With the New Settings programme, each year the Foundation supports artists who experiment with unconventional forms and who venture into uncharted and unexpected creative territories. The Fondation d’entreprise Hermès accompanies these creators from the studio to the stage, and supports the diffusion of their work through presentations at partner cultural institutions across the Île-de-France. Each year, two pieces also benefit from a presentation in New York thanks to a partnership with the FIAF: in 2018, Nora Chipaumire’s 100% Pop will be presented at The Kitchen and 10000 gestes by Boris Charmatz will be staged at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts.

In 2016, the Foundation chose to support Danse de nuit, a nocturnal performance dreamt up by Boris Charmatz. In three open-air urban settings – the Usine Babcock in La Courneuve, the Cour Lefuel of the Musée du Louvre and the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris – six dancers surrendered themselves to a hallucinatory performance. In 2018, the Foundation renews its support for Boris Charmatz, enabling him to present 10000 gestes at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. Twenty-three dancers form a choreographic forest in which no two gestures are ever repeated. Ten thousand gestures, each carried out just once: an ode to ephemerality. With its evanescence pushed to an absolute limit, dance here becomes more alive than ever.

As part of New Settings, Nora Chipaumire will present her new piece in Paris, at the Théâtre de la Cité Internationale, and in New York at The Kitchen. 100% Pop stems from the memories of a young girl who embarks on a voyage of self-discovery thanks to the larger-than-life persona of Grace Jones. The second part of a trilogy that oscillates between imaginary utopias and dystopias, 100% Pop explores the rites and the great discoveries of feminine adolescence, from the menstrual cycle to diets, from independence to nightclubs, from hours spent listening to the radio to the advent of MTV.