Le Lac des Cygnes, Paris Opera Ballet, March 11, 2019
[des extraits de l’article sont traduits en français]
Never in my life have I attended a Swan Lake where, instead of scrabbling noisily in my bag for a Kleenex, I actually dug in deeper to grab pen and bit of paper in order to start ticking off how many times the Odette and Odile did “perfect ten” developés à la seconde. Every single one was identically high and proud, utterly uninflected and indifferent to context, without the slightest nuance or nod to dramatic development. I noted around twenty-two from the time I started counting. This is horrifying. The infinite possibilities of these developés lie at the core of how the dancer will develop the narrative of the character’s transformation.
Riches have wings, and grandeur is a dream.
Sae Eun Park, this Odette-Odile, has all the skills a body would ever need, but where is the personal artistry, the phrasing, the sound of the music? I keep hoping that one day something will happen to this beautiful girl and that her line and energy will not just keep stopping predictably at the mere ends of her fingers and toes. Flapping your arms faster or slower just does not a Swan Queen make.
Made poetry a mere mechanic art.
Park’s lines and positions and balances are always camera-ready and as faultless as images reprinted on cotton fabric…but I prefer a moving picture: one where unblocked energy radiates beyond the limits of the dancer’s actual body especially when, ironically, the position is a still one. Bending back into Matthieu Ganio’s warmly proffered arms, Park’s own arms – while precisely placed –never radiated out from that place deep down in the spine. Technical maestria should be a means, not an end.
I want a lyre with other strings.
Even Park’s fouettés bothered me. All doubles at first = O.K. that’s impressive = who cares about the music? Whether in black or white, this swan just never let me hear the music at all.
Coton
Jamais je n’avais assisté à un Lac des cygnes où, au lieu de farfouiller bruyamment dans mon sac à la recherche d’un Kleenex, j’ai farfouillé pour trouverbloc-notes et stylo afin de comptabiliser combien de fois Odette et Odile effectuaient un développé à la seconde 10.0/10.0. Chacun d’entre eux était identiquement et crânement haut placé, manquant totalement d’inflexions et indifférent au contexte […] J’en ai dénombré vingt-deux à partir du moment où j’ai commencé à compter. […]
Les lignes, les positions et les équilibres de Park sont toujours prêts pour le clic-photo et l’impression sur coton. Mais […] se cambrant dans les bras chaleureusement offerts de Mathieu Ganio, les bras de Park – bien que parfaitement placés – n’irradiaient pas cette énergie qui doit partir du plus profond de la colonne vertébrale. […]
Même les fouettés de Park m’ont gêné.
Tous double au début = Ok, c’est impressionnant = Au diable la musique !
En blanc comme en noir, ce cygne ne m’a jamais laissé entendre la musique.
Silently as a dream the fabric rose: -/No sound of hammer or of saw was there.
Mathieu Ganio’s Siegfried started out as an easy-going youth, mildly troubled by strange dreams, at ease with his privileged status, never having suffered nor even been forced to think about life in any large sense. A youth of today, albeit with delicate hands that reached out to those surrounding him.
As if the world and he were hand and glove.
Ganio’s manner of gently under-reacting reminded me – as when the Queen strode in to announce that he must now take a wife – of a young friend who once assured me that “all you have to do when your mother walks into your head is to say ‘yes, mom,’ and then just go off to do whatever you want.” Yet his solo at the end of Act I delicately unfolded just how he’d been considering that perhaps this velvet cocoon he’d been raised in may not be what he wants after all. Ganio is a master of soft and beautifully-placed landings, of arabesques where every part of his body extends off and beyond the limits of a pose, of mere line. He makes all those fussy Nureyevian rond-de-jambes and raccourcis breathe – they fill time and space — and thus seem unforced and utterly natural. When I watch him, that cliché about how “your body is your instrument” comes fully to life.
Alas, no matter how he tried, his character would develop more through interaction with his frenemy than with his supposed beloved.
Velours
Le Siegfried de Mathieu Ganio se présente d’abord comme un jeune homme sans problèmes à peine troublé par des rêves étranges, satisfait de son statut privilégié, n’ayant jamais souffert et n’ayant jamais été contraint de penser au sens de la vie. […]
Néanmoins, son solo de l’acte 1 révélait combien il commençait à considérer que, peut-être, le cocon de velours dans lequel il avait été élevé n’était peut-être pas ce qu’il voulait, après tout. Ganio est passé maître dans le domaine des réceptions aussi silencieuses que bien placées, et des arabesques où toutes les parties du corps s’étendent au-delà des limites de la simple pose. Il rend respirés tous ces rond-de-jambe et raccourcis tarabiscotés de Noureev – ils remplissent le temps et l’espace – et les fait paraître naturels et sans contrainte.
Hélas, quoi qu’il ait essayé, son personnage s’est plus développé dans ses interactions avec son frère-ennemi qu’avec sa supposée bien aimée. […]
Great princes have great playthings.
Jérémy-Loup Quer used the stage as a canvas upon which to paint a most elegant Tutor/von Rothbart. Less loose and jazzy with the music than François Alu on the 26th, more mysterious and silken, Quer’s characterization thoughtfully pulled at the strings of this role. Is he two people? Two-in-one? A figment of Siegfried’s imagination? Of the Queen’s? A jealous Duc d’Orleans playing nice to the young Louis XV? By the accumulation of subtle brushstrokes that were gentle and soundless on the floor, and of masterfully scumbled layers of deceptively simple acting – here less violent at first vis-à-vis Siegfried during the dueling duets– Quer commanded the viewer’s attention and really connected with Ganio. His high and whiplash tours en l’air and feather-light manège during his Act III variation served to hint at just how badly this mysterious character wanted to wind Siegfried’s mind deep into the grip of the voluminous folds of his cape.
Grief is itself a med’cine.
When this von Rothbart finally lashed out in the last act – and clearly he was definitely yet another incarnation of the Tutor from Act I — both Siegfried and the audience simultaneously came to the sickening conclusion that we had all been admiring a highly intelligent and murderous sociopath.
Soie
Jérémy-Loup Quer, […] moins jazzy musicalement que François Alu le 26, est plus mystérieux et soyeux. […] Par une accumulation de subtiles touches, […], et par l’usage souverain d’une quantité d’artifices de jeu dont la simplicité n’est qu’apparente, […] Quer captait l’attention du spectateur et interagissait réellement avec Ganio. Ses hauts tours en l’air « coup de cravache » et son manège léger comme une plume durant sa variation de l’acte 3 laissaient deviner combien ce mystérieux personnage voulait aspirer la raison de Siegfried dans les volumineux replis de sa cape […] tel un sociopathe hautement intelligent et criminel.
Quotes are from the pre-Romantic poet William Cowper’s (1731-1800) Table Talk, The Taste, and his Sonnet to Mrs. Unwin.
Les Balletonautes 