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To close its cultural season, the Polaris art center is hosting, until January 31, 2026, a unique exhibition: “Pas de côté” ( Step Aside) , by artist and choreographer Jean-Charles Gil . A sensitive immersion into a world where dance leaves the stage to become matter, trace, and memory.
A former principal dancer, choreographer, and director of an international company, Jean-Charles Gil now pursues his career in the visual arts. His new exhibition brings together 26 installations and large drawings on tarpaulin , created specifically for Polaris. At the heart of his work lies an object as humble as it is steeped in history: the ballet slipper , a true extension of the dancer's body. Worn, twisted, marked by hours of work, it becomes, in his hands, a symbol of transmission, fragility, and perseverance.
Gil transforms these relics of the movement into poetic sculptures, revealing the effort, passion, and intimate turmoil of a life dedicated to dance. Each piece recounts a fragment of gesture, an echo of the past, a surge of emotion. It's a way of giving form to all that the stage doesn't show: the sacrifice, the demanding nature, the raw beauty of an art made of repetition and self-transcendence.
“Pas de côté” is thus an invitation to look at dance differently, no longer as a spectacle, but as a physical and inner experience, captured in the very material of the slippers that shaped it.
Polaris art center
Forum des Carmes, Place Patricia Tranchand, 13800 Istres
Hours:
Tuesday to Saturday from 9am to 19pm
Sundays and public holidays from 14pm to 19pm
Free admission
Tel. 04 42 55 17 10
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