It was balance sheet time yesterday. In the presence of René Martin, of course, the designer and artistic director of La Folle Journée, but also of Aymeric Sasseau, assistant to the culture of the city of Nantes and Denis Caille, the director of the Cité des Congrès which welcomes in large part the public.
An audience this year reduced to never parking, exchanging, having a drink. We said it: we went in, we listened, we went out. And we went out through an exit without ever meeting those who entered… through an entrance. I now know all the emergency exits, said René Martin funny, that I had never spotted for 25 years.
At the time of a truly satisfactory assessment, the three men were able to share with us all the fears, even all the anxieties, which seized them in recent weeks: how to organize all this, all these flows? Will the public be there, not put off by so many constraints? Won’t the artists give up? We had to deploy treasures of determination, of combativeness, to respect the instructions of the state, to secure the rooms to preserve the famous gauges. And from this point of view we must pay tribute to all our volunteers who accompanied the public, a sometimes fearful public, with smiles, advice, says Aymeric Sasseau.
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In the end, adds René Martin, only 7 artists had to be replaced out of the 800 who came (counting the musicians of the orchestras). And, when it came to pianists, for example, their comrades played the game, proposing a program for them.
We can testify to all this: both the great professionalism, courtesy and rigor of this staff of volunteers and security, as well as the great discipline of the public, a public a little shy the first few days but who will have come more more numerous, we will even have seen again, the school children having not been able to be welcomed (they will have their special day on Monday, June 13!), little blond (or dark) heads, this Sunday especially, with dad and mom.
We will have been able to witness – because the Folle Journée is also, especially these days, a tremendous economic booster for the city – the increasingly clear return of the said public to the hotels, cafes, restaurants of Nantes; some of these restaurants, as we have also said, are transformed into ephemeral tea rooms. You should know that the weekend of the Folles Journées is the most important of the year in terms of frequentation of the brasseries of the Nantes conurbation. Suffice to say that the decision (and it was a political decision!) of the mayor of Nantes, Johanna Rolland, to give the green light to the Folle Journée on January 10 in the health circumstances that we know, was courageous.
Courageous but necessary and also well calculated because, recalled Aymeric Sasseau, the city’s deputy for Culture, we know that with the barrier gestures and the health passes that have become vaccines, there have never been clusters in the places cultural, neither in Nantes nor elsewhere. The possible cancellations being the result of individual behavior and the very small number of contaminations (only one of the planned pianists, out of fifty, recognized positive for Covid) is also explained by the increased attention of many of them, we heard and observed, wishing to preserve their own life as an artist in the weeks to come.
The fact that La Folle Journée took place – 189 concerts organized in 5 days, 77% fill rate (when we know that part of the public is still reluctant to go out) – was also a very strong sign (the teams by René Martin have observed) for the cultural life of the country. We were assailed, told us a collaborator of René Martin, of phone calls from cultural actors from all over France, artists’ agents, directors of festivals, absolutely relieved that the Folle Journée took place. The fact, in addition, that it went so well will further accentuate the idea that, in our area so affected, we can finally envisage the end of the tunnel in really good conditions.
In any case and in the meantime, it will be a question of already setting a date: the next Folle Journée will take place from February 1 to 5, 2023. The theme (which is usually announced by René Martin on the closing Sunday)? It’s not that I’m running out of ideas, he hinted. Quite the contrary. But let’s wait a few weeks. Let’s also see how things will evolve from a health point of view. This may involve, for example, the presence of large orchestral ensembles, where more contamination can occur, or on the contrary more soloists, which limits the risks a little more. We’ll say more soon, we promise. A little rest is also necessary perhaps for everyone, who has the right to breathe after weeks of tension but with the final satisfaction of a job well done.