From Park to Studio: Pauline Payen’s Research Residency at Dancenter

In early 2026, Dancenter welcomes back Pauline Payen for her second residency. This time, Pauline will research everyday dance practices in Vietnam, with the Dancenter studio as her main space for exploration.

Observing, Joining, Understanding: Where the Research Begins

At the beginning of 2026, Dancenter is pleased to welcome back Pauline Payen for her second artistic residency. Following her first residency in 2024, during which she rehearsed and presented Yahoo! with the support of partner venue Mot+++, Pauline returns this time with a different focus: research.

Pauline at Dancenter

Her current project explores a very familiar yet rarely examined sight in Vietnam’s urban life: dance-aerobic groups practicing in public parks, especially groups of middle-aged women. What draws Pauline to this phenomenon is not only the movement itself, but also its social and emotional dimension, the way these women create a shared world, take ownership of public space, and move together not to be seen, but to feel themselves and the community they form.

Vietnamese dance-aerobics, as Pauline observes, stands somewhere between dance and exercise. The movements often focus on the upper body, structured around repetitions and variations of simple phrases, and can last from twenty to forty minutes. It is a popular and widely shared practice, found in parks, gyms, and online videos, yet one that carries a strong collective and cultural identity.

Rather than remaining an outside observer, Pauline chose to learn from the inside:

“When I became interested in studying this, I first joined a morning group at Lê Văn Tám Park. Then I realized they were themselves following a video, the same one, every morning, for two years! When I went back to France, I continued practicing with that same video. Later, I started exploring other videos to better understand the common movement principles of Vietnamese dance-aerobics.”

For Pauline, practice comes before interpretation. Only by physically experiencing the movement can the research become precise, meaningful, and grounded.

The Studio as a Research Tool: Why Residency Matters

This embodied research then returns to the studio. At Dancenter, Pauline works with other dancers to share the practice, analyze it together, and gradually transform it. Movements are isolated, reorganized, abstracted, and reimagined, changing directions, shifting relationships between leaders and followers, and opening new spatial possibilities.

The residency provides something essential: time, structure, and a safe space. Unlike public spaces, the studio allows for concentration, risk-taking, and deeper exploration. It also becomes a place to host other dancers, share practices, and build a collective research environment.

For Pauline, the studio is not simply a rehearsal space, but a true laboratory:

“Without a space to work in, whether in public or in the studio, I wouldn’t be able to think and feel with my body. At this stage, it’s important for me to go back and forth between learning from the parks or videos and experimenting in the studio. It’s also essential to work with Vietnamese dancers, who carry cultural knowledge and references that I don’t have. With dance, knowledge is transmitted from body to body.”

From Performance to Process: Why Research Needs Time

This second residency marks an important shift from Pauline’s first stay at Dancenter. In 2024, her focus was on adapting and presenting an existing performance. This time, the residency is devoted entirely to practice, questioning, and exploration, without the immediate pressure of producing a finished work.

As Pauline explains, research is fundamentally about time, time to stay with questions rather than rushing toward answers:

“Thanks to the support of Dancenter, I could fully focus on my research, create a structure for it, and invite other dancers into the process. That made it possible to share the practice in concrete ways and truly create a laboratory situation.”

If artists arrived at residencies already knowing their answers, the process would no longer be creative. Like children, artists must remain open to not knowing, to exploring, and to discovering.

Through this residency, Dancenter continues its commitment to supporting not only performances but also the quiet, invisible, and essential work of artistic research, where future works, ideas, and practices begin to take shape.

Nurturing Artistic Practice at Dancenter

At Dancenter, we believe that artistic creation begins in the studio, through time, research, and shared practice. We are proud to support artists not only in presenting finished works, but also in nurturing the long, quiet, and essential processes that make them possible. By welcoming artists into our studio as a space for exploration and experimentation, we reaffirm our commitment to artistic development, where future works, ideas, and practices can take root and grow.