All the Right Moves: Cottonwood Media’s ’20 Dance Street’ Prepares to Take the Stage

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Among the new animated projects debuting at the fall markets this year is Cottonwood Media’s stunning production 20 Dance Street, a beautifully crafted CG-animated show based on Elizabeth Barfety’s book series and set against the backdrop of the prestigious Paris Opera Ballet School. Initially greenlit by German broadcaster ZDF and France Télévisions, the 26 x 26’ was first unveiled at Cartoon Forum two years ago. Targeting 6- to 10-year-olds, the show follows the adventures of 11-year-old Maya as she leaves her hometown in the Caribbean to join the famous Parisian ballet school to pursue her dreams of becoming a world-class ballerina.

To find out more about this exciting new project, we caught up with 20 Dance Street’s producers Zoé Carrera Allaix (Around the World in 80 Days, Find Me in Paris) and David Michel (Totally Spies!, Martin Mystery, Around the World in 80 Days, Theodosia), the co-founders of Cottonwood Media. Here is what they told us about their buzzy show:

Animation Magazine: Congrats to you two on your latest animated venture! How does it feel to be back on the international markets with a new show?

David Michel: We’re very excited to have an extended trailer ready for MIPJunior and MIPCOM next month. We plan to start delivering the episodes in December and January. This is big news for us because, as you know, it’s become quite difficult to produce and finance animation. One of the reasons we are able to move forward with this show is because it was financed four years ago and, of course, because the show is very special and different.

I feel that everyone’s afraid to take chances. They’re either looking for very big IPs or they just want to rehash the same old thing because it did well 10 years before. We tried to do something that was a bit different but had a lot of commonalities with other great shows of the past. The idea was to create an animated show that follows a serialized novela format — almost in the Latin American sense, with big highs and big lows and unexpected twists.

Zoé Carrera Allaix: Yes, this animated show has more in common with our other successful live-action shows, because it’s very realistic. The animation, all the stories, the backgrounds, are quite realistic because of the dance. We are working with the National Opera of Paris, their dancers and choreographers. We have to reproduce the dance movements in a very realistic way, and that costs a lot in animation. We decided to mix motion capture, which is usually used in video games, with keyframe animation that we use in movies and TV series.

We worked with different subcontractors — one which specializes in motion capture and the other with expertise in keyframe animation. They use Maya for the animation and Unreal Engine. The main studio is 2 Minutes (based in Paris and on the island of Réunion), and the motion capture for the dance sequences is done by Mocaplab (also in Paris), and they have years of expertise in motion capture and have also worked with the dancers from the Opera. I’m very happy with the end results, because the animation is very beautiful and authentic, and I’m a big dance fan myself.

David: What’s very interesting is that the show is based on a series of 20-plus books that were commissioned and produced by the Paris Opera. They are very successful not only in France but also all across Europe. They are the ones providing us with the expertise, the dancers, etc.

What would you say the target age group is for the show?

David: I’d say it’s for six- to 10-year olds. The characters on the show are around 15 years old, but it’s very aspirational. It speaks to a younger audience. Traditionally, young girls are always drawn to ballet and horseback riding.

Can you talk a little bit about the overall visuals of the show?

Zoé: The school building in real life has a lot of white walls and glass surfaces. We needed to make it more colorful and interesting for our show. Our director found a way to make the backgrounds more poetic and visually dynamic. It’s actually inspired by the Palais Garnier in Paris. It’s a nice mix of 2D and CG animation with big splashes of color, so it’s quite stylized and graphic and beautifully lit.

We actually started working on the animation in June, and we’re supposed to deliver the first three episodes by winter. In France, we expect to see the show premiere on TV in the fall of 2026. This will be our first animated project in three years.

What do you love about the results of your work so far?

Zoé: I love everything about it — the characters, the drama, the relationships and the fact that we are telling these stories in animation, because we have already worked on a live-action show about dance [and] the Paris Opera. In animation, you can do everything: You can have the character wear red shoes if you want, or you can actually show your character’s dreams. Animation takes a lot longer to produce, but it offers you a lot of freedom. It’s very technical, long and complicated, but it’s very rewarding in the end.

David: I love the fact that the show is girl-skewing. Yes, there are lots of animated shorts for preschool girls, but there aren’t many shows out there for girls of this age group that aren’t about magic or flying ponies. I am very happy that we’re doing something that’s quite different and original, and the storyline is serialized. One of the things that Zoé is a big advocate for is hiring as [much] female talent on the projects as possible. For example, on this show, we are very happy to have a young first-time female director named Romy Yao.

What is your take on the animation scene in Europe?

David: There have been some marginal changes that could be considered positive. Some studios like Disney and Apple continue to have animation commissions. But in Europe, it’s mostly public broadcasters that are keeping everyone afloat — and that’s a lot of people. There are two big issues: There are less orders with lower license fees in general, while costs are all going up due to inflation. Also, the streamers changed the standard order format to 10 or 13 half-hours, which has a huge impact because a company like ours has about 15 permanent employees. We need to pay them based on our margin every year, and that margin is proportional to the number of episodes you are producing each year. How can you retain the same number of people and company structure with fewer orders?

Zoé: In animation, you create and build all your characters and the sets; it costs a lot, so you need to produce a lot of episodes with them to make it efficient and feasible. You can’t amortize with just 10 episodes.

David: Just looking at the market and what it can afford in terms of orders and financing, I think there are just too many production companies. So, I think we’ll see more mergers and acquisitions. For us, we hope to continue working in both live-action and animation. We have a new live-action show coming up called The Lady Grace Mysteries (commissioned by the BBC and ZDF), about a young girl who’s a personal spy for Elizabeth I. It’s a very cool period detective story. We’ve just finishing shooting it, and it comes out this fall.

So these two shows are the ones we’re quite thrilled about this year. We’re also developing more animated features in the future, which we find very exciting creatively. Stay tuned, because we’ll have more to tell you in a few months!

Cottonwood Media’s 20 Dance Street is slated to premiere on France Télévisions in the fall of 2026. The 26 x 26’ series is produced by David Michel, Zoé Carrera Allaix and Cecile Lauritano (co-founders of Cottonwood Media). The show is produced in partnership with ZDF, Opéra National de Paris. Federation Kids & Family and ZDF Studios handle worldwide sales.