À nos jeux

About art and sport

The worlds of art and sport are not so different. Each medium evokes emotions, depicts internal conflicts and creates lasting memories. From logos and uniform designs to iconic sports photography and sculptures of legends outside sports arenas, art and sport have formed an inseparable bond… They are such important parts of our culture and history. This confirms that lovers of sport and art have more in common than we ever thought. Sport has given the art world amazing subjects and art has allowed these moments and athletes to live in infamy because of their work.

Without the collaboration of the two, these memories and moments might not have the same cultural impact as they do today.

There is no doubt that many sporting disciplines involve skill, creativity and imagination, and that their expressions and movements are appreciated as flawless art.

Roald Bradstock, Great Britain’s representative and multiple Olympic javelin champion in 1984 and 1988, and an art graduate, was very interested in sport and art. However, he thought that these activities were very different and not very compatible.

He discovered that Pierre de Coubertin, co-founder of the modern Olympic Games, was an artist. Coubertin himself designed the Olympic rings and won a poetry competition in 1912. He believed that sport and the arts were inextricably linked.

Bradstock began to realise that art was everywhere in sport – logos, typography, mascots, cups and medals all had to be designed by someone. These discoveries changed his perspective and he began to combine sport and art in his life and came to believe that sport and art are perfect partners. They can be a powerful combination for advocacy and development programmes.

A message to be constructed together

Throughout all the parades choreographed for the biennial dance festival, there is one constant in the choreographer’s approach. This process – which brings together a host of volunteers and professionals – necessarily involves appropriating an artistic concept that makes ‘sense’ to each of the participants.

Before delivering a ‘message’, we want to be able to put in place the foundations for it. In other words, we want to take the time to bring people together and get them to tell good stories about things that are real, invented or transformed, beautiful and wonderful!

For Bouba, meaning and gesture are linked. It’s important to have a content that motivates action, releases energy, enables you to enter into a relationship with others, to move with precision and measure in a defined space.

It’s not about training and preparing dancers to achieve a feat, to prepare them for the excellence of an aesthetic movement. But this project requires long-term preparation, as much for the artistic and technical team as for the dancer-participants. Because, before trying to set a direction, the theme of this next parade must appeal to our imaginations, our experiences and the various representations we may have of this notion of ‘peace’. A march for peace, a fight for peace, a danced expression of the inner movements of this indescribable feeling of peace, within a defined framework, with original rhythms and music invented for the occasion.

For this 14th edition of the Défilé de la Biennale de la danse de Lyon, with the help of motivated artists, Bouba is once again keen to implement this creative process in which each member will be able to take ownership of the subject in question and will also be the producer.