Feel Like Dancing? Join the Tate Modern Dance Takeover!

This weekend, the Turbine Hall and the gallery rooms of London’s Tate Modern will be taken over by French choreographer Boris Charmatz and a group of 90 professional dancers.

Charmatz’s project, part of his ongoing investigation Musée de la danse (the dance museum), seeks to question the classical concept and function of the art museum through the practice of dance, the most ephemeral of artistic practices.

For two days only (May 15-16), dancers will engage in a series of performances, classes, and workshops across Tate Modern’s gallery rooms and permanent collection displays.

In the Turbine Hall, a series of major dance works by Charmatz will be staged, and visitors will be encouraged to join in, much in the style of Tino Sehgal’s celebrated performative piece These Associations, which took place in the same location in 2012.

Some performances will be streamed live on Tate’s website, and online and offline audiences will also be invited to participate in the project by using the hashtag #dancingmuseum.

Boris Charmatz, who originally trained at the Paris Opera Ballet, has been challenging preconceived notions of dance for over two decades. In 2009, he became director of the Centre Chorégraphique National de Rennes et de Bretagne in France, which he renamed Musée de la danse.

Musée de la danse at Tate Modern will coincide with the UK premiere of Charmatz’s new piece Manger, and of Partita 2—a work by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, performed by De Keersmaeker, Charmatz, and Amandine Beyer—at Sadler’s Wells.