The FNAC shops in all big towns and virgin Megastores in the main cities have copious listings of what's on and are the best booking agencies for gigs, ballet or theatre

Dance and mime
The French regional contemporary dance companies - including Régine Chopinot's troupe from La Rochelle, Jean-Claude Gallotta's from Grenoble, Mathilde Monnier's from Montpellier, Karine Saporta's from Caven, and Joêlle Bouvier and Régis Obadia's from Angers - easily rival the Paris-based troupes, though the exciting choreographers Jean-François Duroure and the Californian Carolyn Carlson are both based in or around the capital. Other names to watch for are Maguy Marin in Créteil and François Verret in Auberilliers.
 

Humor, everyday actions and obsessions, social problems and the darker shades of life find expression in the myriad current dance forms.

A multidimensional performing art is created by combinations of movement, mime, ballet, music from the medieval to contemporary jazz-rock, speech, noise and theatrical effects.

Philippe Genty's company in Paris combines dance, drama and marionettes to astonishing effect while the Gallotta-choreographed film Rei-Dom opened up a whole new range of possibilities. Many of the traits of the modern epic theatre are shared with dance, including crossing international frontiers.

Though the famous Lecoq School of Mime and Improvisation in Paris still turns out excellent artists, pure mime - as practiced by the incomparable Marcel Marceau - hardly exists, except on the streets and at Périgueux's international festival of mime.

For classical ballet (again well represented in Festivals), the two most renowned companies are the Ballet de l'Opéra National de Paris at the Opéra-Garnier and the Opéra-Bastille, whose dance director is Brigitte Lefère, and the Ballet National de Marseille, whose artistic director is Roland Petit. Other classical ballet companies are based in Avignon, Bordeaux, Lyon, Toulouse and St-Etienne.