What is Touche le Ciel?

“Touche le Ciel – Dance & New Technologies” is a local arts education program created for children from schools located in the East of Paris. It provides its current 700 beneficiaries a cultural gateway to artistic creation and innovation, and enables them to develop and gain essential skills to thrive in the world : collaboration, listening, curiosity, tolerance and emotional intelligence.

In the year 2017-2018, pupils benefited from a regular practice of dance, but also from an awareness of the history and the various movements of contemporary dance, an approach to improvisation and choreographic art, an access to innovative digital tools and many cultural outings. Moreover, they were able to address the issue of their own ‘internal state’ and express themselves on their feelings…

The project has continued at the Amandiers elementary school and at the Robert Doisneau middle school, in the same spirit, and is entrusted to the choreographers supported by La Fabrique de la Danse, helping them to professionalize themselves.

Gradually, thanks to the partnerships with Le Regard du Cygne and the municipal Conservatory of the 20th arrondissement, the neighbourhood is gradually on the road to becoming a center of excellence in dance. In addition, both schools will soon set up a proper dance studio within their walls, financed thanks to the vote of Parisians through the municipal participatory budget.

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children between 6 and 16
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hours of intervention
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cultural outings

New technologies applied to dance

Throughout the school year, the children participate in several regular workshops of 1h30, with different speakers. The program relies on three digital tools to facilitate knowledge transmission: Datadanse, Numeridanse.tv and DanceNote. Guided by the choreographers part of the project, the children visualise several reference videos in dance. Then, the pupils are encouraged to answer to several questions so that they can put into perspective what they have just seen, but also better understand their relationship to dance and live performance.

The artistic team is led by Christine Bastin, choreographer, pedagogue and artistic director of La Fabrique de la Danse, and brings together 10 choreographers in professionalization from our network and Le Regard du Cygne; K Goldstein, choreographer and videographer; Emmanuelle Stäuble, photographer. Educational staff from both the elementary and the middle school are also involved in the project.

In 2018, an artistic creation involving dance and video mapping

For the first edition of the project in 2017-2018, the project ended with several performances directed by Christine Bastin and her artistic team (Jacques Hoepffner, K Goldstein, Emmanuelle Stäuble, Fred Malle): creation around dance and video-mapping, participatory shows at the school, and finally an exhibition at CENQUATRE-PARIS. The pupils learned a choreographic phrase that was used to create a show, conceived in the form of video mapping, and which developed three themes and mixed different forms of expression – dance, Slam, video and projection.

A crowdfunding campaign to duplicate the project

La Fabrique de la Danse applied to the Fedora Education Award. Fedora, a European non-profit organization, supports innovation and creativity in Opera and Ballet, thanks to a network of 80 members composed of institutions, companies and individuals.

This year ‘Touche le Ciel’ was one of the 20 shortlisted projects for the Education Award. After a successful voting campaign, the project was nominated by the public and by the jury. ‘Touche le Ciel’ is now one of the four finalists of the Fedora Education Award. One of these projects will be awarded an endowment of 50k € after a crowdfunding campaign.

By contributing to our project Touche le Ciel, you are supporting a program which allows every single student of 2 schools to discover and practice dance during schooltime, and consequently, learn fundamental values such as inclusion, respect, sharing, equality, and tolerance. Thanks to your support, you will help La Fabrique de la Danse duplicate this program in other schools over the 20th arrondissement, or even over other parts of France. Moreover, in the future, every French students following the Touche le Ciel project will have an european penpal with whom he will be able to chat thanks to new technologies and share his experience about Dance. Touche le Ciel will encourage a long term intercultural dialogue and inclusion throughout Europe. Each child deserves to discover more about Dance throughout his or her school years ! Help us to develop the project in other communities and make every student dance !

You can now support the project until the end of may on the FEDORA platform dedicated page.

Video : Alexandra Marcy-Deleporte

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