Dance your life was the slogan of Isadora Ducan: “My art is precisely an effort to express in gesture and movement the reality of my being. In front of the public, who came in crowds to my representations, I never hesitated. I gave them the most secret impulsions of my soul. From the beginning, all I did was to dance my life.” Ducan, recognized as the founder of modern dance, moved to Paris from the United States in 1900, and danced barefoot in ample tunics, inspired by the arts of Ancient Greece and refusing the rigid discipline of traditional ballet. Negating herself to be filmed, she became an inspiration to many artists, most prominently Antoine Bourdelle who would use her as a model for one of his major works, the bas-relieves of the Champs-Elysées Theatre.

It is these inter-influences, these inter-dependences, that the Paris Museum of Contemporary Art – the Centre Georges Pompidou, which we visited last year on another occasion – chose to explore in its current exhibition. How is dancing a prime material for the visual artist, and how are paintings made into dance? From 1900 to 2012, a series of unexpected relationships and collaborations are presented to the spectator in three chronological and thematic sections: dance as self-expression, dance and abstraction, dance and performance.

Over 450 works of arts, from Matisse’s gigantic fresco, The Dance of Paris, to Olafur Eliason’s games of space and light illustrate the arts’ preoccupation with volume, light, weight, gravity and movement. Many live performances and movie projections (Vidéodanse) accompany the exhibition, keeping alive the idea that dance is the body as art and art as a body.

Paris, though a comparatively small capital, has long been an artistic and cultural hub. It is unlike London, the trendiest of trendiest, or Berlin, buoyantly alternative, or New York, infinitely diverse. Paris is more reserved, conservative and distant at times, elegantly old-fashioned. This may be why it so often knows how to take a new perspective on the old and the foreign, with poise and thoughtfulness… So make the most of your time in Paris and miss no opportunity to see random bits of the world joining together and suddenly making sense along the galleries of Parisian museums.

One such opportunity takes the form of a fascinating exhibition at the Dapper museum, near your Hotel Louvre Marsollier, entitled Masquerades and Carnivals. The exhibition looks at African masks, an object unfamiliar and often troubling to the Western eye, though artists like Picasso and George Braque dubbed them Art. In Africa, masks and costumes making exuberant use of natural materials to create monsters and chimeras of all sorts are consistently displayed in the ceremonies that structure the social and political reality: initiations, elections, justice, death…

The exhibition also explores Caribbean carnivals through artifacts, photographs and video recordings, inviting the visitor to feel the specific atmosphere of these celebrations, and illuminating their profound social and political meaning, often undecipherable to the outsider. Modern day Caribbean culture is a collective memory of the original African and American Indian influences which, layer by layer, created these specific cultures.

Even those of us who are the least experts on photography know Robert Doisneau’s work. As you stroll around Paris, Doisneau’s black-and-white photographs pop up at every street corner, on postcards in souvenir shops, on large-format posters in riverside kiosks, on calendars in libraries… If you look carefully enough, you might even spot a real-life Doisneau moment – one of these “fragments of time when daily life seems to be liberated from gravity”.

Robert Doisneau, born in 1912 in the suburbs of Paris, dedicated his career to immortalizing such moments of post-WWII Paris. “Paris is a theater were one pays for their seat with wasted time.” said Doisneau. However no time was wasted for what became his most famous photograph – the Baiser de l’Hôtel de Ville. In 1950, Life magazine commissioned images of “Lovers in Paris”, asking the photographers to hire actors for the job. From a window looking out on the Paris town hall, Doisneau took the shot that would be displayed on calendars and photo book covers for decades to come. He himself did not like the shot much and, in his old age, he often regretted that “all I’ll be leaving behind is this picture.”

Today, the very same Hôtel de Ville featured as a background set for the baiser honors the memory of Doisneau by holding an exhibition on a theme dear to the photographer’s heart: les Halles. Not far from your Hotel Louvre Marsollier, les Halles were the central wholesale marketplace of Paris from 1183 to 1971 – or, as naturalist writer Emile Zola put it, “The Belly of Paris”. For many a veteran Parisian, the closure of les Halles marked the death of the true Paris. Doisneau was one such lover of Paris, and upon hearing that the marketplace would be moved to some dreary suburb, he set upon photographing all he could of the 1960s Halles. It is this testimony of another city – before gentrification and standardization took their toll on the urban landscape – that will be told to you through this exhibition of both black and white and color photographic works.

Go early in the morning to avoid the likely crowds (entrance is free), and after the show, why not cross the rue de Rivoli and go look for yourself what has become of les Halles?

La Conciergerie is the only remaining section of the medieval palace of the Kings of France. Head out of your Hotel Louvre Marsollier towards the Seine and stand on any bridge. Do you see the two oddly Disneyworld-ish towers standing on the bank of the Ile de la Cité? This is it, the remains of a state prison dating back to the 7^th century! Its most famous prisoner may have been Queen Marie-Antoinette in 1793…

Until March 11^th, 2012, another type of prisoner is on display below the Gothic vault of the Conciergerie. In low-key lighting, surrounded by strange murmurs, the visitor strolls about a forest worthy of the Grimm brothers and Tim Burton together. This is Bêtes-off (Beasts-off), a one-of-a-kind exhibition about animals… in contemporary art. Without captions, explanations, or even titles, the visitor is left to reflect inwardly about the place of animals in our human world, and about our relationship to them. Three sections guide this reflection: “The animal is an Other”, “To live together”, “To become Animal”. Breathtakingly beautiful works are presented, in a variety of media.

It is a not an intellectual, but a sensory, instinctual appreciation of art that is offered to you in the Conciergerie. Open your eyes, ears and mind, and step into the forest!

Guests of the Hotel Louvre Marsollier cannot have missed it: the Paris Ferris Wheel stands proudly over the Place de la Concorde. Open every day from 10:30 am to midnight, the Ferris Wheel is a highly motivating excuse to overcome your fear of heights… You have until February 6th!

65 yards up, you enjoy a scenic view of the Champs-Elysées, the Opera and the Tuileries gardens while the audio-guide whispers a few juicy anecdotes into your ear – an incredible experience at night, when the City of Lights glitters below your feet.

At the foot of the Grande Roue, the Place de la Concorde has a few tales of its own. Did you know that this is the precise place where Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were executed during the French Revolution? Half-a-century later, Egypt presented France with two obelisks from the Luxor temple. One of them was raised on the square, an engineering prowess that King Louis-Philippe preferred not to witness – appearing on his balcony only after the column was up!

Paris Photo is recognized as a festival of exceptional standard by professional photographers world-wide. We have called your attention upon a few of last year’s attractions (many still going on), and as the event reaches its close, we would like to take you on one last photographic walk, just around the corner from your Hotel Louvre Marsollier.

Near the Assemblée Nationale (aka the French House of Congress), just across the Seine river, the Dutch Institute houses a rare collection of photographs by painter George Hendrik Breitner (1857 – 1923). Breitner’s work opens an unusual and very modern window onto the streets of Amsterdam, Paris and Berlin at the turn of the XX^th century.

This retrospective is unique in many ways, made intriguing by the fact that Breitner was one of the first of his contemporaries to purchase a portable camera and explore its technical and artistic possibilities with limitless spontaneity and joy.

Practical information:

Institut Néerlandais
121 rue de Lille
75007 Paris
Tél : 01 53 59 12 40

Open everyday except Mondays from 1pm to 7pm
Entrance fee : 4 €
Metro: Assemblée Nationale

A few years ago, Paris was the first capital in the world to launch a large-scale self-service bike rental system. A decision not to be regreted, as the Velib’ has since become an essential artefact of XXI^st century Parisian life.

Cheap and easy to rent, the grey bikes are the best friends to those who wish to breathe in some fresh air on their way to work, those who find no one to drive them home after a late-night party, and those who fall yet more in love with the city as they bike along the Seine river. We who have a yearly subscription have come to know and love all the quirks of the Velib’… which stations are more likely to be full at a given time of the day (this depends on how the working masses commute), how to pick out the perfect bike in seconds (no flat tires, no wobbly handlebar, no sliding seat)…

Since December 5th, 2011, Velib’ has something of a bigger sibling in the shape of Autolib’ – these colorful little cars you may have noticed at street corners and whose numbers are growing daily to reach 3000 units by 2013. Paris is the first city to boast 100% electric vehicles with a 180 miles autonomy. And in the cold month of January, Autolib’ seems a bit more cozy than Velib’!

On New Year’s Eve, the city of light and love really shines its title… Your Hotel Louvre Marsollier will help you make this night unforgettable.

If you like to celebrate in the street with a million strangers, head straight to the Champs-Elysées. Around 9 pm, the world’s most famous avenue begins to fill up with Parisians and tourists alike, all carrying the necessary champagne bottles and fireworks. Of course, these are nothing compared to the 12 pm Eiffel Tower pyrotechnical show!

All around your Hotel Louvre Marsollier, the cabarets and nightclubs host incredibly sparkly New Year’s dinner and parties. But the most special way to celebrate with the city is to make reservations for a dinner cruise… For a whole night on the Seine at a very reasonable price, try the very popular Alizée boat. With Paris en Scène, you can taste the culinary creations of starred chef Tateru Yoshino to the sound of a gipsy virtuoso… and this is only one of the many options available! For even more New Year’s picks, try these dinner cruises.

A very happy New Year to you!

Of course the Paris Grands Magasins – the Galeries Lafayette, the terrace of which we visited last Summer, and the Printemps department store – are only minutes away from your Hotel Louvre Marsollier, but if you are willing to cross the Seine river, we would like to take you on a no-less prestigious Left Bank shopping adventure.

The narrow streets of Saint-Germain-des-Prés offer an ever-changing variety of shopping options. Between the river and the Boulevard, art galleries occupy every nook and corner around the Paris Beaux-Arts school. Nestled among them is also the Mariage Frères tea parlor, with its exquisite collection of tea blends, and an outlet of the Ladurée pastry shop, the internationally renowned macaron crafter.

Around the Saint-Germain church stands a wooden Christmas market, enticing you with the delicious smells of grilled chestnuts, crèpes and hot wine. On the Boulevard and beyond, all major luxury designers have opened a store, alongside many intimate, exclusive boutiques. Max Mara, Comptoir des Cotonniers, Maje… the Saint-Sulpice block holds an answer to every fashion crave as well as two pastry artisans, Pierre Hermé and Gérard Mulot, who, according to many, outshine Ladurée.

Whenever you get hungry, or cold, or need a rest from the shopping excitement, have a chocolat chaud at the Café de Flore, where Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir used to spend hours in conversation and contemplation, or sit down for a hearty lunch at the Brasserie Lipp, another legendary Saint-Germain landmark.

And to resume your shopping, Le Bon Marché, the oldest department store in Paris, is only one street away…

Christmas is around the corner. What better time to drift back into childhood? If you don’t want to risk a credit card burn-out, rendez-vous at the Grand Palais… Thousands of toys, from antique dolls to Barbie, from rusty automats to video games, are piled up below the high glass ceiling.

Amidst the nostalgia and tenderness, some serious questions are asked: how do children relate to this small-scale reality, imagined by adults? What do dolls, miniature automobiles and lead soldiers tell about their time? What makes a boy a boy and a girl a girl? When does a mimetic reality turn into fantasy?

Instructive, introspective and moving, this is an ideal Christmas-time exhibition, which will dust off some long-buried memories and may very well influence your Christmas gift selection… And if your credit-card is itching, the Champs Elysées are only steps away from the Grand Palais!

Practical information:

Des jouets et des hommes at the Grand Palais. From September 14^th, 2011 to January 23^rd, 2012. Every day except Tuesdays from 10 am to 10 pm (9 am during the Christmas holidays).

At your Hotel Louvre Marsollier, we love the Quai Branly museum, because – aside from its exceptional location right by the Eiffel Tower and its surprising vegetal façade overlooking the Seine river – it offers countless opportunities to discover little-known exotic arts that are rarely exhibited for an international public.

And so, for the first time in Europe, you may admire Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller’s incredible collection of samurai armors. The samurai were a noble warrior cast and a defining component of Japanese society during nine centuries of the country’s History. The heirs and masters of a superior combat tradition, they also formed an intellectual elite, skilled at calligraphy, poetry and literature.

The samurai’s status was expressed and honored through the ages by the exceptionally refined artwork of their armor makers. Way beyond the practical purposes of warfare, samurai panoplies reflect the arts and spirit of a mythical epoch.

Practical information:

Samouraï at the Musée du Quai Branly. From November 8^th, 2011 to January 29^th, 2012. Every day except Mondays from 11 am to 7 pm (9 pm on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays).

Contact: 01 56 61 70 00

A few steps away from your Hotel Louvre Marsollier lies the heart of the XIX^th century City of Lights. The Grands Boulevards, with their cinemas, theaters, and quaint shopping galleries make for a perfect beginning-of-December walk and shopping spree among the bourgeois venues of times long past.

And if it ever gets too cold, why not head once more to the Marais district where the cozy treasure-halls of the Carnavalet Museum will offer you an unexpected outlook on the Paris of the Impressionists and the Industrial Revolution? Rich exhibits, extracted from the museum’s bottomless collection as well as from another twenty Parisian institutions, retell the daily life of the people, the masses, the anonymous: where they lived, what they ate, how they dressed, but also what they thought and fought for.

Step into the backstage of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables and Emile Zola’s quasi ethnographical novels, and you will find that the urban concerns of XIX^th century Parisian mechanics and launderers were much alike those of workers in New York or London.

For another perspective on this same period, do not miss The England of Oscar Wilde at the Orsay Museum.

Practical information:

Le peuple de Paris au XIXe siècle at the Musée Carnavalet of the History of Paris. From October 5^th, 2011 to February 26^th, 2012. Every day except Mondays from 10 am to 6 pm.

Contact: 01 44 59 58 58

This Fall, Paris falls for photography… and your Hotel Louvre Marsollier falls along! Let us take you to the Petit Palais (Paris Museum of Fine Arts), for an inspiring journey alongside the women of India.

In an attempt to make Western stereotypes about Indian women a thing of the past, six photographers roamed the country in search of its true feminine spirit. Olivia Arthur, Martine Franck, Alex Webb, Patrick Zachmann, Alessandra Sanguinetti and Raghu Rai set the lights on the modern Indian woman, a pillar of her community, unafraid to challenge male supremacy in politics, economic development, education, business, and even fine cuisine!

The exhibition has been presented with great success in major Indian cities, and 100 photographs were chosen for the latest Reporters Without Borders album, which can be purchased in support for the NGO’s work.

Practical information:

Elles changent l’Inde at the Petit Palais. From October 21^st, 2011 to January 8^th, 2012. Everyday except Mondays, from 10 am to 6 pm (8 pm on Thursdays).

Address: Avenue Winston Churchill, 75008 Paris.

Let your Hotel Louvre Marsollier take you back to the fascinating Musée du Quai Branly, where an innovative exhibition about Māori culture takes its first step out of New Zealand. Through sculpture, dress, sacred and profane artifacts, architectural reconstructions, photography, music and video, the Māori provide you with complex insights into their ancestral worldview and contemporary issues.

Organized around the notion of tino rangatiratanga – the will of the Māori for auto-determination and sovereignty, which has been legally accepted in the XIX^th century – the exhibition expresses the strength, vivacity and relevance of Māori culture and lifestyle in modern New Zealand.

The Māori’s continuing fight for humans and the environment to protect and complement each other, expressed through unyielding political action and powerful contemporary art, as well as their distinctive interpretation of life and society will surely echo through your own thoughts and soul long after leaving the museum…

Practical information:

Māori, leurs trésors ont une âme at the Musée du Quai Branly. From October 4^th, 2011 to January 22^nd, 2012.

All information at: www.quaibranly.fr (in English)

Parisian nights, sparkling, passionate, libertine, may be a fantasy for many, but in 2010, thousands of Parisians signed the petition “Paris: When the night is dying in silence”, protesting against the increasing elitism of the city’s nightlife.

Unwilling to lose their birthright to an unaffordable display of luxury clichés, the grassroots festive non-profits of the MAP Network and Live Night are opening all doors to the sleepless crowds. During the festival, the people of Paris and over 500 artists ranging from electro DJs to Latin jazz bands claim their right to party in bars, theaters, concert halls, restaurants and even the subway!

Take your pick among a rolling nightclub bus, musical cruises on the Seine river or even the express trains, and take a stand on this authentic, militant dance floor!

Practical information:

From November 14^th to November 20^th, 2011.

All events on: http://nuitscapitales.com/en (in English)

Oscar Wilde’s The Portrait of Dorian Gray was more than a tragic ode to beauty. It took a stand on Art itself and was a critique of the Victorian social and artistic order, calling for a more beautiful and spiritual modernity. What became known as the “aesthetic movement” reached beyond the scope of writing, painting, and other academic arts, encompassing the novel technique of photography and lifestyle aspects like design and fashion.

This fall, the Musée d’Orsay, itself an architectural testimony of the XIX^th century, becomes a time-machine, embarking you on a journey to late Victorian England through the works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, James McNeill Whistler, Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley.

The Orsay Museum recently underwent a year-long renovation process. On November 10^th, the newly remodeled Great Hall will host an exceptional concert – Enoch Arden, op. 38, a melodramatic opera composed by Richard Strauss and inspired by Alfred Tennyson’s poem. Do not miss this unique opportunity for a musical, visual and literary voyage into Oscar Wilde’s England !

Practical information:

Beauté, morale et volupté dans l’Angleterre d’Oscar Wilde at the Musée d’Orsay. From October 28^th to December 15^th.

Concerts on November 10^th, 2011 and December 15^th, 2011 at 8 pm.

All information in English at: Musée d’Orsay

This fall, Paris is teeming with photo exhibitions. After the Photoquai festival of non-western photography, we hope you enjoy our new picks…

A few steps from your Hotel Louvre Marsollier, draped in autumn leaves and nostalgia, is the Jardin des Tuileries and its exhbition pavilion, the Jeu de Paume, where you can discover the intriguing photographic work of Diane Arbus. A visual anthropologist of the American sixties, Arbus uses her camera to reveal the strangeness of daily life and give theatrical quality to the most scrawny reality.

Venturing South to the Henri Cartier-Bresson foundation, you meet with Lewis Hine, the American social photographer of the early XXth century, whom you may know from History books. For over a decade, Hine roamed the most deprived regions of the United States, sometimes risking his life, to document child labor in the manufacturing industry. His moving photographs of American at work are an exceptional testimony of his unique sense of dedication and compassion.

Practical information:

Diane Arbus – from October 18, 2011 to February 5, 2012, at the Jeu de Paume, 1 place de la Concorde, 75001. All the information in English at www.jeudepaume.org (+ 33 (0) 1 47 03 12 50).

Lewis Hine – until December 18, 2011, at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, 2 impasse Lebouis, 75014. All the information in English at www.henricartierbresson.org (+33 (0) 1 56 80 27 00).

Maybe you met him for the first time on the front page of the New Yorker. Maybe you wondered who the man behind the delicate, subtly ironic sketches was… a man who must have known to make himself invisible, unnoticeable in order to make the poetry of our daily life so visible and noticeable in turn. He is to drawing what Doisneau is to photography, with bits of philosophy and playful psychoanalysis as his signature.

A longtime favorite of Left Bank art galleries, Jean-Jacques Sempé now enjoys his first Parisian retrospective at the Paris Town Hall, an exhibition site that your Hotel Louvre Marsollier already recommended to you in the past. Entitled “Bits of Paris and elsewhere”, the exhibition consists of over 300 original drawings and captions by Sempé.

No matter if you are discovering or rediscovering Sempé, you will be delightfully amused and questioned by each and every one of his bits of Paris.

Practical information:

“Sempé, Bits of Paris and elsewhere”

From October 21st to February 11th, 2011

Every day except Sundays from 10 am to 7 pm (last admission 6:15 pm)

Entrance free

Address: Hotel de Ville, Salle Saint Jean, 5 rue Lobeau, 75004 Paris – Métro Hotel de Ville – Tel. 01 42 76 51 53

Seen Midnight in Paris? Would you like an encounter with a piece of Woody Allen’s Paris? Then run to cinépuces this Sunday! Hanging on the edge of Paris, the Saint-Ouen flea market is a weekly treasure hunt for the lovers of rare artifacts and vintage fashion. The area gathers 15 different flea market, each with its own history, architecture, specialties and atmosphere.

This weekend, the flea market celebrates its cinema festival with movies showing on the streets, concerts and contests. Shop owners will run for the best decorated shop – each shop dressing up as a movie set – and children are invited to dress up as movie characters.

To top off the excitement, local restaurants will offer cinema-themed menus… So if you are looking for an authentic, popular, unexpected Paris – Woody Allen style – cinépuces is your moment!

Practical information:

From Friday, October 14th to Sunday, October 16th. From 10 am to 6 pm. Direction: 7 impasse Simon, Saint-Ouen, 93400. Metro : Garibaldi or Porte de Saint-Ouen

Wouldn’t it be lovely to have a good book about Paris? One which unearths the secret of a city that has much more to tell than meets the eye, one which can guide your steps and imagination for a full day, one reminiscent of the city’s feel and spirit… How do you escape the tasteless fare of postcard books, translated into a thousand languages, teeming behind souvenir shop windows?

Eric Hazan has the answer. His Invention of Paris; A History in footsteps is a historian and a wanderer’s mind set free. In an exciting brick by brick account of the city’s modern history, Hazan tells of another Paris – one less standardized, less exclusive, more restless.

If you are looking for a more visual book, Janelle McCulloch’s A secret Paris, is a compelling and gloriously illustrated celebration of a city where beauty and elegance arise from every nook and corner. Do not forget to pay a visit to the legendary Shakespeare and Company English-language bookstore and tell your Hotel Louvre Marsollier about your discoveries!