EDITO

It’s already been ten years since, taking over from the Rencontres d'Octobre, the Liège Festival has opened up a truly new window on the world. A window which lets in the fresh air of artistic creation, and also reflects the interrogations of our time. Over the previous years’ events, the Festival has attracted the loyalty of a wide audience, inquisitive about everything and prepared for unique and authentic scenic adventures. It has played host to performances from around the world, contributing to its questioning of the multiplicity of viewpoints. It has obtained the support of loyal performers. Thus, famous international creators, such as Falk Richter and Emma Dante, are returning to Liège this year, a venue which, for them, has become an obvious choice. Also, the Festival has imposed itself as a major event in cultural life, making the heart of the town beat with its programme and its spaces devoted to encounters and debates.

This spirit, both demanding of the quality of the artistic approach, and resolutely festive, will once again be placed at the forefront for the sixth edition of the Festival brimming with audacity and ambition. The United States, Vietnam, Chile, France, Switzerland, Germany… the entire world is invited to this month-long Festival. Theatre, dance, music: artistic expression in all its joyous diversity is offered to spectators. The horrors of war; the stigma of mental or physical torture; the persistence of solitude in an increasingly globalised world; a certain disenchantment among young people, yet the strong desire to fight and change the world; time spent listening to what the major voices of the past have to say about us: the powerful themes of this year’s event pursue the work which has been developed since the very origins of the Festival.

A Festival which also continues to be a space for creation. Thus Falk Richter, Jacques Delcuvellerie and Groupov, Coline Struyf, as well as Fabrice Murgia, for whom it all started here with the Chagrin des Ogres, will present their latest creations. With “Nouvelles Vagues”, a festival within a festival, we also join forces with Tournai Maison de la Culture, L'Ancre (Charleroi) and the Théâtre National in order to support the emergence of young talent, whose creations, unique by the topicality of their language and their take on the world, will travel between the different partners.
In the magical spaces of the renovated Manège, the Festival will also continue to prolong the emotion of the stage with the pleasure and experience of after-show events.

More than ever, the Liège Festival will be, as it has always declared, rooted in the present. Because, as its name suggests, the present is... a gift!  

Jean-Louis Colinet,
Director