The 8th Festival Week-end à l’Est celebrates contemporary Armenian art through a multidisciplinary program across six venues in Paris. Featuring renowned and emerging artists, the event explores themes of identity, displacement and cultural dialogue, bridging Armenia’s vibrant artistic scene with global audiences.

While contemporary dance is still seen as a very niche and esoteric “corner” of Armenia’s performing arts landscape, it is starting to flourish with many young dancers from Armenia and abroad involved in making this change.

Although performance art has practically disappeared from the contemporary art scene as an autonomous medium, early practitioners had a profound impact in changing perceptions of the body in Armenia’s post-independence culture.

For Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, and for Syrian-Armenians in Yerevan, crafting served as a way of earning a living and as a process of rebuilding and reimagining a social world through the temporal markers that help them nurture a sense of “home.”