In the late 1970s, pop music flooded the radio. The band Téléphone was a huge hit and progressive rock was ceaselessly growing more complicated. Punk gave way to French-style cold wave: Les Jeunes Gens Modernes. An impalpable movement, a media joke – a few dozen musicians cutting their teeth in an unbridled creative ferment. Today it still resonates for music groups.

Jeunes Gens Modernes, the new festival from the CCN¹, takes its title directly from the 1980s French musical movement. Directly inspired by its “army of romantics with an aesthetic of disillusionment”, this festival for “Modern Young People” launches a new event in Orléans. The Jeunes Gens Modernes festival is a space for celebration, encounter and discovery focused on dance and music. “Modernity” reflects the idea an epoch makes of itself, conscious of change or proclaiming originality. It reflects a certain experience of the period but also suggests a “modern perspective” of that period and that generation.

What was distinctive to this scene was perhaps a certain form of elegance, simultaneously awkward, nonchalant and erudite, cultivated and literary – even if all the references cited were far from fully mastered, analyses Jean-François Sanz, artistic director of the agnès b. endowment fund, who for this first edition is proposing an exhibition emblematic of this alternative scene. Re-branding the term “modern” while avoiding dichotomy between an (endorsed) past and an (overrated) present is the programming challenge for this brand new CCNO festival.

Jeunes Gens Modernes is above all a state of mind: the urge to go out, dance, make or listen to music, create, experiment, discover, share unique moments living and expressing yourself freely. And for the CCNO, an excuse for eccentricity!

Let’s remain, become, or stop being Young and Modern People… but above all, let’s do it together!

Maud Le Pladec.

Partners

French Ministry of Culture and Communication – D.G.C.A. – D.R.A.C. Centre-Val de Loire
City of Orléans
Centre - Val de Loire Region
Loiret Departmental Council
French Institute – French Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Orléans National Theatre
Théâtre d’Orléans
L’Astrolabe
agnès b.
Asterios
The Onda – National Office of Artistic Dissemination

Loire Vision
Les Inrockuptibles

Many thanks to Matthieu Goeury (Vooruit in Ghent) and Antoine Allain