Romeo Castellucci, Forced Entertainment and more at FIAF's Crossing the Line Festival 2016

The French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF), New York's premiere French cultural center, is thrilled to announce the full program for the Crossing the LineFestival 2016, the tenth annual edition of its celebrated fall arts festival, presenting interdisciplinary works and performances by artists from around the world. Crossing the Line runs from September 22 through November 3 in venues and public spaces throughout New York City. Tickets will go on sale August 15.

One of Europe's most radical and acclaimed theater directors, Romeo Castellucci will make his New York debut at Crossing the Line with Julius Caesar. Spared Parts. Performed out of sequence, amidst the marble columns of Federal Hall, this visceral work transforms Shakespeare's Roman tragedy into a phantasmagorical dreamscape.

This year's edition of the festival features four world premieres: Anne Nguyen, breakdance world champion and one of France's most up-and-coming choreographers, makes her US debut with Graphic Cyphers. A radical take on the hip-hop cypher, created in collaboration with 20 NYC street dancers,Graphic Cyphers will be presented at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Roberto Clemente Plaza in the South Bronx, and will culminate in a final performance in Times Square. In Nguyen's Autarcie (....): a search for self-sufficiency, a US premiere, four jumpsuit-clad female hip-hop dancers face off in a hypnotic, ritual warrior dance.

Also in Times Square, UK-based writer, artist, and director of award-winning theater company Forced Entertainment Tim Etchells brings the world premiere of his specially created multi-channel video installation Eyes Looking to the electronic billboards as part of Times Square's Midnight Moment. After presenting Sight is the Sense that Dying People Tend to Lose First at Crossing the Line 2013, Forced Entertainment returns this year with the New York premiere of the delirious, comic play Tomorrow's Parties.

New York artist and choreographer Maria Hassabi also returns to Crossing the Line with the new commission STAGED. In this world premiere performance, four of New York's most captivating dancers-Simon Courchel, Hristoula Harakas, Molly Lieber, and Oisín Monaghan-perform solos, collectively forming an intricate living sculpture.

This year's edition of the festival features a focus on celebratEd French choreographer Jérôme Bel, who returns to Crossing the Line for presentations of his major works, including the US premiere of his radical, iconic performance Jérôme Bel; his landmark work The Show Must Go On; and a screening of Bel's widely admired film Véronique Doisneau. In the world premiere commission Artist's Choice: Jérôme Bel/MoMA Dance Company, the choreographer brings together 20 to 25 MoMA staff members for solo and group performances in the Museum of Modern Art's Marron Atrium.

In his first major US solo show, UK-based drag fabulist Dickie Beau presents Blackouts. Conjuring the wayward spirits of Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, and journalist Richard Meryman in uncanny impersonations, Beau merges reality with illusion and his identity with those of his idols.

French choreographer Rachid Ouramdane returns to the Crossing the Line following his 2011 performances of World Fair and Ordinary Witnesses ("among the most remarkable dance-theater works of our time"-The New York Times). In TORDRE (WROUGHT), a US premiere, two of Ouramdane's longtime collaborators-Lora Juodkaite and Annie Hanauer-perform raw, captivating self-portraits.

Part of FIAF's French Protocol series, French photographer Mathieu Bernard-Reymond's new exhibition Transform features photographs that have been mutated from documentary images into troubling poetic compositions.

After presenting Episodes 4.5 & 5 of their obsessive, ambitious Life & Times cycle at Crossing the Line 2013, Obie-award-winning Nature Theater of Oklahoma, led by husband-wife duo Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper, returns with the grand finale of their epic journey: the New York City premiere ofEpisodes 7, 8 & 9. The multi-art chronicle of company member Kristin Worrall's life story continues with an ode to Citizen Kane; a vividly colorful musical inspired by early Cinemascope; and a rap video shot with GoPro cameras on roller skates.

New York-based actor and performance-maker Aaron Landsman returns to Crossing the Line with his multi-year project Perfect City, bringing young people from the Lower East Side into conversation with architects, urban planners, and critics to imagine answers to pertinent questions about gentrification, capitalism, and community.

The festival culminates with Post-Party Dream State Caucus from American interdisciplinary art collective My Barbarian (Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon, and Alexandro Segade). Featuring New York-based artists as special guests, the performance turns the audience into delegates, tasked with the promising and dangerous work of building political consensus.

Now in its tenth year, Crossing the Line is an annual citywide festival that engages International Artists and New York City audiences in discovery and dialogue to re-imagine the world around us. The festival is produced by the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) in partnership with leading cultural institutions. Crossing the Line is co-curated by Lili Chopra, FIAF's Executive Vice President and Artistic Director; Simon Dove, Executive and Artistic Director of Dancing in the Streets; and Gideon Lester, Director of Theater Programs at Bard College.

"Welcome to the 10th edition of Crossing the Line, an international festival for New York City. We invite you on a series of glorious adventures and wondrous encounters in our own city. From the public plazas of the Bronx to Federal Hall on Wall Street, from Times Square to the Lower East Side, these artists and companies will shift your sense of possibility in the world. We're so glad you can join us."

-Lili Chopra, Simon Dove, Gideon Lester, co-curators of Crossing the Line

Crossing the Line, now in its tenth year, is an annual citywide festival that engages International Artists and New York City audiences in discovery and dialogue to re-imagine the world around us. The festival is produced by the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) in partnership with leading cultural institutions. This year's edition of the festival takes place fromSeptember 22-November 3, 2016.

France has a long history of supporting national and international cultural practices, welcoming and nurturing new ideas and influential perspectives from around the world. FIAF, as the leading French cultural institution in the US, critically maintains that tradition through the Crossing the Line Festival, presenting leading-edge artists from France and the US alongside their peers from around the world.

Since its inauguration in 2007, Crossing the Line has cultivated an increasingly large and diverse following, and received numerous accolades in the press. The festival has been voted "Best of 2009," "Best of 2010," "Best of 2012," "Best of 2013," and "Best of 2014" by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time Out New York, Artforum, and Frieze, with performances earning an Obie and several Bessie awards. The New York Times states, "For terrifically unusual, unpredictable, unnameable performance, we've come to expect a lot from ... the curators of the French Institute Alliance Française's interdisciplinary festival," and The New Yorker says, "This interdisciplinary festival...goes from strength to strength."www.crossingtheline.org

Photo Credit: Luca Del Pia

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