Imagining Paris and its surroundings as a vast playground and transforming its squares, monuments and parks into performance spaces with the wave of a magic wand has always been the driving impulse of the Paris l'Eté performing arts festival. Since its founding in 1990, the summer event, whose guiding principle then and now has been to delight Parisians who remain in the city, has brought performances to an impressive array of open-air spaces of every shape and size, setting up stages for shows that nearly evoke a holiday atmosphere.

Performances staged in unusual settings make for lasting images and memories. By disrupting both the artistic intent and the audience's perspective for the better, the performances have taken the risk of breaking free of the magician's black box and confronting the unstable rawness of the outside world. Under the leadership of Patrice Martinet from 1990 to 2016, the festival saw the main courtyard of the Hôtel des Invalides amplify the impact of choreographer Angelin Preljocaj's Empty Moves I and II in 2011, and then the Arenas of Lutetia transform into a curious construction site for the performance Transports exceptionnels (Exceptional Transports), a dialogue between a man and an excavator conceived by Dominique Boivin, in 2012.

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