An arts festival about sports, for people who don’t like sports

WHEN it comes to the biggest sports show on earth, many Parisians have reached the stage of begrudging acceptance. The level of disruption – and metro price hikes – to get the city ready for this summer’s Olympic Games hasn’t exactly endeared the event to locals, especially those who favour culture over sports.

“The Olympics are coming – whether we like it or not,” a curator from the Pompidou Centre, Linus Gratte, said as he introduced a performance there last weekend as part of the Hors Pistes festival. The audience chuckled.

Hors Pistes (meaning “Off-Piste”), a festival that the Pompidou Centre says is devoted to “moving images”, came with an Olympic-ready theme this year: The Rules of Sport. It is part of the Cultural Olympiad, the programme of arts events that is now a part of the Olympic experience in every host city.