Music
Concerts are often grouped together in festival mode during the summer, enabling small venues in the department's villages to bring touring bands through their doors. Each public holiday or vacation period is also an opportunity to put festivities back on the menu. What's more, many cultural and gastronomic events with no direct link to music add concerts to their program to round off their evenings in style. Music festivals can be a reason in themselves to visit the Gard, but depending on your destination, keep an eye out for proposals from nearby cultural venues for nice surprises to add to your stay.
For classical music, go to Uzès in July for the famous Nuits musicales, which now also includes jazz, and in August to Aigues-Vives for their international festival, or to Lasalle en Cévennes for the Fête de l'Alto where, even during the day, masterclasses fill the streets with music for those who take a stroll and listen carefully.
Folk balls are held all year round in several villages, and dancers don't hesitate to come along. In January, the Trad'Hivernales festival in Sommières brings people together, expanding the program to include storytelling performances, workshops and round-table discussions. Several events take place in Nîmes throughout the year, including the Rencontres internationales des troubadours de temps modernes, in June. Wednesdays in July and August welcome traditional music from all horizons with L'Échalapée Belle in Sénéchas, thanks to the initiative of the Balagan company.
The big names in pop and rock perform at the Festival de Nîmes at the start of each summer. For reggae, Zion Garden persists in July in Bagnols-sur-Cèze, while renowned jazz artists are in Junas at the same time. In August, it's Les Electros d'Uzès that attracts fans, and for funk, it's Watt the Funk Festival that gets Bessèges vibrating in August. With its festive, eclectic program of electro, rap, Balkan jazz and rock, the Transes Cévenoles in Sumène in July is a summer must, also featuring street arts during the day with free shows for all.
Street art and circus
A number of factors have contributed to making the Gard, and above all the Cévennes, one of France's epicenters for the performing arts, not least the many large disused buildings whose use was just waiting to be renewed. In Alès, the Verrerie de Rochebelle (Rochebelle Glassworks) has had many working-class vocations since 1788 - from glass and crystal to union premises and coal mines, before becoming one of France's twelve national circus centers in 2009. Gradually abandoned, from 1986 onwards, the Archaos - Cirque de caractère company occupied the site, creating its shows in a strong community spirit, and later founding the Salto circus school. It was the town of Alès that saved the site from ruin by buying it back in the 90s, wishing to devote it to a cultural mission. Today, La Verrerie presents 120 shows a year, including the fall Temps des Cirques events in the Gard, Hérault and Aude regions, and InCIRCus, a week of circus in the public space in Alès in June.
Not far away, in Champclauson (La Grand Combe), the Les Lendemains company set up shop in the late 90s in a former mining wasteland. Little by little, the site became structured around a flying trapeze site, hosting residencies for live performance companies, training courses, a circus apparatus workshop and another stage structure, as well as creating and presenting shows. In 2020, the Espace Culturel la Berline was officially inaugurated. In 2012, when Les Lendemains wanted to clean out its big top, they set it up outside, which gave the artists around it the idea of creating a spontaneous cabaret, the Cabaret de Champclauson, a highly alternative and civic-minded event that has continued every two years in the spring. It has to be said that the surrounding artistic community is strong: La Grand Combe is also home to the CirqVost company, which specializes in aerial disciplines, and Mécanique Vivante, which builds performance machines and new devices, and invents scenic creations all around.
In July, street performances take over the whole department. Cratère Surface, run by the Cratère team in outdoor programming mode, reaches tens of thousands of spectators by presenting companies from Gard and around the world. The Villeneuve en Scène Festival is a gentle, "slow" festival in a rural setting, while marquees and trailers combine different, multi-disciplinary itinerant theatrical offerings. Fest'in Zone in Port Camargue draws the public into street art, dance and music wanderings along the quayside. At the La Goud'vibe festival in Goudargues, clowns, acrobats and street poetry enchant young and old alike.
Theater
In addition to the always relevant and sought-after program at Le Cratère in Alès, theater fans can head for the border of the département, to the Centre national des écritures du spectacle, La Chartreuse, in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon. Here, writers and researchers are in residence all year round, and regularly give public presentations at the end of their residencies. Each season, the site also offers Rencontres, more festive occasions for dialogue with the public. The summer Rencontres, in July, focus on contemporary voices in playwriting, with readings of new texts, creative performances, themed literary cabarets, a symposium and round-table discussions, installations and exhibitions. It's an opportunity to make new discoveries, of course, but also to delve into the aesthetic, political and social questions raised by today's playwrights.
