Le Gymnase and the LOOP network have devised a new commissioning cycle focused on very young children : Les mouvements minuscules (tiny movements).
Le troisième volet sera porté par la chorégraphe Betty Tchomanga, avec une création prévue pour l’automne 2027.
Betty Tchomanga
mouvements minuscules #3
creation 2027
For all audiences from age 1
(suitable for nurseries and schools)
In-situ or stage performance
Approx. 30 minutes – followed by an audience exchange
Since 2022, Le Gymnase CDCN, together with the LOOP network – a dance and youth network – has coordinated Les mouvements minuscules, a choreographic program for early childhood, presented both in-situ and on stage. After Marion Muzac (Le petit B, 2022) and Amala Dianor (Coquilles, 2024), the third edition will be carried by choreographer Betty Tchomanga, with a new creation planned for autumn 2027. Her work is distinguished by an embodied approach to movement and a language in which the body becomes a site of resistance, layered stories, and connection to the world.
In her latest piece for young audiences, Histoire(s) Décoloniale(s), Betty Tchomanga already explores issues of representation by using in-situ performance (classrooms) as a performative space, intertwining transmission and creation. Her dance, infused with narratives from elsewhere, brings together gesture and voice as spaces of freedom and imagination. The choreographer’s plurality of expressions and cultures aligns fully with the spirit of the Les mouvements minuscules program, which fosters choreographic creation for early childhood, open to new ways of reading and seeing the world.
“I chose to accept this commission as a challenge: how can I create a piece for very young children without falling into the pitfalls of naïveté or oversimplification? It also resonates with my interest in exploring diverse formats. I like creating works that can circulate beyond traditional performance contexts. It nourishes me personally and artistically, in what it opens up in terms of encounters. I try to draw on the power of projection, imagination, dreams, and emotions inherent in live performance to convey visions and enter into connection.
Moreover, this commission comes at a moment in my personal life when I have become a mother for the second time, and I am once again witnessing with wonder the development of a young human being. These early years of human life are deeply connected to the body, to movement, to imitation, to sounds, to the voice. These are fundamental elements of choreographic work, and they are central to my process when creating performances.
Dance, moving bodies, and the voice appear to me even more strongly as powerful mediums for building relationships and nurturing the imaginations, bodies, and minds of young beings in the making.”
Betty Tchomanga
Concept, choreography: Betty Tchomanga
Performance: for a duo (in progress)
Choreographic assistant: Lise Vermot
Production: Le Gymnase CDCN Roubaix – Hauts-de-France, as part of the commissioned choreographic project Les mouvements minuscules.
Co-production: LOOP Fund – professional dance and youth network, International Center for the Production and Dissemination of Dance for Children and Youth.
(ongoing)
Available for touring from autumn 2027
biography
Born in 1989 to a Cameroonian father and a French mother, Betty Tchomanga began her artistic training in 2004 at the Conservatory of Bordeaux as well as with Alain Gonotey of Cie Lullaby. She then continued her studies at the CNDC in Angers in 2007 under the direction of Emmanuelle Huynh. Her career as a performer began in 2009, working notably with artists such as Emmanuelle Huynh, Alain Buffard, Fanny de Chaillé, Gaël Sesboüé, Herman Diephuis, Marlene Monteiro Freitas, and Nina Santes. Alongside her artistic work, she pursued literary studies at Université Paris 3 – Sorbonne Nouvelle and obtained a Master’s degree in Modern Literature in 2014.
From 2019 onward, she has devoted herself primarily to her own creative and research practice as a choreographer. Her pieces explore the notion of transgression, understood as the act of surpassing or crossing a limit—whether physical or aesthetic.
She enjoys creating hybrid forms in which bodies transform and metamorphose. Her work draws on practices that push the limits of body and mind through an intense engagement of breath, body, and voice. Since creating her solo Mascarades in 2019, she has carried out research on the Vodou religion and the representations associated with it. She is interested in the narratives that connect the West and Africa, particularly through the lens of colonial history.
Betty Tchomanga choreographed and directed Madame (2016), Mascarades (2019), Leçons de Ténèbres (2022), and the four-episode choreographic series Histoire(s) Décoloniale(s) (2023–2024).
She is an associate artist at Théâtre de la Bastille in Paris and at Danse à tous les étages, an itinerant CDCN in Brittany.
To GANG’s websiteles mouvements minuscules
(tiny movements)
a choreographic commissioning project for young children
Le Gymnase and the LOOP network have devised a new commissioning project focused on very young children: Les mouvements minuscules (tiny movements).
This programme invites a choreographer to create a short form intended for very young children, to be performed in‑situ (e.g. daycares and nursery schools) or on stage. Les mouvements minuscules project is entrusted to an artist whose writing is powerful and singular, who is uncompromising when it comes to aesthetics. The aim of this new project is to encourage choreographic artists to create for very young children, an age group where dance offers are particularly limited.
Will be invited, seasoned choreographers who can devise demanding and inventive formats that are nevertheless adapted to the performance settings, such as venues and spaces designed for very young children.
Around this new project, a programme of teaching offers is being designed specifically for people who work with small children and their families.
Marion Muzac (Le petit B, 2022) and Amala Dianor (Coquilles, 2024) created the first two opus. The third will be carried by choreographer Betty Tchomanga, with a new creation planned for autumn 2027.