This weekend French choreographer Boris Charmatz and a group of 90 professional dancers will take over the Turbine Hall and the gallery rooms of London’s Tate Modern. The project is part of Charmatz’s ongoing investigation, Musée de la danse (the dance museum), and seeks to question the classical concept and function of the art museum and gallery through the practice of dance – the most ephemeral of artistic practices.
The series of performances across the Tate and its gallery rooms and permanent collection displays will occur for two days only over 15 and 16 May, with the dancers also engaging in classes and workshops. There will also be a series of major dance works by Charmatz that will be staged in the Turbine Hall, and visitors will be encouraged to join in.
Boris Charmatz, originally trained at the Paris Opera Ballet, has been challenging preconceived notions of dance for over two decades. In 2009, he became director of the Centre Chorégraphique National de Rennes et de Bretagne in France, which the performer renamed Musée de la danse.
Much of the work at Tate Modern will be in the style of Tino Sehgal’s celebrated performative piece These Associations, which took place in the same location in 2012. A number of the performances will be streamed live on Tate’s website, and online and offline audiences will also be invited to participate in the project by using the hashtag #dancingmuseum.
Musée de la danse at Tate Modern will coincide with the UK premiere of Charmatz’s new piece Manger, and of Partita 2, a work by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, which is performed by De Keersmaeker, Charmatz, and Amandine Beyer, at Sadler’s Wells.
Image: Boris Charmatz, If Tate Modern was Musée de la danse (2015) © Hugo Glendinning 2015 via Tate