Ever thought about doing some cat-cows and child’s poses after hours on your feet at the art museum? Over in Paris, visitors are doing just that as the Louvre debuts a new exercise program in anticipation of the 2024 Summer Olympics beginning in late July. The temporary initiative, called Run to the Louvre, invites the public to join in on ticketed yoga and dance sessions on various dates from the remainder of April through the end of May to ring in the new museum exhibition Olympism: Modern Invention, Ancient Legacy.
Run to the Louvre is a collaboration with dancer Mehdi Kerkouche and his creative direction and choreography company, EMKA Dance Project. A team of seven movement professionals are leading the hour-long disco, dancehall, yoga, and cardio workshops at the museum in the morning before the building opens for its regular visitor hours. The sessions take place in the Louvre’s Richelieu Wing, full of Mesopotamian antiquities like the iconic lamassu sculptures, and the Sully wing, known for Ancient Greek and Egyptian art and artifacts as well as French paintings.
Those who buy tickets for the fitness sessions are given free re-entry privileges into the Louvre for the Olympism exhibition and other galleries as well, adding a bonus reward for feeling the burn.
Though the fitness program only runs through May, the Olympism exhibition will be on view until mid-September, through both the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games. The show details the 19th-century Olympic Games revival in Athens and the influences taken from the ancient iterations, and boasts the display of the “Bréal’s Cup” — the French-designed silver trophy awarded to Spyros Louis, the winner of the first modern Olympic marathon in 1896.
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