Groundbreaking Festival Features a Wide Range of New Works for Families by Celebrated French and International Artists

The Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) are pleased to announce programming for the second annual Tilt Kids Festival. With five world premieres and four U.S. debuts, the multidisciplinary festival presents adventurous and playful new work for families from artists spanning the globe. The Festival takes place March 4 through April 16 at venues throughout New York City. Tickets are on sale at www.tiltkidsfestival.org.

Tilt Kids Festival invites kids and families to discover, play, imagine, think, and create, with performances and events that challenge the boundaries of art forms. From theater to dance parties, music concerts, innovative workshops, conversations, and visual art installations, Tilt is designed to stimulate and inspire the audiences of today and tomorrow.

This year, the French Cultural Services and FIAF are thrilled to join forces with leading cultural institutions throughout the city including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Public Library, The Invisible Dog Art Center, and NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. Multiple events will also take place in various spaces at the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and FIAF. The 2017 Tilt Kids Festival features programming ranging from high-flying acrobatics and open philosophical discussions for kids, to a new adaptation of a classic fairytale, told through a combination of film and live performance.

Five of the festival's world premieres are newly commissioned works. The first is a large-scale, immersive installation-the first exhibition in New York-by Hervé Tullet, the internationally acclaimed illustrator and author of over 75 children's books, including Press Here. In another, Congolese theater director Toto Kisaku invites kids and their parents to create costumes, sound effects, and creative recitation in a participatory performance of his favorite African folktale. The Teens Library, created by French artist Fanny de Chaillé, will highlight the lives of recent immigrant teenagers in New York City, who will become living books and share their personal stories with the audience in an intimate setting. In the festival's first collaboration with the Met Museum, the Juilliard Orchestra will perform Oscar- and Grammy-winning composer and conductor Tan Dun's Terracotta Symphony and Hero Concerto, which will complement the Met's exhibit of terracotta warrior sculptures protecting the Qin Emperor. And renowned actor Nicolas Bouchaud and cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton will offer a compelling, musical retelling of the Hans Christian Andersen classic The Emperor and the Nightingale.

The festival will also include four U.S. premieres that will introduce American audiences to acclaimed works from abroad. Among them, a series of special photobooth workshops created by François Hébel, artistic director of the Greater Paris Month of Photography, will give budding photographers an opportunity to explore the world before selfies, culminating in an exhibition of creative self-portraits made entirely by kids. La Cordonnerie's clever ciné-performance Snow White or the Fall of the Berlin Wallwill combine live theater and music and an original film in a re-imagining of the classic tale of Snow White, set in the context of the Cold War. French DJ Pedro Winter (aka Busy P), known for his work with Daft Punk and founder of the Ed Banger record label, will curate a mini-version of his popular European dance music festival for families, Stéréokids. And Franco-Spanish aerial artist Nacho Flores will present Tesseract, a unique production that combines ephemeral sculpture and circus.

The thrilling Montreal-based ensemble The 7 Fingers (Les 7 doigts de la main), best known for their work in Broadway's Pippin, will combine culinary arts with acrobatics for their newest creation, Cuisine & Confessions, presented in its New York premiere. And celebrated author, philosopher, and New York Times columnist Simon Critchley returns to Tilt with an all-new edition of Philosophy for Kids, featuring insightful philosophical conversations with children in a parent-free zone.

"Tilt Kids Festival invites you on a journey across the arts, and on this train, there is no quiet car! Tilt will elicit a sense of freedom rather than impose decorum. Invited artists create new work that pushes the frontiers of creativity, and stimulates the imagination of both kids and their parents," said Rima Abdul-Malak, Lili Chopra, and Violaine Huisman, co-curators of Tilt Kids Festival. "In this time of heightened global uncertainty, we remain committed to offering positive, mind-opening artistic experiences that encourage a deeper understanding of the world. No matter how old you are, let curiosity be your guide!"

Tilt Kids Festival is co-curated by Rima Abdul-Malak, Cultural Attachée of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy; Lili Chopra, Executive Vice President and Artistic Director of the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF); and Violaine Huisman, Director of Humanities at the Brooklyn Academy Of Music.

For more information visit www.tiltkidsfestival.org.