"Together, let’s be a group" to take one's place as an individual and move forward in society

With the Pépites d'Art project, Smaïl Kanouté, in collaboration with the Théâtre national de la danse de Chaillot, is working with young people in the Goutte d'Or and Chapelle districts of Paris, to reveal their talents through creative workshops and cultural visits.

"We always move forward as a group, and it's these encounters that enable us to evolve and discover what's inside us. It's the encounters that shape the course and forge the personality of the artists," confides Smaïl Kanouté. The Pépites d'art workshops have an obvious artistic dimension, but it's the human aspect and the personality that come first. That's why the workshops are partly open to the public, in order to mix different backgrounds and life stories, so that participants emerge from these moments of exchange more enriched.

"Young people need to be curious, enterprising, stubborn - because they need to have self-confidence beyond words - motivated, open-minded. They must want to work both in groups and on their own. They must believe in their story and personality, which they will defend at all costs. It's their personality that will make them unique artists, as well as their strength of conviction." - Smaïl Kanouté wants to deliver a message to young people, showing them that anything is possible with some motivation.

The What Dance Can Do association, for its part, has chosen dance as a cultural vector for integrating young people into society.

"In this unstable and particularly fragile context for its children, the challenge is to be able to unite these young people, first-time arrivals from often difficult migratory journeys, whom we look after at Collège Romain-Rolland, around the same project, to inspire them, to offer them access to the culture of a new country, to see them meet on this same line and on this same history of dance and then to share these traditions of doing. In the end, the challenge is also to see their journey between their origins, their countries, their memories and today to retranscribe in this new project with a new writing style to enrich their personal journey." Dorothée Blacher, project manager.

The impact study of their workshops, carried out by the association What Dance Can Do, reveals that the creation and interpretation of a choreography also involves learning to dance as a group. Each dancer is responsible for his or her own movements, but also takes into account the movements of other dancers to ensure that the piece runs smoothly. Being in a familiar place and having a dedicated moment to express themselves without using words seems to have put the participants at ease. The relationship of trust established week after week by Rodolphe Fouillot, the choreographer assisted by Emmanuelle Huybrechts, enabled the beneficiaries to feel increasingly relaxed.

The fact that the young people's efforts and proposals were recognized and taken into account, and that they were regularly encouraged and congratulated by the people accompanying them, helped them to open up, invest in the project and gain confidence in their work.

The first sessions sometimes seemed abstract to the participants; over time, in addition to the practice of dance itself, the benefits of the program are attributable to the creative process and the collective, collaborative vocation of the project as a whole. Co-creating, meeting challenges with the help and moral support of peers, taming new situations together, such as taking to the stage, and sharing a formative experience inevitably give rise to a sense of camaraderie and even fraternity.

"The ambition of our program is to offer our beneficiaries a safe space from which they can draw the resources to acclimatize to their host country." Aurélia Sellier, founder of the What Dance Can Do association.

These young people from the PE2A class will be performing on the stage of the Clichy-sous-Bois conservatory on June 6 at 6pm: a final performance of the work accomplished during this 2022/23 year not only schoolish.

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