Dance Games Are Reshuffling Relationship Between Art, Play, and Cultural Education

Copélia Mainardi

Games with a focus on dance have become newly popular in recent years. Borrowing the rules and structures of traditional board games, these playful tools are bringing the history and practices of choreography to the masses. Some creators think of them as art, while for others they’re tools for artistic education. Regardless, their emergence is a sign of an important shift in how the French dance sector is thinking about and relating to audiences.

A small wooden case, the size of a shoebox, that can be easily carried to the park, the gym, or a school: this is what the designers of Danse tout terrain had in mind for their “educational kit” of 100 cards that invite players to understand “how certain places move us to dance.” Created in 2021 by Mathias Poisson and Laurent Pichaud in collaboration with Le Dancing, a national center for choreographic development in Dijon, this game offers a way to rediscover our environments through creative movement. “Choreographers have been interested in creating in natural spaces for over a century, but this so-called ‘localized’ dance is often poorly documented,” observes Poisson. “So with this game, we worked on different sensory approaches to make ourselves attentive to the gestures that can arise.”

Though so-called “dancing games” have been around for several decades, their popularity, and production, have increased in recent years. The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic and its successive lockdowns played a significant role in this boom. Certain games seem to have emerged as a substitute for artistic events, compensating for the bans on live performances. Numerous games with a dance focus were created in France, such as Oiseau en danse, Body bagarre, and Corpus. “During this period, we set up a system of correspondence with families to keep in touch with the students we were working with,” explains Bérénice Legrand, a dance teacher who created Corpus during the pandemic. “These correspondences then evolved into a board game, with a clear objective: to instill dance and body imagery into everyday household life.” 

Though play is the common denominator of all games of all types, their formats, audiences, and objectives vary considerably. Corpus, for example, is marketed as a real board game and can be purchased over the Internet. “I wanted it to find a place in the family library, between Uno and Monopoly”, says Legrand, with a smile. Aimed at children aged four and over, there’s no need to know how to read: players follow a character who proposes different gestures to build a choreography. Danse tout terrain also relies on illustrations, allowing access to playful movement through images rather than text. Everything is modular, players and rules alike. The only condition is the presence of a mediator “who can make suggestions and adapt things a little bit,” explains Poisson.

Body Bagarre is also played with the help of a mediator, but in this case it’s the creators themselves, accompanied by two dancers. “No game box has been released, and the cards are not available except when the game is being played,” explains its creator Mathieu Heyraud. For the choreographer, who confides that he “loves to play as well as work,” Body Bagarre was born out of “a mixture of anger and disappointment at the elitist streak that is still too present in our choreographic culture.” The game covers 350 years of dance history, “to understand how dance is inseparable from social, political and artistic issues.” Some sixty cards featuring famous choreographers – dating all the way back to Louis XIV, and featuring video excerpts – invite participants to improvise and imitate... with an often comical effect.

How should we label these games? As “educational resources,” “devices,” “art pieces”? Poisson is emphatic: “Danse tout terrain is an educational tool that can also be seen as a research tool, but it’s not a dance piece.” Legrand, on the other hand, has included Corpus in her company’s repertoire. “We imagined large-scale ‘bonus’ versions, complete with a play mat, a soundtrack, voice-over, costumes, music... This project gradually became a dance piece as it unfolded,” she recounts. Heyraud says that “in the end, Body Bagarre is a show,” before adding: “I am the author of the game, of course, but also the choreographer of the project, which I define not as a moment of ‘mediation,’ but of ‘playing together’.”

The rise of dance games and the questions they raise reveal, above all, a new relationship to the process of cultural transmission. “We’ve abolished the hierarchy between performance and artistic education,” says Bérénice Legrand. “Gone are questions like a dance piece’s cultural worth. It’s the work around a ‘project,’ in its entirety, that matters.” Fanny Delmas, Head of Artistic and Cultural Education at the CN D, sees this phenomenon as part of a larger movement to redefine what success means in the dance worlds. “In the 2000s, a ‘successful’ artist was one who created, toured, and did residencies,” she explains. “Today, they’re also artists who work on local projects and are involved with the community.” As varied as they are unclassifiable, dance games are part of this fundamental shift in values and in the relationship with audiences of all ages.

Copélia Mainardi is a journalist. She works with various media, including Le Monde diplomatique, Libération and France Culture, on reports, investigations and documentaries. After studying modern literature at university, she worked for France Culture, Arte’s 28 minutes program and Marianne’s culture department. She keeps a close eye on cultural news, particularly photography and performing arts, and writes about it for specialist publications.

« Je(u) danse, nous dansons » (I dance, we dance)
Professional meeting
Resource Centers for Artistic and Cultural Education, dance and movement arts, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
From December 4 to 6 in the Comédie de Clermont, Clermont-Ferrand
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Danse tout terrain
Design: Laurent Pichaud and Mathias Poisson
Published by le Dancing CDCN Dijon Bourgogne-Franche-Comté
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Corpus
Design: Bérénice Legrand
Published by Minus and La Ruse
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Body Bagarre, le jeu
Design, direction: Mathieu Heyraud
December 4 in Boom’ Structur, Clermont-Ferrand 
January 10, 2025 in Maison de la Culture Le Corbusier, Firminy
January 22, 2025 in L’ilyade, Seyssinet-Pariset dans le cadre du festival Maillon en scène