Exclusive partnerships

As part of the 2025 Brazil-France Cultural Year, the Biennale de la danse is staging an extensive showcase of Brazilian creativity.

Twenty-nine years after the 1996 Biennale de la danse, which was wholly devoted to Brazil, the brasil Agora! strand offers an update on its choreographic approaches, based on the many visions, gestures and bodies that make up Brazil’s contemporary scene – be it artists living in Brazil or the diaspora in France.

The programme – ranging from in-situ performance to group pieces for a big stage, and from the Biennale Défilé to festive venues – illustrates the wealth of aesthetics and formats specific to the Brazilian dancescape.

Celebrating 200 years of diplomatic relations between Brazil and France, the 2025 Brazil-France Cultural Year is a unique opportunity to strengthen bilateral ties and honor the cultural diversity shared by both nations. Led by the Guimarães Rosa Institute, the Institut français, the French Ministry of Culture, and the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, the Season will highlight the creativity and diversity of Brazilian and French artistic, academic, and cultural scenes. The partnership with Festival Panorama is sponsored by Petrobras using Lei Rouanet, with the support of the Culture Minsitry of Brazil and the Brazilian Government.

The 2025 Brazil-France Cultural Year focuses on key global issues: ecological transition, social diversity and dialogue with Africa, democracy, and fair globalization. It marks an important milestone in fostering deeper connections between Brazil and France and promoting new, sustainable collaborations.

Programme devised in conjunction with the Festival Panorama - Rio de Janeiro
Event held as part of the 2025 Brazil-France Cultural Year

In 2025, the Centre Pompidou is embarking on a metamorphosis. This autumn, its iconic building will close for refurbishment, so that it can reconnect in 2030 with its initial utopian vision. Meanwhile, the spirit of the Centre Pompidou will come to life in partner venues throughout France and beyond, thanks to the Constellation programme, with the 2025 Lyon Biennale de la danse as one of its highlights.

The live shows of the Centre Pompidou and the Biennale de la danse de Lyon share a vision and strong artistic affinities. The Constellation programme provides the opportunity to join forces and invent a trail for the 21st Biennale de la danse, featuring the multi-faceted worlds of three major artists on the contemporary scene: Eszter Salamon, Gisèle Vienne and Dorothée Munyaneza.
These invitations stem from a deep desire to present the work of these choreographers – long supported by the Centre Pompidou – across every aspect of their output and explorations.
Distinctive and committed, their respective aesthetic visions invites us to reconsider the questions that animate us – whether it’s how we relate to time, to others or to nature. Gisèle Vienne explore the brighter and darker aspects of partying, and its anthropological dimension, to a rave-party tempo; Eszter Salamon composes landscapes and monuments with her dancers’ presence and movements; and Dorothée Munyaneza has devised a fourday programme featuring an array of artists (writers, musicians, performers, DJs, fashion designers) whom she is inviting to share her quest for poetry and for multiple ways of inhabiting the world.
These three artists all work at the intersection of disciplines, and the immersions they propose span a variety of artistic forms: installations, performances, shows, music, DJ sets, literary panels, etc.
This joint programme will take place in a constellation of venues across Lyon and the metro area: Les Grandes Locos, Le Sucre, the Cité Internationale de la Gastronomie de Lyon, the Théâtre National Populaire and the Villa Gillet.

2025 marks the centenary of the birth of Pierre Boulez, a seminal figure in the world of contemporary music.
Against this backdrop, the Festival d'Automne in Paris and the Biennale de la danse are teaming up to conceive a unique artistic production that will be a highlight of the Centenaire Boulez.
Developed using a transmissive approach that Pierre Boulez cultivated all through his life, the project unites third-year dance and music students from the Conservatoires Nationaux Supérieurs de Musique et de Danse in Paris and Lyon, who will bring to life a creation where Pierre Boulez’s music is played live, and performed to by 30 dancers from the two institutions.
The choreographer is Portuguese artist Tânia Carvalho, who has a visceral bond with music.
This bespoke work, tailored for tomorrow’s musicians and dancers, will be staged as a walkabout in museum spaces: at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, then in the autumn at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris.

The Centenaire Boulez is curated by Laurent Bayle, Chairman of La Biennale de Lyon.