The ensemble in Danser Ensemble by Alice Davazoglou. © L’échangeur-CDCN

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Everybody Festival: inclusion as genuine shift or selling point?

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The ensemble in Danser Ensemble by Alice Davazoglou. © L’échangeur-CDCN
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Everybody and every body – inclusivity is about more than representation

The Everybody Festival, held from 14–18 February 2025 at the Carreau du Temple in Paris, presents itself from the outset as a manifesto celebrating the diversity of bodies and identities. It is not merely a contemporary dance festival but a multidisciplinary space where performances, free dance classes, parties, and exhibitions converge. But behind this ambition for openness, does one witness a celebration of artistic plurality, or rather a juxtaposition of heterogeneous aesthetics flirting with current trends? The festival seems to teeter between truly transformative propositions and mere declarations of intent.

Olivier Dubois: Pour sortir au jour

The festival opens in a warm atmosphere, far from the solemnity that sometimes characterises Parisian institutions. Yet, a first hitch quickly disrupts this dynamic: Olivier Dubois’ solo is delayed by twenty minutes. A detail? Perhaps. But this setback, met with amusement by some and frustration by others, immediately creates a tension between anticipation and the performance to come, as if the show had already begun offstage, in this in-between space where expectation blends with impatience.

When he finally appears, Dubois delivers a solo oscillating between intimate confession and flamboyant display. The stage setup, deliberately sparse – table, laptop, an ashtray, a champagne coupe, three chairs aligned at the back – evokes the workspace of an artist in the midst of creation, a mental studio where memories and traces of past works overlap. His precise and sculptural movements testify to an undiminished technical mastery. He revisits the milestones of his career as a performer with near-obsessive precision, unfolding a choreographic self-portrait where the body becomes both an archive and an analytical tool.


Olivier Dubois exposes a dancer’s narrative in Pour sortir au jour. © Pierre Gondard
Olivier Dubois exposes a dancer’s narrative in Pour sortir au jour. © Pierre Gondard

This could have been a fascinating exploration of the condition of the dancer-performer, a figure too often overshadowed by that of the choreographer. Yet the monologue falls short. Quickly, the staging closes in on an omnipresent ‘I’, preventing personal experience from fully opening up to a collective dimension. Dubois does attempt to engage the audience: he invites spectators to draw cards, each containing the name of a piece or music from his repertoire. But rather than generating genuine exchange, this interaction remains anecdotal, a random mechanism that only reinforces the centrality of his own persona.

The references to the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a guiding thread of the performance, seem to promise an initiatory journey. Yet the dramaturgy never truly offers the audience a space for exploration. Participation also means making room for the other – but here, the invitation never extends beyond a controlled game, where the rules remain dictated by Dubois himself. The final participant, for instance, is tasked with removing a piece of the dancer’s clothing at each sequence, a device that verges more on a self-indulgent fantasy than on a genuine reflection on stripping away or transmission.

Dubois undeniably captures attention. But in a dramaturgy where ego prevails over collective engagement, Sortir au jour appears less as a quest for illumination than as an erratic journey through the labyrinth of a personal legend. While the performance aims to pay tribute to the dancer’s memory, it ultimately traps that memory in an enclosure too self-centred to be truly shared.

Nicolas Bellenchombre: Cabaret La Sirène à Barbe

In contrast to Dubois’ introspective spectacle, the queer cabaret La Sirène à Barbe by Nicolas Bellenchombre (also known as Diva Béluga) delivers a raw and incisive energy. This is not cabaret as a form of consensual entertainment but as an act of visceral transgression, where subversion is not an aesthetic choice but a necessity.

Diva Béluga is not alone on stage. Surrounding her is a diverse troupe of performers, drag queens, dancers, and singers, each bringing their individuality to the forefront. Together, they form a cabaret that reflects its time – hybrid, radical, and unapologetically fragmented. The stage, intentionally stripped down, becomes a playground for experimentation, where bodies serve as vessels for a narrative oscillating between defiance and celebration.

Far from the dazzling opulence often associated with Parisian cabarets, the setting evokes the backroom of a misty port, a liminal space where those on the fringes of society find their voices. Within this raw and intimate environment, Diva Béluga and her troupe command attention with an unrelenting presence. There is no comforting glitter, no polished aesthetic – only the rough edges of a performance that thrives on resistance. Biting humour intertwines with fierce physicality, where each movement feels like a response to social constraints, a refusal to be confined to a fixed identity.


Cabaret La Sirène à Barbe, by Nicolas Bellenchombre (Diva Béluga). © Jean Decaux
Cabaret La Sirène à Barbe, by Nicolas Bellenchombre (Diva Béluga). © Jean Decaux

This cabaret is not just a show; it is a space of confrontation. It challenges the audience’s expectations, forcing them to confront their own perceptions. It fluctuates between bold affirmation and sheer survival, between the desire to exist and the experience of exclusion. While some contemporary queer cabarets embrace an Instagram-ready aesthetic, repackaging inclusivity into something easily consumable, La Sirène à Barbe roots itself in something far more urgent. The stage is no longer a place of mere spectacle but an outlet for resistance, where excess is not just performance but a deliberate strategy.

But how long can provocation sustain itself as a political act? By refusing any form of compromise, the performance at times risks becoming locked in a stance of systematic opposition rather than opening up a space for reinvention. Yet perhaps this intransigence is its very essence – a reminder that some struggles are not meant to be sanitised or made palatable, but seek rather to disturb, unsettle, and demand their rightful place.

Myriam Soulanges: COVER

With COVER, Myriam Soulanges presents an autobiographical piece that highlights patriarchal and colonial domination, from her history as a woman in Guadeloupe (French overseas territories), while exploring how personal memory can intersect with collective history. Her solo, at the crossroads of testimony and dance, seeks to make the body a site of archives and resistance, where each movement becomes an act of reclamation.

From the introduction, she moves across the stage with a fluid, undulating walk, while the voice of her father echoes in the background. This distant dialogue immediately places the body at the heart of a tension: how to reconcile familial heritage with individual emancipation? How to inscribe a personal trajectory within a broader history marked by past oppressions and ongoing struggles?


Myrian Soulanges embeds the personal into a larger history in COVER. © Éloïse Legay
Myrian Soulanges embeds the personal into a larger history in COVER. © Éloïse Legay

While Soulanges impresses with her stage presence and ability to command space, the transition between her personal story and the larger historical narrative is not always seamless. Where the body could carry this transmission on its own, spoken words often preempt it, framing movements that might have otherwise left more room for the audience’s interpretation. Some sequences stretch out, creating a sense of anticipation where dramatic tension does not always fully take hold.

The solo’s core challenge lies in its balance between embodiment and demonstration, between expressing an individual identity and opening the story to a more universal perspective. COVER questions what it means to bring memory to the stage but at times struggles to weave a clear dialogue between personal narrative and collective resonance. However, when Soulanges allows the body to speak without confining it to explanation, she reaches a deeper truth – one where the fight for recognition extends beyond the personal, anchoring itself in a shared history, a battle that continues to be rewritten with every movement.

Alice Davazoglou: Danser Ensemble

Alice Davazoglou, a dancer and choreographer with Down syndrome, overturns the usual dynamics of choreographic transmission. In Danser Ensemble, she invites a group of choreographers she has worked with before – Gaëlle Bourges, Lou Cantor, Bruce Chiefare, Nathalie Hervé, Marc Lacourt, Bérénice Legrand, Xavier Lot, Béatrice Massin, Mickaël Phelippeau, Alban Richard – to adapt their means to her own gestural language. This reversal is not just symbolic – it challenges the very idea of virtuosity. Forget academic technique; this is about a different approach to movement, one that is organic, instinctive, and redefines norms through singularity.


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Alice Davazoglou in Danser Ensemble. © L’échangeur-CDCN
Alice Davazoglou in Danser Ensemble. © L’échangeur-CDCN

The evening kicks off in a playful mood: the performers let loose to guilty pleasure songs, a lighthearted, almost mischievous moment that briefly shakes the solemnity of contemporary dance. Then comes Davazoglou’s solo, a sequence that, despite its apparent simplicity, commands attention. Every movement feels like a necessity rather than an attempt to impress. And this is where things take a turn: the solo is then reinterpreted and transcribed by a series of duets with different invited choreographers. A fascinating concept on paper, though the results are uneven. Some duets establish a genuine choreographic dialogue, while others feel like rough sketches hastily thrown on stage.

The performance raises a key question: how much does inclusivity actually reshape artistic creation? While Danser Ensemble avoids the trap of condescending representation, its balance remains precarious. The redistribution of roles is clear, but is that enough to turn it into a true choreographic engine? More than a manifesto, the piece leaves an open-ended reflection: how can this shift in norms translate into an artistic language that goes beyond political discourse?

Lenio Kaklea & BODHI Project: Chemical Joy

With Chemical Joy, Lenio Kaklea and the BODHI PROJECT claim to explore contemporary youth through the lens of consumer society and the relentless pursuit of pleasure. A promising idea: how do constant injunctions, image saturation, and hyperconnectivity shape a generation?

From the very first moments, subtlety is off the table. Pop music, music videos, soda cans, e-cigarettes – a pile-up of symbols scream ‘Look, here is your youth.’. The choreography follows the same logic: synchronized marching, jerky movements, stereotyped poses, as if the piece were trying to trap this generation in a greatest-hits montage of its supposed behaviors. Exuberant, alienated, caught in an endless loop of self-reference – that’s the image that emerges. A critical analysis? Not really, more like a heavy-handed repetition of clichés.

Then, like a bad dream that refuses to end, the marching resumes – heavier, more insistent, more demonstrative. At this point, the piece wavers between irony and complete sincerity, making it impossible to tell whether we are witnessing a critique or an unintentional celebration of consumerist emptiness.


Chemical Joy, by Lenio Kaklea & Bodhi Project. © Albert Vidal / Vèrtex Comunicació
Chemical Joy, by Lenio Kaklea & Bodhi Project. © Albert Vidal / Vèrtex Comunicació

And suddenly, Baby One More Time. Britney Spears, late 90s. A pop icon that lands like an obvious reference. The surprise factor? None. The irony? Unclear. Why bring up this song to talk about today’s youth? A comment on compulsive nostalgia recycling the same icons over and over? An attempt to suggest that society has worsened since then? Or just a way to fill a creative void with an easy wink?

Rather than fostering a dialogue between engagement and entertainment, hyperconnectivity and the search for authenticity, Chemical Joy gets caught in its own contradictions, endlessly replaying what it seeks to deconstruct.

In conclusion: on inclusion

The Everybody Festival has a clear ambition: to celebrate diversity, to open the stage to all bodies, all identities. But is simply adding up different works enough to create a true choreographic language? In trying so hard to showcase inclusion, does it risk becoming a concept rather than a real driving force for creation?

Some performances explore the question with nuance, examining transmission, legitimacy, and the power of the body on stage. Others rely on a series of references, as if accumulation alone could create meaning. But inclusion is not a collection of representations – it is a dramaturgy to be built. ●


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4–18/02/2025, Le Carreau du Temple, Paris, France
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www.lecarreaudutemple.eu/evenements/festival-everybody-2025
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