No summer break at the Palais de Chaillot. In this month of July, while most Parisian theaters have closed their doors for the summer, a show is being prepared in the Maurice-Béjart studio, in the basement of the establishment. On the stage of this small room move in silence the bodies of Eunice, Marc-Antoine, Noémy, Nolan, Anaïs, Annelle, Annalycka. In total, they are about twenty, aged 14 to 17 years. Their movements, slow at first, become more lively when the music starts. Unlike the many artists who are used to performing in the sumptuous building on the Place du Trocadéro, the little dancers are not professional. And they are not considering becoming one either, at least not yet.

For ten days, these twenty teenagers from the priority neighborhoods of the city of Saint-Denis, in Martinique, were chosen by local popular education associations to participate in the Chaillot Colo. These cultural summer camps were imagined by the new director of the Palais de la Danse, Rachid Ouramdane. They allow young people who are too precarious to go on vacation to discover Paris, dance and theater through various activities.

Teenagers are invited to live to the rhythm of the theatre. The morning is devoted to artistic practice workshops supervised by real professionals responsible for supervising the stay. And the afternoon is dedicated to exploring the capital. The opportunity for them who have never set foot in Paris to visit the Luxembourg Gardens, the Musée de l’Homme or the Avenue de Champs-Élysées. Every week, a new group sets up shop in Chaillot: teenagers from Angoulême inaugurated this unique system from July 10 to 15.

For the last day of this stay articulated around “movement and self-narrative”, the teenagers perform behind closed doors. Dressed in large colorful skirts – traditional Martinican clothing – the girls mingle with the boys. The duos begin a couple dance on the joyful rhythms which accelerate. From the bleachers, the activity leaders encourage the young people with their eyes. On stage, they stop at regular intervals to take the floor, one by one, and ask a question that they have never dared to formulate aloud. The words fuse, sometimes simple, sometimes dizzying. “How old are you?” asks one. “Can I kill you?” whispers another. “Why her and not me?” asks a third. When the show ends, all the little dancers get up in great outpourings of joy. From the corridors of the palace, we hear their great exalted cries resound.

“More than the dance, the most important thing for us was to teach them to tell their story, dare to take the light and express themselves out loud,” explains Gal, an Israeli director who supervised the device alongside Yannick. , a Rwandan choreographer. The theme of the stay, the “unsaid”, seemed to them to fit well with their personal stories – the Shoah for one, the Rwandan genocide for the other. With that of these young French people also, whose family history is marked by the colonization of Martinique.

The beginnings of these workshops were difficult: “They had a lot of trouble confiding in each other and did not dare to put themselves forward,” notes Gal. To unite the group and teach teenagers to give voice, there is no miracle recipe. Only theater exercises and a lot of patience. Learning to stand on stage, to occupy the space, but also to get to know each other better by writing letters to “people of the future”. “You had to be very subtle to make them want to confide,” recalls Gal. During a workshop, she asks her little pupils to come forward when they are concerned by a statement. “First, we ask for simple things. For example: “Who has long hair?”, “Who has brown eyes?”, and then little by little, we go up in intensity with more personal questions, which invite those who feel capable of it to reveal themselves. » The exercises seem to be paying off. One of them confessed his first name after having maintained for days that his name was “Mbappé”.

“Giving young people in difficulty the opportunity to experiment with things of art, helps in the construction of oneself at a time when the relationship to the body is troubled”, explains Rachid Ouramdane, the director of the Palais de Chaillot. The choreographer had already launched the same project at the Grenoble Choreographic Center, which he directed between 2016 and 2021 before being appointed to the National Theater of Dance. “With these workshops, we hope to help these teenagers discover the pleasure of movement. Allow them to be more considerate of others as well. Because dancing is coordinating with the other bodies on stage.” He believes that his initiative is now “caught up by current events”: one in ten children would not go on vacation for lack of means, according to a recent INSEE study.

“I had never danced in public. At the beginning of the week, I said to myself that we were never going to be able to put on a show, ”recalls Eunice, fifteen, seated around a few pastries after this unique performance. “I feel like I’ve overcome my shyness,” whispers the small voice of Sarazvati, a fourteen-year-old girl. Slowly, I found it less and less difficult to speak louder thanks to the exercises.” “I doubted us a lot and in the end I am very happy with the result. I would like to continue dancing after that, ”promises Annalycka, who will enter high school in September.

“I hope that after that they will dare to speak out more, that they will understand that their opinions are worth as much as those of others”, wishes Gal, already a little nostalgic for the stay which is ending. “The technique basically, we don’t care a bit”, confirms Yannick, the other supervisor of the stay. “The important thing is that they tell themselves that it’s ‘ok’ to tell each other.” Young people from Saint-Denis should be succeeded by Guyanese teenagers. The colonies will follow one another as long as the Palace is empty, until the resumption of its programming in September.