BABYBOUM (working title)
The third part will be led by choreographer Betty Tchomanga, with a new production scheduled for summer 2027.
creation summer 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
creation 2027 – Betty Tchomanga
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 summer 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.
Concept, choreography: Betty Tchomanga
Performance: Noan Colin, Angelo Abanolo, Sandra Sadhardheen, Clarisse Tognella (two performers alternating)
Choreographic assistant: Lise Vermot
Light : Eduardo Abdala
Music : Stéphane Monteiro
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 (Le Gymnase CDCN Roubaix Hauts-de-France, L’échangeur CDCN Hauts-de-France, La Faïencerie SCIN Art en Territoire – Creil, Les Rencontres Chorégraphiques Internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis, La Maison danse · Uzès Gard Occitanie CDCN), CND Centre national de la danse, Chaillot Théâtre national de la Danse – Paris, La Manufacture – CDCN Nouvelle-Aquitaine Bordeaux • La Rochelle, La Maison danse · Uzès Gard Occitanie CDCN, Opéra de Paris, Opéra de Limoges, Danse à tous les étages CDCN itinérant en Bretagne, Pole Culturel de Chirongui. (ongoing)
statement of intent
by Betty Tchomanga
For several years now, the concept of ‘decentring’ has been a recurring theme in my works and my artistic explorations. I am interested in the relationships between the ‘centre’ and the ‘periphery’, and in shifts in perspective, particularly those arising from what is invisible, hidden, forgotten or erased…
It is in this spirit that I am approaching this commissioned project, Les mouvements minuscules #3. Creating a piece for very young children inherently involves a form of decentring, a shift in perspective.
How can we turn perspectives on their head?
What if babies knew more than we thought?
What if babies knew how to dance before they could walk, knew how to sing before they could speak?
BABYBOUM is a rhythm, a beat.
BABYBOUM is a pulse that flows through bodies.
BABYBOUM is a groove that is passed on and shared.
BABYBOUM is voices that envelop, songs that connect.
BABYBOUM uses repetition as a compositional motif.
BABYBOUM uses difference as a form of accompaniment, disruption and wonder.
BABYBOUM awakens adults’ mirror neurons and nourishes those of little ones.
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 and artistic director of GANG. 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). She is also the creator of the choreographic series Histoire(s) Décoloniale(s), composed of the four episodes of Season 1 (2023–2024), as well as #Autoportrait (2026) and The Sea is History (2026).
She is an associate artist at Théâtre de la Bastille in Paris and at Danse à tous les étages, an itinerant CDCN in Brittany.
Provisional Schedule
- > 12–16 October 2026
immersion in a nursery
> between January and March 2027
residencies
> 31 May to 5 June 2027 – La Maison Danse CDCN, Uzès
residency and creation of the in situ version
> 23 August to 3 September
residency and creation of the stage version
> Available for touring
the in situ version : from June 2027
the stage version : from September 2027
