The Centres chorégraphiques nationaux (CCN), alongside the Centres de développement chorégraphique nationaux (CDCN) and the Centre national de la danse (CND), structure the dance landscape in France as reference centres, labelled by the French Ministry of Culture.

Supported by the State and local authorities, the CCNs promote the development of dance, both through the creative dynamics of their director-choreographers, but also by supporting choreographic artists of various currents, through the diffusion of their productions and the outreach work of raising public awareness of the art of dance.

There are currently 19 Centres chorégraphiques nationaux. The CCN of Créteil is one of the first to have been created, by Maguy Marin. Three of them are now run by hip-hop choreographers, in Créteil (Mourad Merzouki), La Rochelle (Kader Attou) and Rennes (FAIR-E collective).

Mourad Merzouki, director of the Centre chorégraphique national of Créteil and Val-de-Marne, is developing an artistic project open to the world and to the plurality of choreographic languages. Since the creation of his Compagnie Käfig in 1996, the choreographer has broadened the language of hip-hop by orienting his approach at the crossroads of multiple disciplines: circus, martial arts, contemporary dance... His choreographic pieces have made it possible to make the voice of hip-hop dance heard on all French stages and in many theatres and festivals around the world.

Blending the sophisticated and the popular, using dance as a means of reaching out to otherness, of making distant worlds communicate with each other, such is the meaning of the CCN team’s work. Mourad Merzouki has long been working to eradicate from hip-hop and the artists who bring it to life, the often unique and narrow reference assigned to it: that of the social, of exclusion, in order to reveal their true and singular artistic gesture and to nourish the energy of openness, the very foundation of hip-hop.

Based in Créteil, near Paris, Compagnie Käfig finds in this city a singular cultural and associative richness that breathes its precious dynamic into all the projects undertaken. The artistic work, constantly nourished by the back and forth between the public audience and the stage, grows in the artistic relationship with the inhabitants. It is the perpetual back and forth between a culture and a territory, the confrontations with other "worlds", which allow the artistic language to be built and to meet the support of audiences from very diverse generations and cultures.

The work of creation, the actions developed in the territory, the support given to independent companies over the seasons, make it possible to offer a positive model to young people and to encourage the transmission of a different perspective on new urban practices to everyone.