Company SmARTS
Photo: Guisi Lorelli (Fuori Formato Festival 2024)
Project and mission
Company SmARTS is a non-profit organization located in Paris and founded by contemporary tap-dance choreographer, Roxane Butterfly. Developing a clever strategy to transform a complex matter of life (her own: being the mother of a child with Down syndrome), the internationally acclaimed performer, combines her artistic expertise with the challenge of “inclusion”.
Through workshops and performances directed to audiences from all walks of neurodiversity, Company SmARTS offers itself as a platform of exchange and reflection on the fundamental value of difference.
“Promoting an inclusive society is not enough. We must create models that help counter the systemic exclusion of our humanity’s many variations”
_Roxane Butterfly
The show
Conversation with my daughter
Aware of the power of rhythm on the evolution of each of us, Roxane stages the conversation that she managed to establish with her child thanks to the practice of her art. The show tells the challenge caused by the irruption of a “force majeure difference” in life.
“Zuly arrived from the cosmos carrying an extra-dose humanity which reset the counter of my ego. The slow factor had suddenly appeared in my life’s equation, shaking my sense of time and space, and creating its own swing . I fell under the sweet insurrection of slowness. » (Roxane Butterfly)
A dance of emancipation resulting from black-American slavery, tap-dance returns here to its genesis by once again becoming the instrument of the voiceless.
The Workshop
Rhythm for all
A non-exclusive dance workshop co-animated by Roxane and Zuly
Tap dance is an elaborate language that combines dance and music simultaneously. While the use of tap-shoes is not a requirement to participate, students are invited to experience the spirit of this exciting art-form,through fun body-percussion exercises, stomping, basic shuffles and call-and-responses.
The workshop highlights the benefits of collective rhythmic practices, notably the strengthening of self-esteem, the bond with the group, the acquisition of concepts otherwise abstract for people with neuro-atypical learners (like the representation of time, space, volume, speed…) etc…
By becoming a supporting member of Company SmARTs, you are simply helping to demonstrate the importance of inclusion. You expand our distribution network. Your voice helps us carry those who don’t have one further. It’s FREE! Our members are made up of artists, health professionals, teachers, dance and music enthusiasts, journalists and families living in the 3D dimension of Down syndrome.
VIDEOS
“Until her arrival in France, Zuly had not experienced separatism. Zuly was a child like any other, included in everything and by everyone. So we weren’t talking about inclusion since that was the norm. It was in Paris that I was genuinely directed towards activities for “disabled people”. So I asked myself : what more could she learn there, than she wasn’t already learning?”
