跨越边界：纽约法兰西联盟 Crossing the Line 艺术节与当代法语文化的多元实践

Nina Del Rio: Welcome to Get Connected with Nina Del Rio, a weekly conversation about fitness, health, and happenings in our community. On 106.7, Light FM.

Violaine Huisman: Violenne Huisman, L'Alliance.

Nina Del Rio: Thanks for listening to Get Connected. For 125 years, L'Alliance New York has represented the spirit of France in New York City. Founded in 1898 and formerly known as Alliance Francaise de New York, the independent nonprofit celebrates the diversity of Francophone cultures and creativity through arts, culture, programs, and workshops for all ages and levels. And my guest is Violenne Huisman. She is La Lance Artistic Director. She's a French-American festival curator, writer, and translator who grew up in Paris and has lived in New York for over two decades. We will focus the conversation on La Lance's Crossing the Line Festival, now through December 20th, featuring boundary-breaking visual art, music, film, dance, and theater across New York City, and for the first time in the festival's history, in upstate New York. Violaine Huisman, thank you for being on Get Connected.

Violaine Huisman: Thank you so much for having me.

Nina Del Rio: You can find out more about the organization with campuses both in the city and Montclair, New Jersey, at l-a-l-l-i-a-n-c-e-n-y.org. So, Violaine, let's talk about the organization first. So, L'Alliance New York, Again, around 125 years plus. So clearly it feels essential to some people. What makes it essential in New York City?

Violaine Huisman: It's a unique institution in that it is both a language center, an educational center for learners of all ages who want to study the French language, and a cultural center. We're part of the network of Alliance Francaise, which has permission to teach French all over the world. And so we do that in our building in New York City. And as you mentioned, on our campus in Montclair. In New York, we have three stories of language classrooms where we teach French. We also have a preschool where I think the only Alliance Francaise in the world to have a preschool. And we also have a theater. And in our theater, we program the Crossing the Line Festival, which not only takes place here, but all over New York City. And we also have a film series every Tuesday. So we're a very rich cultural organization in addition to being a place where you can learn French.

Nina Del Rio: I think anybody, if you just go to the website, you can see there's so much going on. In addition to the class, as Virlaine mentioned, the films look incredible. This festival looks incredible. The Crossing the Line Festival, I believe it's the 18th year. You're the curator. The name perhaps gives us some idea of the mission, but what would you say the spirit and style is of Crossing the Line?

Violaine Huisman: It really, as you say, its title gives a sense of what it tries to do. We're trying to be a hybrid festival to merge forms or to encompass form, embrace form. the diversity of creation in a multicultural way and also in a way that's multidisciplinary. So the festival is visual arts, dance, music, theater. And in the case of the performance that we're presenting at the start of the festival, Camillon Rose Comedia dell'Arte, it's a visual arts turned theater form. Camille Henrot is a very prominent French visual artist who currently has a sculpture at the end of our block, serendipitously, Public Art Commission on 60th Street and Fifth Avenue. It's a sculpture of dogs. It's so great. It's at the entrance of Central Park and lots of dogs seem to have taken a liking to it. And the festival Performa, with whom we're collaborating this year, has invited her to create a theatre work. which is a new creative enterprise for her. So it's her first theater work as a visual artist. And it's a full cast, full ensemble cast, musicians on stage. And it's a truly unique collaboration. That's an example of the hybridization of forms that we present in the festival also.

Nina Del Rio: You mentioned when you were talking about it a moment ago, it's sort of, You want to bring in the breadth of cultures. So French culture is not just France. Can you talk a little bit about what you mean?

Violaine Huisman: Yeah, so our mission is to promote Francophone culture, the French language at large and its influence. So unlike a state-funded organization, we don't have a mandate to promote strictly French culture. We're a non-profit independent organization. And our aim and our goal is to really show the diversity of French culture or even just French-accented cultures, meaning where French might have an influence or the French language or the French spirit might have an influence beyond its strict cultural boundaries. In the festival this year, we present a lot of artists from the French diaspora, On Governor's Island, we're presenting Léo Lérus, who's a French artist originally from Guadeloupe. At New York Live Arts, later in October, we're presenting Dorothée Mounianesa, who's an artist from Rwanda, currently based in France. We're presenting Nigerian, originally Nigerian artist Okwui Okpokwasili. We're presenting... Thiago Rodriguez, who's the current artistic director of the Avignon Festival, the biggest theater festival in France, who's originally from Portugal. So really a very broad diversity of voices.

Nina Del Rio: My guest is Violaine Huisman. She's the artistic director at L'Alliance New York. Their upcoming Crossing the Line Festival has already begun. You can find out about performances in New York and elsewhere at their website, l'AllianceNY.org. You're listening to Get Connected on 106.7 Light FM. I'm Nina Del Rio. Let me ask you about another one of the shows. In early November or mid-November is the world premiere of Losing Your Bag in English. This is a one-woman show with an actress named Pauline Chalamet. Assuming you have heard it both in English and French, how is it different in each language?

Violaine Huisman: Well, I haven't yet heard it in English because it's going to be a world premiere. So Pauline Charlamagne knows the work of Pascal Rombert, the director and author of this play. And she was really particularly interested in working with him and sought him out for this collaboration. So we commissioned a translation of the work. Nicholas Elliott, who's somebody that we work with frequently on translations of new works. And they're going to create this English language version of the play for us exclusively at L'Alliance New York.

Nina Del Rio: That's going to be very interesting. I would assume you've at least heard an excerpt or something like that. So just to hear it. And, you know, when you translate things sometimes, depending on the language, it's like it becomes very different.

Violaine Huisman: What's interesting is that you always see a translation, whether it's a language translation, even when we present dance in New York and it's not strictly about language, you see a cultural translation in the audience's approach to a work from elsewhere. And that's the point and the goal of our festival also is to present works that wouldn't necessarily come to New York if we weren't if we weren't given the impetus for, uh, also co-presenters to, to showcase these new artists. That's the case of Caroline Gillis and Green's new work Saigon, which is going to be at St. Anne's warehouse for three weeks. She's an artist that we co-presented last year at BAM with a piece called Lacrima. That was a sold out run and St. Anne's warehouse, um, decided that they wanted to present more of her work in New York, and they're now presenting it for three whole weeks. What's particularly interesting for us with this show is that it's the first time in the history of the festival that we're presenting such a long run. And that means for us that we can also include this play, this cultural offering in our language offering. So every student who will come to L'Alliance, learn French, will also get an opportunity to go see this show and experience French in the flesh, so to speak.

Nina Del Rio: If we are not a French speaker, you know, dance aside, perhaps, is a spoken word performances, are they accessible to us?

Violaine Huisman: Absolutely. And this is not unlike a lot of international presenter seasons that present works with supertitles. So every performance that we're presenting, and in fact, every film that we present has subtitles or supertitles. So it's absolutely accessible to non-French speakers. In fact, our very special film curator, Jake Perlin, is a Francophile but not a Francophone, and he curates extraordinary French films for us every week.

Nina Del Rio: That's fantastic.

Violaine Huisman: He is taking French classes at L'Alliance.

Nina Del Rio: I want to mention another performance from early November. Maybe you mentioned it a moment ago, but Merliton. It's a New York premiere. It's voices, feet, arms, props, and costumes in a duet sort of shared. And I mentioned that one because it's appropriate for families. What on the schedule is appropriate for families?

Violaine Huisman: So we have a lot of different works that are appropriate for families in our season because we are also very adamant to include all audiences in our program, including young people, including our very own preschoolers in the building. So we have a show that's specifically for preschoolers in October called Mille Secrets de Poussin, A Thousand Secrets of.

Nina Del Rio: Chicks.

Violaine Huisman: That was created around the work of a very well-loved French writer named Claude Ponty, who's also beautifully translated in English. And this is a show that's specifically for very young audiences, two to three-year-olds. We'll present it in our own preschool and we'll also present it on a Saturday morning to young audiences. We also have two different dance theater works in our Sky Room on the top floor of our building that are absolutely accessible for all ages. One is called Ad Libitum. It's a dance performance by Simon Le Borgne, who's presenting his work in the US for the first time. He's a gorgeous dancer, formerly trained at the Paris Opera. And this is a very short 15-minute dance piece that's really taking you on a journey. And Myrliton by François Chagnot and Aymeric Hainaut, which is a dance set to beatboxing. It's a sort of duet slash battle dance that François Chagnot created with the beatboxer. François Chagnot is one of the iconic figures of contemporary dance in France, and we're very pleased and proud to have him back in our festival.

Nina Del Rio: Would you like to mention some of the other organizations you've partnered with? You mentioned St. Anne's. Other organizations you've partnered with for the festival?

Violaine Huisman: So we partnered this year. We've partnered with PS21 Chatham to open our festival, which was very exciting. It's the first time we present a performance in our festival upstate New York. We partnered with New York Live Arts, the Chocolate Factory in Queens, BAM in Brooklyn, St. Anne's Warehouse, also in Brooklyn.

Nina Del Rio: Those are all great organizations. They do such sort of boundary-breaking work. I can see why you would partner with them. As far as ticket ranges go, you've got a 15-minute performance. You've got something at St. Anne's. So what's the range for the tickets?

Violaine Huisman: Our tickets tend to be very affordable. We have some performances that are free for our members, including our young audience performances. You can come on a Saturday and have a free performance. And our cheapest tickets are $ 20 to, I believe, at BAM and St. Anne's, the tickets are a little bit more expensive, but we still have discounted tickets for students. And I think anyone can get in for less than $ 30.

Nina Del Rio: Again, the festival is already underway. Performances go through, I believe, December 20th. There's a lot on the calendar. We have about a minute left. Anything else you want to mention about the festival this year or something you're particularly looking forward to?

Violaine Huisman: The Simon Le Bon performance that we're presenting in our Sky Room is a really exciting performance in that, again, this festival is a great opportunity to discover new artists and new voices and emerging styles in contemporary creation and This is the beauty of a risk-taking festival that you have an opportunity to discover new works that are not by established artists. So I would love to see new faces discover new voices as part of this adventure.

Nina Del Rio: The festival, the Crossing the Line Festival again is underway. You can find out more on the L'Alliance website. It is L-A-L-L-I-A-N-C-E-N-Y dot org. And my guest has been artistic director Violin Guzman. Thank you for being on Get Connected.

Violaine Huisman: Thank you so much.

Nina Del Rio: This has been Get Connected with Nina Del Rio on 106.7 Light FM. The views and opinions of our guests do not necessarily reflect the views of the station. If you missed any part of our show or want to share it, visit our website for downloads and podcasts at 106.7lightfm.com. Thanks for listening.