WITH plays, dancing performances, classical music, visual art and fashion shows, the French Waves art festival is chilling out the hot summer for art lovers in China.

    Running for six weeks from June 5 to July 16, the art festival is bringing French art to Chinese audience on Tencent Video with acclaimed artists, art groups and museums in France.

    “King Lear,” which ran from June 5 through 11, was the first show of the festival. As the opening play for the 2015 Avignon Festival at the Palais des papes, “King Lear” offered a glimpse into the worldly renowned drama event. The play was translated and directed by Olivier Py, who has been the art director of the Avignon Festival since 2013.

    In addition to “King Lear,” Py, who’s also an actor and poet, delivered online 13 art lessons to the audience, each of five to 10 minutes’ length, and covering topics such as “poets, the lives of heroes,” “opera, the source of drama” and “directing in a prison at Avignon.” His lessons have allowed the audience to appreciate the world of drama from different perspectives.

    “I’m glad to share with everyone my career life and a cause that I love and have been fighting for. I wish everyone a happy summer in spite of such hard times. At the end of the day, art and culture will claim the victory,” said Py.

    Starting from June 12, (La)Horde, an artists’ group from the National Ballet of Marseille, is bringing their dancing performance “To Da Bone,” once brought on stage at the Dance Biennale 2018 in Lyon, and an art film “Novacieries.” Both shows will run through this Thursday.

    The National Ballet of Marseille was founded in 1972 by Roland Petit. In collaboration with Pink Floyd, a British rock-and-roll band, they created the “Pink Floyd Ballet,” which has led the trend for modern ballet in Europe.

    (La)Horde is a group of three artists. They have been the art directors of the National Ballet of Marseille since September 2019. They’re engaged in dancing, film and installation art.

    Another worldly acclaimed French art group attending the online festival is the Orchetre Philharmonique De Radio France, one of the top three orchestras of France. It was scheduled to tour China in May, but the tour was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thanks to French Waves, classical music enthusiasts can still enjoy performances from June 19 to 25 as the orchestra will play pieces by Ravel, Debussy and Stravinsky, with Mikko Franck, art director of the orchestra, as the conductor.

    From June 26 to July 1, the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume museum will present online a short documentary on Sabine Weiss. As a humanist photographer, Weiss has captured the images of different people across the streets of France with her camera and recorded Paris in the 1950s and 1960s in black-and-white pictures which many people find impressive and touching.

    Meanwhile, the Palais de Tokyo museum, a center for modern and contemporary art, will invite the audience on a tour around the museum, which was named after a nearby street previously known as Avenue de Tokio, or Tokyo Avenue.

    From July 2 to 8, “Liliom,” a play directed by Jean Bellorini, a talented young French director, will be released. In addition to directing, Bellorinni also has a flair for composing, lighting design and stage art design. He was highly praised by French media as an “all-round artist with a creative, imaginative, intelligent and aesthetically-immaculate mind.”

    Finally, the festival will be wrapped up with the 2020 Paris Fashion Week which is familiar to many Chinese audience members. Previously scheduled in June and July, the fashion week was canceled and instead will go online from July 10 to 16.  (Lin Lin)