Strikes cripple French dance scene.

France has long been considered a haven for youthful struggling artists. Throughout the 1970s and '80s, young American dancers including Trisha Brown and Carolyn Carlson helped shape the French dance scene as they escaped their desperate working conditions at home to benefit from this country's state-funded El Dorado. All that is about to change, however, as the Chirac government works to drastically cut the funding it pumps into the pockets of les intermittents and les precaires, the entertainment industry's itinerant performers and casual workers.

Show-business activity came to a grinding halt on the morning of June 27, when the government announced a drastic and highly unexpected reduction in the unique unemployment benefits formerly enjoyed by French entertainment personnel.

The announcement couldn't have come at a more precarious time. The French population was still reeling after a monthlong transportation and school strike that was provoked by an unpopular reform of the state's retirement plan in late spring. When it was announced that performing-arts workers would also have to swallow a full 30 percent decrease in their otherwise paid downtime, emotions flared.

Although the festival season was revving up, the dozens of theater, dance, music, and street festivals that otherwise dot the French summer horizon disappeared as performers and technicians launched a nationwide strike in a widely supported reaction to the budget cuts. Rather than discovering the latest in choreographic, theatrical, and musical talents, the eager public was confronted with closed theaters, picket lines, and massive demonstrations.

For the dance community, the proposed cuts, if implemented, would have a particularly brutal impact. Dancers generally tend to work for several companies at varying times, and as such, rely heavily on these benefits to sustain themselves during rehearsal and creation time, as well as during downtime between short-term contracts. The loss of the benefits would be deadly for the youngest and most vulnerable of them all.

It came then as no surprise that the first casualty of the strike was the annual Montpellier Dance Festival, which closed down twenty-four hours after the opening night performance was "postponed." However, on a more positive note, festival Director Jean-Paul Montanari, in his emotionally charged declaration to the press, confirmed that his decision "would in no way jeopardize the 2004 edition."

Shortly thereafter, the curtains came down at the eighth annual Festival de Marseille, which would otherwise have run July 2-20 and would have featured new dances by Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and Wire Vandekeybus, as well as a new piece by Robert Wilson.

Festival Director Apolline Quintrand, who has been running the show in this southern coastal city since its inception, anticipated the conflict, commenting that she understood early on that there was "no hope for negotiations" with the government, despite the uproar among entertainment personnel. In an effort to quell hostility and to manifest her support for the movement, she opted for an immediate cancellation.

The nationwide strike came to a boiling point on July 10 at the internationally renowned theater festival in Avignon. After three days of heated debate and unending altercations, festival Director Bernard Faivre-d'Arcier announced that, for the first time in its fifty-seven-year history, "the festival is closing with death in its soul."

For Patrice Poyet, director of Danse a Aix in Aix en Provence, the most difficult task throughout the crisis was keeping tensions down to a minimum. "We held discussion groups several times a day; letting each other vent our feelings was a big help," said Poyet about the weeks they spent anticipating the possible cancellation of their July 19 opening night.

Yet, as noted by Poyet, perhaps the most debilitating element to have come out of the strikes was the hatred and animosity, that poisoned co-workers as their conflicting ideas about the strike often clashed. Those are the scars that the country's entertainers will have to work through when--or if--the season kicks off this fall.

While the industry's actors, dancers, organizers, and sponsors packed up their bags, the country's indignant shopkeepers, hoteliers, and restaurateurs began calculating their losses. It is estimated that in Avignon alone, an estimated 40 million euros in revenues will have been lost as a result of the strikes.