Avignon.

While the Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg supported 2 co-productions among the Festival d’Avignon programme, namely Extinction by Julien Gosselin and The Confessions by their associate artist Alexander Zeldin, 4 Luxembourg productions were well represented among the 1,491 shows that made up the Festival OFF. The Théâtre National du Luxembourg stood out at the Théâtre du Chêne noir with Frank Hoffmann‘s production of Roland Dubillard’s Crabes and at the Espace Saint Martial with Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables revisited by Isabelle Bonillo. Finally, as part of the Luxembourg Selection, Kultur | lx supported the presence of the play Petit frère – la grande histoire Aznavour by Laure Roldàn and Gaëtan Vassart at the Caserne des pompiers, Théâtre de la Région Grand Est, as well as the dance production Hear Eyes Move. Dances with Ligeti by Elisabeth Schilling at the CDCN d’Avignon – Les Hivernales as part of the “On (y) danse aussi l’été!” festival, all part of an increasingly interdisciplinary festival.

The presence of Luxembourgish productions at what is undoubtedly one of the largest live performance events in the world, and the largest in the French-speaking world, is an important opportunity for the country’s artistic teams to present their work to different audiences and to gain access to French and international professionals. While Avignon was an opportunity for Elisabeth Schilling to break into the French market and present her work to programmers from all over France, it was also a chance for people more familiar with the French scene, such as Laure Roldàn, to deepen their network and, beyond the prospects of touring the piece she presented, to consider collaborations for her next creation.

Kultur | lx will continue its efforts in the coming years to provide as many opportunities as possible for Luxembourgish directors and choreographers to showcase their work in Avignon, with the best support and conditions.

Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg is thrilled to support for the first time the presence of Luxembourg productions both in dance and theatre at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe which will take place from 2 to 28 August.

The Luxembourg performing arts scene, just like the country itself, is rich in languages, influences and aesthetics, and has long been open to the international scene and involved in numerous creative and cooperation networks. Presenting at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is therefore an obvious milestone on its development path.

Luxembourg’s official selection at Festival Fringe

Larisa Faber question motherhood in her play Stark bollock naked. An international smash hit about our reproductive shelf life and what (not) to do with those (ageing) eggs. Featuring stunning video mapping, comedy-infused storytelling and a live score of gynaecological instruments, Stark bollock naked is a multimedia show with a real naked body and an honest conversation about reproduction, abortion and the biological clock presented from, 02 to 28 August at 15:10 (excluding Tuesdays) at The Assembly. Game ovaries.

In Shoot the Cameraman, AWA – As We Are blend the instinctive and spontaneous quality of live performance with the possibilities of the seventh art by joining camera operators with live dancers on stage. The audience will thus be offered a permanent double reading of the piece and have the opportunity to simultaneously attend a live performance on stage and on screen. By forcing the audience to choose where to focus their attention, AWA – As We Are challenges them and plays with perspectives. If what we see with our own eyes seems unfalsifiable, it quickly becomes clear that the framing of a shot can be a matter of pure manipulation. Shoot the Cameraman questions the omnipresence of the image in our lives and ingeniously sharpens the critical gaze of the audience. An essential production to discover in the age of fake news from 02 to 28 August at 15:00 (excluding Wednesdays) at The Assembly Roxy Central.

Extend your discovery of Luxembourg creation

In the wake of these two shows of the Luxembourg selection, take time to also discover Lovefool by Gintare Parulyte performed from 02 to 27 August at 19:15 in Summerhall and This is a scam. by Sølve Sundsbø and Anne Klein from 21 to 26 August à 11:50 at The Space.

Detailed programme here.

GLEN (Great Little European Network) connects the smallest countries of Europe (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Iceland, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Kosovo, Malta) through common networking and training programmes with the objective to contribute to designing more meaningful practices and more sustainable performing arts sectors in the concerned countries, interconnecting them and taking a prominent place on the international scene. The network aims to be an incubator for those who, while benefiting from a local anchorage, ambition to develop their practice internationally.

Following a call for applications, the Luxembourg laureate of this first edition is Fábio Godinho. Until June 2024, he will benefit from three activity programs implemented by the network, including

• Networking events in Riga (Latvia) from 1st to 4th of November and in in Tartu (Estonia) in early May 2024;
• Critical friendships : peer matching across partner countries with other grantees or third professionals to provide mutual support and understanding of each other’s context;
• Webinars : addressing the specificities of producing and distributing in small countries and advising on how to develop internationally from there.

For Fábio Godinho, joining this network is an opportunity to “confront countries that have the same problems as Luxembourg. Countries that certainly have a wide range of cultural offerings, talented players in the field and things to claim, but which are up against these major cultural countries [editor’s note: France, Germany, Portugal and Belgium, with whom he has had the opportunity to work].

In dance, we are lucky enough to be able to use the body, which is a universal language that allows us to show our creations all over the world. Theatre is confronted with language, which requires the logistics of subtitling or the creation of something much more elaborate. This sometimes makes distribution more difficult, if not impossible. How do you make a show in French, Luxembourgish or German, created in Luxembourg, more visible internationally, in countries that don’t speak these languages?

I’d be interested to learn about the different ways of creating in these countries […] and to see the themes that are developed there. I’ve also been working for some years on the question of borders and languages, and I’m intrigued to see the ways of creating in languages that we, here in Luxembourg, are rarely confronted with in performative culture. I draw inspiration from all the experiences I have and the people I meet, and this network would enable me to accentuate the search for new ideas that I carry out in each of my creations.“

Continuing its efforts to connect the Luxembourg performing arts sector with those of neighbouring countries, Kultur | lx has organised a second scouting trip to Frankfurt, on the other bank of the Rhine, following its trip to Mainz in March 2022.

The trip, which was organised from 30 June to 2 July, coincided with the opening of the triennial festival Theater der Welt, Germany’s biggest international festival, which was held in Frankfurt this year.

The German system, which is essentially made up of theatres operating their own ensembles, offers few opportunities to host Luxembourg productions. Consequently, 6 Luxembourg professionals were invited to meet the independent scene. Mousonturm, one of Germany’s few, let alone most important, production companies, gave an insight into its creation and distribution facilities and presented its artistic approach. On the other side of the independent scene, members of the ID_Frankfurt association presented the state of independent artists in Germany and the many initiatives they have put in place to improve working conditions. Exchanges with these two organisations enabled participants to gain a better understanding of how the performing arts sector works in Germany and to put the Luxembourg sector into perspective.

This year, 6 Luxembourg productions and co-productions will be shown at the Festival OFF d’Avignon from 7 to 29 July (France).

Luxembourg’s official selection in Avignon
This selection gives pride of place to Luxembourg women creators. Actress and director Laure Roldàn and choreographer Elisabeth Schilling will be representing the diversity and richness of the Luxembourg performing arts scene with their productions.

Petit Frère – La grande histoire Aznavour, directed by Gaëtan Vassart in collaboration with Laure Roldàn, was chosen by the jury made up of Serge Basso de March (author and poet), Pablo Chimienti (head of communications and public relations at THEATER FEDERATIOUN), Godefroy Gordet (journalist, author, director and president of the collectif d’auteurs.e.s dramatiques transfrontalier Le Gueuloir), Lee Fou Messica (artistic director of the Espace Bernard-Marie Koltès – scène conventionnée d’intérêt national in Metz and co-president of the Quint’Est network) and Ian De Toffoli (playwright and director, winner of the Luxembourg selection for the Festival OFF d’Avignon in 2022). The play will be performed from 07 to 25 July at 7.15pm (excluding Thursdays) at the Caserne des pompiers, a programming venue for the Grand Est Region as part of its agreement with the Luxembourg Ministry of Culture.

As well as being a successful tribute to Charles Aznavour and a moving account of his life, Petit Frère is also a pertinent reflection on brotherly love, artistic creation, bohemian life, migration and integration.

Les Hivernales – CDCN d’Avignon will host HEAR EYES MOVE. Dances with Ligeti by Elisabeth Schilling, a choreographic interpretation of the 18 Etudes for Piano by the renowned composer György Ligeti and an unprecedented initiative to date. Devised for 5 dancers and accompanied live on piano by Cathy Krier, HEAR EYES MOVE. Dances with Ligeti is envisioned as a dance-concert concert-dance full of captivating multi-sensorial imagery.

The show will be performed on the Hivernales stage as part of the “On (y) danse aussi l’été!” festival from 10 to 20 July at 9.15pm (excluding 15 July) in a version adapted to the conditions of the Festival, notably with an audio recording by Cathy Krier whose piano cannot be accommodated on the Hivernales stage.

A rich and varied programme beyond the official selection
In addition to the official selection, the Festival OFF d’Avignon will also see Luxembourg represented by Les Crabes by Roland Dubillard, directed by Frank Hoffman and performed at the Théâtre du Chêne Noir, and Les Misérables, directed and performed by Isabelle Bonillo and co-produced by the Théâtre National de Luxembourg and performed at the Espace Saint-Martial.

Besides this presence in the ‘Off’, two Luxembourg co-productions by the Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg will also be part of the ‘In’: Extinction adapted and directed by Julien Gosselin and The Confessions by Alexander Zeldin.

Detailed program HERE.

Benefiting from the concurrent programming of Luxembourgish creations, Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg organised a very first Focus highlighting all the performing arts in Luxembourg.

The 3-day event benefited from the support of Les Rotondes to set up a special event for young audiences, and of the TROIS C-L for a special dance event, in addition to the theatre event held at the Grand Théâtre.

54 international professionals from the sector, programmers, artists and representatives of institutions, from 17 countries, were able to discover the Luxembourg scene through a framework programme offering performances, meetings with artists and management of Luxembourg theatres and cultural centres, as well as networking with 80 professionals from the Luxembourg sector.

This first Focus on the performing arts was a unique opportunity to introduce the Luxembourg scene in all its diversity to its international peers. As a concrete space for exchange with artists and producers, a platform for the promotion of contemporary creations, but also a space for discussion of the challenges of international cooperation in the sector, the Luxembourg and foreign participants were all able to open up their artistic horizons and professional development perspectives.

While certain invitations for residencies and programming have already emerged from the discussions during the Focus, it is clear that the internationalisation of Luxembourg’s performing arts sector can be expected to benefit from this event in the 2024-2025 season.

This type of programme, specifically designed for professionals in the sector, is part of the range of tools that Kultur | lx can deploy to encourage artistic mobility, stimulate the desire for collaboration and establish cross-border partnerships.

Continuing to connect the Luxembourg performing arts sector with those of neighbouring countries, Kultur | lx organised a second field trip to Belgium, following the visit to Brussels in May 2022. This time, the meetings focused on the French-speaking area.

This meeting was organised with the aim of allowing artists, independent collectives and production companies from Luxembourg to discover their peers with the aim of nurturing cross-border collaborations.

A delegation of twelve artists and other performing arts professionals from all disciplines took advantage of this unique opportunity to meet the managements and discover the venues of the Wallonia-Brussels federation: the Théâtre and CCN of Namur, the Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles, the Théâtre des Martyrs, the Halles de Schaerbeek, MARS – Mons arts de la scène, Charleroi danse, the Théâtre de l’Ancre and the Théâtre de Liège.

This visit was an opportunity for some to strengthen ties forged during their studies in Belgium or through past collaborations, and for others it allowed them to open doors that were previously difficult to open. It was certainly a reminder of the geographical and cultural proximity and the many areas of exchange that exist and can be developed between Belgium and Luxembourg.

“I very much appreciated this field trip of the performing arts in Wallonia. The meeting between several cultural actors from different countries was greatly facilitated by this initiative. I also discovered more about the directors’ vision of their cultural institution, which allowed me to better understand their respective expectations. The meetings were also very enriching thanks to the sharing of experiences and the discovery of each other’s projects. This initiative is very relevant for the deployment of Luxembourg’s performing arts, thank you!” commented Paloma Georges from Bombyx, an artists’ collective, about this trip.