Archives d’Auteur: Fenella

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Pour ne pas rester muette, car je n'ai pas les deux pieds dans le même sabot, i will write in English.
par | 15 mai 2023 · 8 h 45 min

Maurice Béjart at the Paris Opera : « Let Me Entertain You »

Maurice Béjart, Paris Opera Ballet. April 28th, 2023.

L’article en anglais est traduit en français plus bas …

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Maurice Béjart’s ballets have a Broadway soul: generous, florid,  and loud. So catchy, you feel you could almost hum a few bars of the steps.

Decades later, Béjart’s gimmicks still “have it” for an audience, even when it probably sees them coming from miles away. Just one example: spot-lit and center stage, you lunge towards the house/ right arm thrust directly forward/palm up/eyes focussed straight into the audience/ in order to either plead to or challenge the darkness. It showed up in each one of this night’s three ballets.

Firebird/L’Oiseau de feu …

”Do something special, anything that’s special!”

Everyone kept demonstrating the steps too heavily: now I plié to leap, now I plié to turn, now I…

Francesco Mura didn’t lead the narrative. If he hadn’t been in red, you wouldn’t have known he was the one inspiring the troops in this theoretically “revolutionary” ballet. For a while I wondered if he were holding back in order to unleash charismatic power later and thus pump up the drama.  Not.  While Mura’s soft and un-bombastic approach (despite rather tight-backed arabesques) did grow on me a bit, I couldn’t find the firebird.

In fact, it seemed that the trio of girl passionarias were in charge.  Caroline Robert, Aubane Philbert, and Pauline Verdusen, caught the light and commanded our attention at every twist and turn.

I could sense that those sitting around me had not the faintest idea as to who Gregory Dominiak’s Phoenix was supposed to be, either.

The audience wasn’t restless. Just clueless.

Songs of a Wayfarer/Le Chant du compagnon errant…

“I had a dream, a wonderful dream.”

Most in this role of “the young man who must look death in the face” dive right away into the realm of twenty minutes of anguish. Here we started with an almost weightless Antoine Kirscher and I wondered where he was going to go with this nice and naïve persona.

But then he, like the audience, got a shock when Enzo Saugar (who he? A yesss to whoever cast him) showed up and revealed the stage presence of someone born to be in the spotlight. Better yet, this kid knows how to share the stage. Here, dancing with his death, Kirscher has never seemed so alive. His partner shook him up, challenged him, made him dance bigger and better. Unexpected emotional crescendos happened. I, and I think Kirscher too, forgot about how pretty his feet are.

Bolero…

“I’m beginning to like doing this. I like that. I hope you did because I’m going to do it again. However – my mother’s advice, which I always take, is to make them beg for more, and then – don’t give it to them.”

Bolero, about 16-17 minutes of emphatically-demonstrated aerobic striptease, often just wears me down. By the time we reach the sweat-drenched climax, I’ve often got a melody from a different burlesque thrumming in my head: “You can pull all the stops out/ Till they call the cops out, […]/ Grind your behind till you’re dead…”

Here, Hugo Marchand proved he had nothing to prove. Calm, controlled, riveting, he patterned the downbeat, light and agile and untouchable. There was stillness to the way he moved. I sat there thinking: how fabulous that he’s pretending this ballet is not a gimmick.

Those little thrusting movements, which can seem quite vulgar, here illustrated Duncan’s theory about the solar plexus: an honest – almost innocent — grounding of the body.  My thoughts flashed to when Sondheim’s Gypsy Rose Lee — very, very slowly — removes a glove with finesse instead of baring it all.

The male corps responded to Marchand’s cool aplomb and worked it with ease. On cloud nine, the audience hummed as it wafted down the steps of the Opera Bastille in a bemused daze, begging for more.

In Béjart’s world, ”Either you have it, or you’ve had it.”

All quotes are from the 1959 Broadway musical Gypsy. Stephen Sondheim, lyrics.

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 *                                         *

« Let Me Entertain You ».

Libre traduction Cléopold

Les ballets de Béjart ont toujours eu une âme Broadway : généreux, flamboyants, tapageurs. Tellement entraînants qu’on a l’impression qu’on pourrait en fredonner les pas.

Des décennies plus tard, les « trucs en plume » de Béjart sont toujours un hit pour le public, même lorsqu’on les sent venir à des kilomètres. -Un exemple ? Éclairé au projecteur, en plein centre de la scène, vous vous mettez en fente en direction de la salle, le bras et la paume droite tendus vers l’avant, les yeux plongés dans le public comme pour une supplication ou un défi à l’obscurité.- On retrouve ces ingrédients dans chacun des trois ballets de cette soirée.

L’Oiseau de feu

« Do something special, anything special ! »

Chacun avait tendance à détailler lourdement les pas : « et maintenant je plie pour sauter », « et maintenant je plie pour tourner », « et maintenant… »

Francesco Mura ne dominait pas la narration. S’il n’avait pas été en rouge, on n’aurait pu deviner qu’il était l’inspirateur de cette troupe dans ce ballet théoriquement « révolutionnaire ». Un moment, je me suis demandé s’il ne se retenait pas afin de déchainer son pouvoir charismatique plus tard dans l’optique de renforcer le drame. Mais non. Même si l’approche douce et non grandiloquente de Mura a fini par me toucher (en dépit d’une arabesque un peu raide), je n’ai jamais vu un oiseau de feu.

En fait, il m’a semblé que le trio féminin de passionarias avait pris les commandes. Caroline Robert, Aubane Philbert et Pauline Verdusen, prenaient la lumière et attiraient notre attention sur chaque tour et chaque torsion.

Je pouvais sentir aussi que tous ceux qui étaient assis autour de moi n’avaient pas la moindre idée de ce qu’était le Phénix de Gregory Dominiak.

Le public n’était pas impatienté mais vaguement médusé.

Le Chant du compagnon errant

« I had a dream, a wonderful dream »

Dans ce rôle du « jeune homme qui doit regarder la mort en face », la plupart des interprètes plongent d’emblée dans un monde de vingt minutes d’angoisse. Ici, tout a débuté avec un Antoine Kirscher presque sans poids et je me suis demandé où le danseur allait pouvoir aller avec cette douce et naïve personnalité.

Mais alors le danseur, de même que le public, a reçu un choc quand Enzo Saugar (qui ça ? Bravo en tous cas à la personne qui l’a distribué) est apparu, révélant une personnalité faite pour se retrouver sous le feu des projecteurs. Mieux encore, ce gamin sait déjà comment partager la scène. Ici, dansant avec sa propre mort, Kirscher n’a jamais autant semblé en vie. Son partenaire l’a bousculé, l’a poussé dans ses retranchements, le faisant danser plus grand et plus vrai. Sont arrivés d’inattendus crescendo émotionnels. J’en ai oublié, et sans doute Kirscher aussi, combien ses pieds sont jolis.

Bolero…

« I’m beginning to like doing this. I like that. I hope you did because I’m going to do it again. However, my mother’s advice, which I always take, is to make them beg for more, and then – don’t give it to them”

Boléro, 16 à 17 minutes de striptease aérobic emphatiquement démontré, me lasse bien souvent. Alors qu’on atteint le climax inondé de sueur, j’ai souvent la mélodie d’un numéro burlesque qui me trotte dans la tête « You can pull all the stops out, /Till they call cops out, […]/ Grind your behing till you’re dead… »

Mais ici, Hugo Marchand a prouvé qu’il n’avait rien à prouver. Calme, sur le contrôle, passionnant, il façonnait le rythme, agile, léger et inatteignable. Il y avait une forme d’immuabilité dans son mouvement. Je restais là assise, pensant : c’est fabuleux, il fait comme si ce ballet n’était pas un truc en plumes.

Ces petites oscillations pelviennes, qui peuvent paraître assez vulgaires, illustraient ici la théorie Duncanienne du plexus solaire : un honnête, presque innocent, ancrage au sol du corps. Retournant soudain à la Gypsy de Stephen Sondheim, j’ai pu voir Gypsy Rose Lee, retirer très très lentement un gant au lieu de se mettre crument à poil.

Les hommes du corps de ballet se sont mis à l’unisson de l’aplomb contrôlé de Marchand et s’y sont aisément coulés. Au septième ciel, les spectateurs semblaient littéralement flotter tandis qu’ils descendaient les marches de l’Opéra Bastille, l’air hébété. Ils en redemandaient.

Dans le monde de Béjart « Either you have it, or you’ve had it ».

Toutes les citations viennent de la comédie musicale Gypsy (1959) avec les paroles de Stephen Sondheim.
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par | 11 mars 2023 · 14 h 05 min

Balanchine in Paris.  “Alas…it’s a bore.”

Ballet Imperial/Who Cares? Paris Opera Ballet, February 10, 2023.

I had a great time during intermission, which bodes ill for what will follow.

This double-bill ballet evening supposedly counterpoints “masterpieces” from contrasting moments in time — 1941 and 1971. Yet the two pieces, new to the Paris repertoire, were danced almost interchangeably in terms of rhythm, attack, and, indeed, inventiveness. After an exhausting series of Swan Lakes during December and January, how on earth did the once perfect but a now obviously under-rehearsed corps manage to be consistently out of line almost throughout these two little “easy” American ballets? I did everything possible not to groan aloud.

« Look at all the captivating fascinating things there are to do”

“Name two”

“Look at all the pleasures

All the myriad of treasures we have got.”

“Like What?”*

Sometimes these days, Balanchine ballets can seem like dusted off museum pieces that refuse to come to life. But as Balanchine knew, anything can come alive if the music is right. Ah music. All music has an emotional (albeit not necessarily narrative) arc. Perhaps part of my “meh” reaction to this double-bill might be laid at the doorstep of the Orchestre de l’Opéra national de Paris under Mikhail Agrest’s restrained baton: schoolroom tidy for the Tchaikovsky piano concerto, then utterly lacking a drop of razzamatazz for the Gershwin.

Ballet Imperial, aka Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto #2 in the US

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Fred Astaire and Lucille Bremer. « This heart of mine ». Ziegfield Follies. 1946.

You can see every tree almost saying “Look at me!”

“What color are the trees? “ “Green!”

“What color were they last year?” “ “Green!”

“And next year?” “Green!”

“It’s a bore.”*

No concerto – even if you re-re-name it Number Two for NYCB after having gotten rid of the sets and costumes for that original thing first entitled “Ballet Imperial” – is ever about “I show up, play fancy, and then go home.” Alas, that was the feeling that dominated both in the pit and on stage on Friday night.

With the exception of the always just-right and delicious Marine Ganio  [who can lay claim to the title of most overworked and underrated dancer in the company], the other minor soloists proved cautious, self-conscious, or just plain stiff (special mention to Silvia Saint Martin).

Oh and yes, there she was. Ludmila Pagliero was all pulled up: a pliant partner, a soloist lit from within, with nowhere to go during so much of the dull and predictable choreography.

But Paul Marque came to the rescue and caressed his ballerina in masterful gently-landed lifts [even that super-awkward one in attitude front where she falls back and then hops on pointe with bended knee. It’s always been an ugly one]. Marque was marvellous in returning his partner to the ground as if she were as light as an autumn leaf. You could sense that he had his own narrative thing going on and bravo to him.Marque did his responsive best as the token male who represents one finger in the cat’s cradle/labyrinth of females-with-connected-hands movement. Just how many times did Balanchine do this “signature move” in his works?  I would have preferred that the Paris Opera Ballet offer “Theme and Variations,” which uses the same themes and patterns but which has a spine. That ballet would have given the blossoming Paul Marque more of a chance to shine.

This thing called Ballet Imperial went on and on and nowhere. Some fouettés were offered up at some point. Woo-hoo?

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Who  Cares?

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Fred Astaire & Eleanor Powel « Begin the Beguine ». Broadway Melody of 1940.

“Don’t you marvel at the power of the mighty Eiffel Tower?”

“How many stories? “ “Ninety!”

“How many yesterday?” “Ninety!”

“How many tomorrow?” Ninety!”

“It’s a bore.”*

A backcloth with a vaguely New Yorker-style cover illustration of skyscrapers is now a dated cliché. But at least it was less hard on the eyes than that dull cyclorama, predictably blue and bland since early television recordings. (And which had been deemed sufficient for the previous ballet).

In 1971, this ballet claimed to pay homage to beloved Gershwin musicals of the past. And for a generation or two afterwards, often an audience member would hum along.

Clearly no youngster in this audience had ever heard of Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire [both still alive and venerated in 1971] or…George Gershwin. So did the under age fifty audience pay attention? Kinda.

OK there is nothing a conductor can ever do about the Balanchine’s beloved and somehow sublimely tacky orchestrator, Hershey Kay. Except maybe, give up and give in to that old “ba-da-boom” of Broadway melodies. Here George Gershwin’s jazzy swoop just bumbled along in the orchestra pit. If dancers have no air under their feet, they cannot fly.

The first part is a medley/mash up of relatable tunes, created to give kids in the corps about 15 seconds of fame. Their moments are totally fleeting, kind of as pointless as confetti. After the corps has sufficiently increased the running time  [which included some haplessly missed marks], Mr B. begins to unleash the mini-soloists. A loud “yes” goes out to the swoop and charm of Seohoo Yun and to the natural swing and flow of Roxane Stojanov .

Then all these other people show up. [Apparently, this has always been a ballet in two parts. To me it was always just shapeless].

“But think of girls!”

“It’s either yes or no

And if it’s no or if it’s yes

It simply couldn’t matter less.

It’s a bore.”*

 As to “the” Fred and Ginger/Gene and Cyd avatars… I preferred Léonore Baulac and Germain Louvet later, alone in their solos, rather than together. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong in what they do as a pair, lovely lines. They clearly like each other, dance to each other. But as far as a couple goes, you never sensed that shiver of desire. Alas this description applied to whomever the cheerful and charming Louvet ended up dancing with.  It’s weird, he’s a generous and well-meaning partner and fun to watch but here he just didn’t connect to anyone. Watching Louvet was like watching Eleanor Powell, an asteroid, a comet, doing her own marvellous things. Who remembers who her partners/satellites were? Who were Louvet’s? (F.Y.I. Baulac/Colasante/O’Neill).

Hannah O’Neill, on her own in “I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise,” rode on whatever inflections she could glean from the lackluster conducting with poise and discretion.  Léonore Baulac’s solo “Fascinatin’ Rhythm” had snap but could have been bigger, in the sense of more openness out of the hip. Valentine Colasante’s “My One and Only” was luscious and beautifully outlined, but read as oddly unmusical, so unusual for her. (N.B.: leaden orchestra’s fault).  In his solo then, Germain Louvet, finally liberated from the females [and I am sure he doesn’t think about it this way, but is he just better when he dances unhindered?] proved very smooth, silkily, and jaunty. Nevertheless, he lacked that mysterious “something else” a Gene Kelly, or a Georges Guétary, or a Louis Jourdan, brought to their musicals back in the day.

I did not even try to score a ticket for another cast. Worse than that, I had come home from the theatre, written the above, printed it out, and put it in a drawer. Who’d care?

“Look at Paris in the spring when each solitary thing is more beautiful than ever before.”

“It’s a bore.”*

Quotes from *Lerner and Loewe, “Gigi.” Look up either the Broadway version from 1951 or the MGM version by Vincente Minelli from 1958.

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Classé dans Humeurs d'abonnés, Retours de la Grande boutique

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par | 22 février 2023 · 9 h 59 min

Michaël Denard (1944-2023) : The Art of Sharing.

Denard Giselle prière

Michaël Denard. Giselle Acte 2. Paris. Photographie Mickaël Lemoine

In 1971, an unknown guy from the distant Paris Opera Ballet breezed into an ABT  City Center run,  “just like that,” and not only astonished us but stole our hearts.

All of us in New York: gay or straight, young or old, orchestra seaters or top of the house fanatics at City Center became equally and completely besottedly in love with the gorgeously cheekboned, dashingly blond, and beautifully-proportioned guest artist Michaël Denard. Guest artists at ABT were both the norm and an exception. So why was this one so special?

For many of us, love at first sight centered itself down around his ankles, elegantly arched, controlled, and connected to pliant feet pointed without effort.  We didn’t have that many male dancers so fleet of foot and arched of line in the American dance world back in the day.  Even Nureyev, the then absolute idol, had to make up for a lot of his limitations with sheer grit…Remember how Nureyev used to curve over and stab his five toes into the floor at the end of a variation, hoping that we’d focus on his assertive upper-body flourish instead? Denard didn’t seem to need to do any flourishes and the way all the parts of his dance radiated “this is all natural and not a challenge” was a revelation.

But then it got better when you looked up from down there at the rest of him. His arabesque, the way he’d push off those feet into easy jumps, his sweet and relaxed gentlemanly demeanour and natural épaulement. Denard remains one of those rare dancers who had nothing to prove to themselves, no insecurities.  No stress.

Denard Lac agenouillé Rothbart

Michaël Denard. Le Lac des cygnes. Bourmeister. Paris. Photographie Mickaël Lemoine.

But, as his career would prove, his work was never just all about him. During these early days in the 1970’s when he was starting to develop his legendary partnership with Ghislaine Thesmar in France, Denard had been imported to finally give an American ballerina at ABT, Cynthia Gregory, a “tall-enough” partner and thus a chance to shine.  Her 5’7” in those days, so normal nowadays, had been used against her for years but her talent was obviously ready to explode. Gregory had had it pounded into her that she was too big to dance any of the Romantic parts, and now here came this dishy and stretched cavalier from a far off land. Each season through 1975 – so short a time — we could not wait until the annual arrival of Gregory’s best prince and partner. Paquita, Swan Lake, a joyous and witty Coppelia, one-acts, and most of all, Giselle.  Each time, Denard made Gregory look so easy to love and move through the space of the stage. He made her seem so normal sized, absolutely as light as a will o’ the whisp, gorgeously feminine, at her best. How I wish their Giselle had been filmed!

An innate gift for partnering – be it with a ballerina, a corps, a choreographer, a student — may have been Denard’s life-long secret: mastery of craft combined with the most generous and un-egotistical spirit. Any dancers can spin or split. But not that many know how to share.

Michaël Denard (1944-2023) : une étoile en partage

Denard Giselle Lys

Michaël Denard. Giselle final. Paris. Photographie Mickaël Lemoine

En 1971, un gars venu du lointain Opéra de Paris arriva comme une brise durant une saison d’ABT à City Center, « comme ça », et non seulement nous étonna mais encore s’empara de nos cœurs.

Tous à New York, gay ou straight, jeunes ou vieux, fauteuils d’orchestre ou fanatiques des hauts de City Center tombèrent également et complètement fou-amoureux de ce superbe invité aux pommettes hautes, insolemment blond et merveilleusement proportionné, Mickaël Denard. Les « guests » à ABT étaient pourtant à la fois la règle et l’exception. Alors qu’avait celui-ci de si spécial ?

Pour beaucoup d’entre nous, l’amour au premier regard se centrait particulièrement dans la zone au-dessous de ses chevilles, joliment cambrées, contrôlées, et connectées à de souples pieds qui pointaient sans effort. À cette époque, nous n’avions pas dans le monde de la danse américaine tant de danseurs si agiles et à la ligne si arquée. Même Noureev, alors idole absolue, devait compenser ses limites avec du cran. Vous souvenez-vous comme Noureev se rassemblait par-dessus ses cinq doigts de pieds plantés dans le sol à la fin d’une variation dans l’espoir qu’on se focalise sur son haut du corps confiant ?  Denard ne semblait pas avoir besoin de quelconque fioriture et la façon dont sa danse irradiait le « c’est naturel ; ce n’est pas un défi » était une révélation.

Mais dans un sens, cela devenait encore meilleur quand vous regardiez au-dessus de ses chevilles et le considériez dans son entièreté : son arabesque, la façon dont il repoussait le sol dans ses sauts légers, son attitude douce et  chevaleresque, ses épaulements naturels enfin. Denard était de ces rares danseurs qui n’avaient rien à prouver à eux-mêmes ; aucune insécurité ; pas de stress.

Mais, comme le reste de sa carrière l’a prouvé, son travail ne se résumait jamais à lui seul. Dans ces années du début des années 70, alors qu’il commençait à développer son partenariat légendaire avec Ghislaine Thesmar en France, Denard avait été « importé » pour donner finalement à une ballerine américaine d’ABT, Cynthia Gregory, un partenaire suffisamment grand et, de ce fait, une chance de briller. Dans ce temps-là, les 1 mètre 70 de cette dernière, si dans la norme aujourd’hui, lui avaient porté préjudice, mais son talent était prêt à exploser. On avait martelé à Gregory l’idée qu’elle était trop grande pour danser les rôles romantiques, et voilà qu’il arrivait, ce cavalier savoureux à ligne étirée venu d’une contrée lointaine. Chaque saison, jusqu’en 1975 – une période si courte – nous ne pouvions nous tenir d’impatience en attendant la venue du meilleur prince et partenaire de Gregory. Paquita, Le Lac des cygnes, un joyeux et primesautier Coppélia, des ballets courts et, par-dessus tout, Giselle. Chaque fois, Denard rendait Gregory si facile à aimer et à mouvoir sur l’espace de la scène. Il lui donnait tellement une taille normale, une légèreté  de feu-follet, une superbe féminité. Que j’aurais aimé que leur Giselle soit filmée.

Un goût inné du partenariat – que ce soit avec une ballerine, le corps de ballet, un chorégraphe, un ou une élève – a dû être le secret de la vie de Denard : une maîtrise de la technique combinée au plus généreux, au moins égotiste des esprits. N’importe quel danseur peut pirouetter ou jeter. Mais ils ne sont pas si nombreux ceux qui sont capable de partager.

Libre traduction, Cléopold

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Classé dans Hier pour aujourd'hui, Retours de la Grande boutique, Vénérables archives, Voices of America

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par | 5 novembre 2022 · 9 h 55 min

Mayerling in Paris : deadly…

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Mayerling. Hugo Marchand and Dorothée Gilbert as Rudolf and Marie.

As Joseph II of Austria once purportedly said, even a Mozart can produce something with “too many notes.”

After descending the grand staircase at the Palais Garnier, I stopped at one of the pulpits to buy the illustrated program. Before I could say “bonsoir,” the clearly exhausted usher, without looking up, launched into the bilingual mantra she had obviously been repeating all evening: “there is a plot summary in it! Cast list! Y’a un synopsis dedans, of course!”

That’s not a good sign for a story ballet. Especially one based on history that has become a film and television and touristic cliché: the Decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

But if we are in SissiLand, as one visitor to the Palace of Schönbrunn once called Vienna, exactly which one of these equally young women on stage is the Empress Sissi? Despite Scene One, my young neighbour and seatmate admitted during intermission that he had no idea that the tense and sad pas de deux with Rudolf in Scene Two had been with his mother. “Maybe she should have stayed inside the same costume from Scene One? “

My neighbour made a nostalgic reference to how Ophuls’s film of Schnitzler’s La Ronde, set in the same Viennese fin de siècle twilight as this, still makes who is who so easy to follow nearly a hundred years later. Then he began to enumerate silent movies that aren’t that hard to understand, either. “Do they ever use inter-titles in ballet?” he suggested, full of hope.

As to this scene, it turns out that consulting the illustrated program afterwards – the one with a Plot summary! Cast list! – won’t help in any case. “SA peine” [a feminine noun in French despite the object] was translated as “HER grief.” Instead of clarifying that Rudolf was reaching out to his mother with HIS grief, he had been somehow upset for her.  Which was not the case at all. Confusing.

After that scene with “her” grief, we discovered the anti-hero in a different bedroom playing with guns and skulls and yet another young woman. Who she?

You get the picture, it takes an age to figure out who is who, sort of, as there are just too, too, many anxious women and men in fancy wigs buzzing around.  Actually, the wigs help: the redhead, the blonde, the one with bangs.  But do wigs mean anything dramatically? I wonder how many in the audience inhaled and sat back and then sat up straight: “oh damn now who is this new woman with long loose dark hair” during Act Three Scene Two? Ha! fooled ya, it’s Sissi’s New Look.

Let’s not even mention my neighbour’s confusion concerning “those four guys who hang out and seem quite loyal to Rudolf, but seem a bit threatening.” “They are Hungarians who want their country to leave the Empire.” “Really? Wow. I never would have guessed that.” It doesn’t help that they do parallel turn-ins à la Russe and in the cast list are not even given one of that plethora of given-names that only a historian could identify (Count Hoyos? Are you serious?) Upon reflection, my neighbour thought that announcing them as “These four mystery men who lurk on the stage and then on the apron have been added to cover the noise and tedium of scene changes” would have been clearer.

I could go on and on about the “hunh?” factor concerning the narrative: imperial boyfriends and girlfriends galore. Then there is Bratfisch, oh god. (Marc Moreau was both funny and touching and danced with zest, but nobody in the audience had a clue as to why he kept popping up in the narrative in the first place). FYI Bratfish is not an old boy-friend, he is the designated Imperial Coachman Loyal To Rudolf Until Death Do Us Part.

Of course I’ve seen this ballet before. But every single time it takes me ages to finally concentrate on the dancers dancing and acting out about something because I’m just too distracted by trying to channel the Almanach de Gotha. I usually fight hard to get to see every cast for a ballet. I only had a ticket for this one. But should another pop up, I will probably say, “not in this lifetime.” Or better yet: “over my dead body.”

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So, now, as to the leads: Hugo Marchard’s Rudolf is a brusque and sardonic Laurence Olivier-y Hamlet, utterly confused and repulsed by his compulsive need for women’s approval.  Dorothée Gilbert’s Mary Vetsera is more Nureyev’s Clara: she has seen too much of adult life, and tries to mimic it. She has had a theoretical understanding of love, gleaned from overheard gossip provided by the, many, many, women whooshing around her. Her role makes it clear that long before the Internet naive young women were already being groomed by their environment to pleasingly submit to dominant males. I can’t say this pair clicked as “gilbertmarchand” at first, but by the end they convinced me of their “folie à deux.”

I am looking forward to seeing them in Manon”s last pas de deux this summer instead. Perhaps that illustrated program in English translation will contain no more oxymorons such as: “The tragedy reached its tragic conclusion.” And have you ever heard of a “twin suicide?” I’ve heard of the Twin Towers, but as far as I know, few twins were on stage. What was demonstrated at the end of the ballet by the leads was a “murder-suicide.”

Hannah O’Neill, identified as Countess Marie Larisch in the program, grew on me and my seatmate and the audience. She’s the one in the blue dress at first, reddish wig, etc…but with glinting eyes and a unique elegance that went beyond all that — so easy to partner, like Dorothée Gilbert, that every trick seems effortless. O’Neill’s Larisch was the character my seatmate “got” almost at once as an old flame/friend/pimp à la Pompadour. He rooted for her, a discarded girlfriend (out of those too many discarded girlfriends who dominated space on the stage).

As poor Princess Stephanie, the ugly duckling Belgian devout political pawn married off to an Austrian sex maniac, Silvia Saint-Martin came off more as spoiled and stiff rather than frightened or anguished. As Rudolf’s woe-begotten bride remains in costumed variations of white and cream, my neighbour DID understand later on that a woman standing stiffly downstage-left in Act Two was the same character who had been flung about and humiliated at the end of Act One…But then he said, ”but who is she supposed to be in the first place, exactly? She never reacts to anything.”

Mitzi Caspar, what a great role and what waste at the same time. This character appears onstage in Act Two for One Scene that’s all and then hangs around somewhere backstage in costume for an hour and a half waiting for the final curtain calls. Valentine Colasante’s prostitute  — joyful and easy-going and gorgeously all there — finished every whirl with unfussy, light, and impressive suspension. With her long neck and relaxed tilts of the head, she was lit from within. Her dance with Marchand’s Rudolf felt trusting and warmly in synch. They even gave us the illusion that the heavily re-orchestrated Liszt had lifted up its head too for a while. That’s so cool: dancers making the music sound better.

Let it be said: the cast on stage was not helped by the languidly-conducted Liszt score that dragged us down. The orchestra provided zero swing or swoop, especially in the last act. My neighbor noted that a lot of the musicians were awfully young. “Is that normal for a Grand Opera?” “No.” Poor dancers, poor us.

As stunning and challenging as MacMillan’s passionate acrobatic pas de deux can be for dancers, this thing called Mayerling ends up delivering an exercise in narrative tedium.

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The Family-Crypt of the Habsburgs in Vienna.

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Classé dans Humeurs d'abonnés, Retours de la Grande boutique

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par | 26 septembre 2022 · 8 h 54 min

Le Temps d’Aimer la Danse 2022 (5) : « A Carnival of the Animals »

Le Temps d’aimer festival in Biarritz

Saturday-Sunday, September 10-11

When you will go to Biarritz’s fall dance festival next September, you will be trying to run from place to place as fast as a thoroughbred. Be prepared: You will spend your time running around the town and its ‘burbs like a headless chicken unless you hire a limo, and even with a blessed limo you can’t be in two places at the same time.

For an article in French by Cléopold on the same shows, click here.
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CERCLE EGAL DEMI-CERCLE AU CARRE par la COMPAGNIE DIFE KAKO, chorégraphe CHANTAL LOIAL, Photographie de Stéphane Bellocq.

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OXEN

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Proyecto Larrua. « Idi Begi »

Saturday, September 10

14h on the esplanade Théâtre du Casino Municipal

Proyecto Larrua: Idi Begi

The entire piece seems to be taking place in slowed-down motion inside your head. Have you ever milked a cow? Felt the warm, silent, yet titanic weight of that flank as you rested your head against it? Those ten minutes feel completely out of time, just as this piece did.

Idi Begi means “ox eye.” Idi probak” means “pull bull,” a competition between farmers. A lot of Basque games – and this is Basque country — seem to be about skilful shows of force. I’d have called this perfectly formed 15 minute piece, one of the winners of the Artepean choreographer’s competition: “Agon.”

To the thunderous and then plaintive sounds of what seem to be pots and pans or maybe cowbells, a bent over and already worn duo with heavy hanging heads trot slowly as they submit to a dominator with a long stick.

Yet the downtrodden mood doesn’t feel violent or frightening, but uncertain and volatile instead. A stylized power struggle, played out through the weight and push and pull these three dancers give to their movements. The dominated tread along and slowly and painfully, yet as bodies intertwine you start to lose the sense of who is on top. Images of paintings of powerful peasants and beasts, the heavy and symbiotic lives they led together, flashed through my mind.

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HORSES AND ROOSTERS AND BEES

LE TEMPS D'AIMER 2022 - COMPAGNIE DIFE KAKO - CERCLE EGAL DEMI-CERCLE AU CARRE

CERCLE EGAL DEMI-CERCLE AU CARRE. COMPAGNIE DIFE KAKO, chorégraphe CHANTAL LOIAL., Photographie de Stéphane Bellocq.

Saturday, September 10, 9 p.m.

Théâtre du Casino Municipal

Companie Difé Kako

“Cercle égal demi-cercle au carré” [A circle equals a semi-circle squared]

In this increasingly mean and ugly world – where we talk at and not to each other, particularly when the issues at stake include colonialism, racism, and ageism — civilized discourse, friendly interchange, has become as rare as hens’ teeth.  At this performance you witnessed the best kind of cross-pollination as a joyous swarm of colourful bees and dignified butterflies fluttered and stomped around each other in good and infectious cheer.

Welcome to Difé Kako [Things Will Get Hot] a joyously inclusive company of musician dancers of all colors (including pink) and all ages (from young adult to senior). And I mean inclusive: from the get-go the seated audience buzzed, tickled by the fact that after the performance they were invited to another venue where they could meet and dance with the entire company.

At first you are a bit bewildered by what is successively projected on the backdrop: squares (okay that’s part of the title), then ocean waves, then a tan rider galloping on a horse, then odd dated black and white footage of expressionless white men perfecting dressage. It all takes a while to sink in. But when a “caller” shouts out to her dancing “cavaliers” [one of the many words in Creole that you can easily figure out] you start to get it. Aha, not only ballet but the patterns of most old social dances took their inspiration from horses [the term “balletto” was originally coined during the Renaissance to describe intricate horseback parades]. To put it another way: in a past life you were probably either a slave or serf, but when you appropriate these European dances you, too, are as glorious as a knight in shining armor.

The dance varied back and forth in waves. The swooping and dignified quadrilles of the elders were mesmerizing. A quadrille with a caller…a square dance? Of course, that’s how it translates. Yet the first term evokes Marie-Antoinette while the second is Americanized. These church ladies’ casually dextrous use of their fans and the sloping angles of their necks took me straight back to the elegance of the ancien regime, too cool for barn-raisings. One particularly elegant man with jaunty tipped hat and a whisper of a smile wiggled in the lightest and the least emphatic of increments. You could see the energy reserved deep down below the surface, and that he was readied to dance all night. He stole my heart.

Alternatively –and even when the whole company fills the stage — the youth stomps and bops, play with every way to move from Ministry of Silly Walks stalks to hip swivels and wiggles, to two-steps or to gallops around the stage. They even tease each other by imitating the pecks only chickens use to check each other out.

Several members of the younger troupe of dancers meanwhile flowed back and forth from the dance floor to the bandstand house right where they’d join the percussionists and pick up a base, or a sailor’s concertina, or a wood/metal block or with maracas or fiddle. Song and words floated atop the air.

At one point, the ecstatic dance stops as the youths turn to stare at the screen and watch themselves dancing to the sound of a flute on a volcanic hillside in the Antilles.

Absolutely nothing matched, but everything in this patchwork (down to the chequered fabrics that somehow hung on to belts) seemed to be all the right ingredients you’d need for a savory stew. There are are words for “just throw it all it the pot and it will end up delicious” in every single language, after all.

It was marvellous to watch the audience stream out at the end, so much more buoyant than when it fussily trooped in. Now we were ready and willing to engage in conversation, and did. If you open your mind and heart to others you will live and learn. It’s never too late.

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SHEEP, DOGS, AND HOOMANS

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Kukai Dantza. « Eta orain zer? » Photographie ©stephane Bellocq

Sunday, September 11, 9 p.m.

Atabal (not exactly in the center of Biarritz)

Kukai Dantza  “Et oran zer?”

Atabal, like the other suburb of Anglet where I had found “Tumulus” the day before, is kind of in the middle of nowhere outside the resort town of Biarritz. These new venues are quasi-impossible to get to on public transportation on a Sunday. Indeed the space used for this performance seemed to be nothing more than an industrial zone hangar, despite the raised stage area.

You panic about arriving late, worried about the “open seating” plan, then realize that both audience and performers are upright and scattered all over the place. Where is the vantage point where you could sit semi-comfortably on the floor or even lean exhausted by the day you’d just had against a wall? Nowhere. [About an hour in, this turned out to be clearly painful for a valiant elderly gent with a cane who I couldn’t take my eyes off of to the point of worrying about him rather than the dancers. He was a real trooper and survived].

“Eta oran zer”/”And what comes next?” or even “Now what?” turns out to be a roiling group of ten dancers and a plethora of ambulating musicians and their conductor who all couldn’t care less where the stage happens to be traditionally located. You are supposedly part of the performance, swivelling around to follow one dancer or the other from one spot to a palm-held illuminated spot, then unwittingly get encircled and swept into the center like sheep, then pushed back out to the edges of the dance floor.

During the hour and more than a half of Et Oran Zer, these dancers/border collies –gently, but with pre-planned determination and startlingly cold hands —  forced the audience to be squared, circled, and divided.

You might catch and enjoy some energetic Basque references. A girl keeps repeating a Basque flurry of beaten jumps in whiplash fashion (the entrechat-six, among other steps, were integrated into Louis XIV’s new – the world’s first– vocabulary of ballet). Tours en l’air, also of Basque origin, proliferate. And then these hints of an ancient culture translated themselves into delicious hip-hops, crumps and slides. I was particularly taken by the scary intensity of the dancer who looks just like Keith Haring, sans the glasses.

Unlike last night with Difé Kako, however, tonight I didn’t feel included. Just getting pushed about, hither and yon, for no clear reason. And, alas, way too early into the thing we got pushed out of the centre and got to stand around in a circle and watch. Forty-five minutes of just standing around, clearly disinvited to the dance, became endless. Might as well provide seats, then, in the first place.

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Kukai Dantza. « Eta orain zer? » Photographie ©stephane Bellocq

At several turns during this festival, you could run into troupes of Basque dancers, sometimes already bouncing on the plaza as you walked out of a venue. Each time, amateurs young and old would join the professionals and demonstrate an ingrained mastery of complex steps and patterns and exchanges. Unlike so many places where “folk dance is like so yesterday,” — Hungary included — here in the southwest of France these peasant dances remain a strong vector of identity, a part of everyday life. I envy how hopping up to the plate in your espadrilles has never stopped being an easy and normal thing that anchors you to a sense of communal and intergenerational identity. Look up some Basque dances and try them out in front of your mirror: it takes a will of steel to learn these deliciously complex steps and patterns. You gotta be born into it.

As for the music, I was instantly amused as I walked into the performance space only to catch tiny threads of  “L’Arlesienne.” Bizet’s eponymous heroine is a mirage whom you will never see. And that seemed like a cool metaphor. But then the music moved on to a catchy melodic hodgepodge of folk-ish instruments like fiddle and flute and ambulating cello, a real score. Alas, the inventive live de-ambulating orchestra’s mesmerizing sound finally faded into in to the predictable beats of a recorded soundtrack about twenty minutes before the end.

Shatteringly loud house techno took over. I pulled back like a terrified mouse and crouched in a corner behind the amps, hoping to spare my ears. In any case, the audience had long been reduced to the usual status of immobile passive onlookers, gaping at dancers whirling in the centered spotlight. I peeked out and watched through the legs of the crowd of static onlookers. Not one amateur Basque dancer’s leg stepped out to join in.

When I walked out of that hangar, I was more panicked about finding the next bus back to town than hushed in reverie. After what I had just experienced, honestly, I felt as deflated and exhausted as a lab rat.

Commentaires fermés sur Le Temps d’Aimer la Danse 2022 (5) : « A Carnival of the Animals »

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par | 22 septembre 2022 · 8 h 54 min

Le Temps d’Aimer la Danse 2022 (3) : Tumulus. Wondering in the round

Sunday, September 11, 7 p.m.

Théâtre Quintaou in Anglet near Biarritz

François Chaignaud and Geoffroy Jourdain

“Tumulus”

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Tumulus. François Chaignaud et Geoffroy Jourdain. Photographie ©Olivier_Houeix

Did you know that the origin of the word audience is “audio” aka “to hear?” In the choral work that is “Tumulus,” the sound-scape, the landscape, the dance-scape, and the potentially fertile soil that we also call the public must merge or else…

Throughout, you could hear coughing and rustling of programmes and little rude guffaws of incomprehension. Sometimes, you just get it or you don’t. Even I am not sure that I “got it.” And while I hate that I probably got most of it wrong, I am glad this company challenged me to surrender to their mysterious ritual.

All about this solemn, otherworldly, and vaguely creepy realm – the dry clack of wood blocks, eerie soprano voices, and tinkling Renaissance glissandi and ostinatos of movement and sound — evoked the out of time world of the fairies in Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, not the easiest of operas.

At the start, the cast silently descends the aisle sporting what seem to be puffy Elizabethan brigandines and fraises geometrically cut from darkly-colored down coats. Now clustered onstage in front of the towering tumulus from which the piece takes its name, fingers began to play 12345, 12345. And a counter-clockwise procession took shape, one that would appear only to disappear and continue to evolve in subtly shifting shapes for the next hour and a half.

Are they lost pilgrims?

Voices emerge from the bodies misshaped by fat fabric, ancient sounding melancholy melody thrummed. The a-cappella voices both disturbed and reassured, as in a requiem (I could only check the program afterwards, it was one! What had seemed vaguely familiar were beautiful live renditions of not only Byrd and Desprez, but even more obscure Renaissance composers).

The dancer-singers disappeared one by one behind the mound, only to re-emerge, their costumes reconfigured into what can only be described as Renaissance space suits.  And the roundelay continued.

Is this going to be dance of death about global warming?

Rounding the hill, they re-emerge one by one, – their costumes now dismantled to reveal calves ensconced in ragged “greaves” (ankle-to-knee knightly leggings) – they proceed onwards. Often leaning forward in parallel on bent knees, low developée heel first, hands stretched forwards as if advancing in the dark. Hands describe small shapes.

Are these peasants fleeing the Swedes during the Thirty Years War?

You are now sucked in – or absolutely not — by the soundscape produced by these bodies, in light or shadow, which grew bigger with little clicks of sticks on metal or wood, with the sound of thirteen silhouettes breathing and panting, murmuring, whispering and threading to their own lulling liturgical chants. And their basse dance/baixa continues in triple or double time, with some plies in seconde, round and round the earthen mound.

Are these elves in exile?

A soprano ascended the hillside and suddenly the energy shifted from horizontal to vertical. Three others of the group re-appear wielding three gigantic straw hats, vaguely Mexican and start to climb.

Are these people supposed to be from Chichen Itza?

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Tumulus. François Chaignaud et Geoffroy Jourdain. Photographie ©Olivier_Houeix

No, the hat thing goes nowhere.

 But the alternation between sound and silence, thwacks and squawks and chant gets more pronounced. Bodies push and pull and gain sharper angles with elbows spiking out and delicate hands.

Suddenly they all begin to stamp their feet: 1 2 3 4, 1  2, 1 2, and hop as if their ankles are tied. They clump together, they go tiptoe. A person is lifted for the first time, only to be swooped back face down to the ground, then another. The dancer-singers strew themselves, exhausted, on the hill, then burst into wild runs as if in a game of tag, up and down and around it.

Was that a reference to The Adoration of the Earth from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring?

First running down the hill, now sliding, now all are sprawled atop the mound, heads dangling down, utterly still.

Is it over?

No. One hand starts clapping. They all slip under the hill and disappear.

Is it over?

No. They all come out and slowly restart, walking in backbends increasingly as if pulled by invisible strings, stripped to the bust, now wearing sparkly gamboised knight’s cuisses (Medieval quilted over the knee leggings).  Aha, here come the hats again.

The roundelay seems to be dancing backwards, bent knees, arms akimbo, and then around and around and in and out of the cleft in the hill and up and down and sliding.

Sitting in a row with their backs to us, the company slowly remove their leggings and stare up at those straw hats strewn upon the side of a random hill.

Is it over?

Yes. Did I want it to end? Strangely, no. Stepping back out into the sun, I was still wondering.

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Tumulus. François Chaignaud et Geoffroy Jourdain. Photographie ©Olivier_Houeix

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« Tumulus » : « Tourner en rond » [libre traduction, Cléopold]

Saviez-vous que l’origine du mot « audience » [« public » en langue anglaise] est « audio », c’est-à-dire « entendre » ? Dans cette œuvre chorale qu’est Tumulus, l’espace sonore, le paysage, le plateau de danse et le terreau potentiellement fertile qu’on appellera le public doivent fusionner.

Tout du long, vous pouviez entendre des toux, des bruissements de programmes et de petits pouffements impolis d’incompréhension. Personnellement, je ne suis pas sûre d’avoir « compris ». Et bien que je haïsse l’idée que j’ai presque tout faux, je suis heureuse que cette compagnie m’ait mis au défi de m’abandonner à son mystérieux rituel.

Tout dans ce solennel, d’un autre monde et vaguement menaçant royaume – clacs secs sur wood blocks, voix de soprano haut perchées et tintements renaissants en ostinato de mouvements et de sons – évoquait le monde des fées du Midsummer Night’s Dream de Britten, pas le plus accessible des opéras.

Au commencement, la troupe descend silencieusement les allées de la salle, arborant ce qui semble être des brigandines et des fraises élisabéthaines coupées géométriquement dans des doudounes joufflues de teintes sombres. Désormais agrégés devant l’imposant tumulus qui donne son nom à la pièce, les doigts commencent à compter 12345, 12345. Et une procession évoluant dans le sens inverse des aiguilles d’une montre se forme, n’apparaissant que pour disparaître et évoluer en subtiles variations de forme pendant l’heure et demie suivante.

Sont-ils des pèlerins égarés ?

Des voix émergent de ces corps déformés par le tissu gonflé, des mélodies mélancoliques marmonnées sonnant ancien. Les voix a capella perturbent et rassurent à la fois, comme dans un requiem (n’ayant pu consulter le programme je n’ai réalisé qu’après que c’en était un ! Ce qui avait paru vaguement familier était en fait la belle interprétation en direct non seulement de Byrd et Desprez, mais de compositeurs encore plus obscurs de la Renaissance).

Les danseurs-chanteurs disparaissent un à un derrière le monticule pour en émerger avec des costumes reconfigurés qui peuvent seulement être décrits comme des combinaisons spatiales de la Renaissance. Et le rondeau de reprendre.

Va-t-on assister à une danse de mort au sujet du réchauffement climatique ?

Tournant autour du monticule, ils ré-émergent un par un – leurs costumes maintenant déchirés révélant des mollets enserrés dans des jambières en loques –, ils avancent toujours. Penchés le plus souvent vers l’avant en parallèle sur genoux pliés, avec des développés bas partant du talon, mains tendues vers l’avant comme s’ils avançaient dans l’obscurité. Les mains dessinent de petites formes.

Sont-ils des paysans fuyant les Suédois durant la guerre de trente ans ?

On est englouti, ou pas du tout, par l’univers sonore produit par ces corps, dans la lumière ou l’ombre, qui s’enfle de petits cliquetis de baguette sur du métal, par le son de ces treize silhouettes respirant, haletant, par leurs murmures, leurs chuchotements, et des bribes de leur apaisant chant liturgique. Et leur basse danse (Baixa) continue sur des comptes de 3 ou de 2, avec quelques pliés à la seconde, tournant et tournant encore autour du monticule en terre.

Sont-ils des elfes exilés ?

Une soprano grimpe enfin la colline et soudain l’énergie bascule de l’horizontal au vertical. Trois autres comparses apparaissent brandissant trois gigantesques chapeaux de paille vaguement mexicains et commencent à escalader la colline.

Ces gens sont-ils supposés venir de Chichen Itza ?

Non, la piste des chapeaux ne mène nulle part.

Mais l’alternance entre son et silence, entre sourd, strident et scandé devient toujours plus prononcée. Les corps poussent, tirent et gagnent en angularité avec coudes en position saillantes. Les paumes de mains, frottées l’une contre l’autre, susurrent.

Soudain, ils commencent tous à taper du pied, 1.2.3.4, 1.2, 1.2, et à sauter comme si leurs pieds étaient liés. Ils s’agglutinent, marchent sur la pointe des pieds. Une personne est soulevée en l’air pour la première fois avant d’être redirigée vers le sol la tête en bas, et puis c’est le tour d’une autre. Les danseurs-chanteurs se répandent pendant un moment sur la colline, épuisés, puis éclatent en courses folles comme pour une partie de « chat » de bas en haut et autour du monticule.

Etait-ce une référence à l’Adoration de la terre du Sacre du printemps de Stravinski ?

D’abord courir en bas de la colline, maintenant glisser, et maintenant tous étalés la tête vers le bas, complètement immobiles.

C’est fini ?

Non. Une main commence à frapper. Tout le monde glisse sous la colline et disparaît.

C’est fini ?

Non. Les voilà qui réapparaissent et ils recommencent à marcher le dos toujours plus courbés, comme s’ils étaient tirés par des fils invisibles, le torse dépouillé, portant désormais de scintillantes chausses matelassées de chevalier. Oh ! Et revoilà encore les grands chapeaux de paille !

Le rondeau semble désormais se dérouler à l’envers, genoux pliés, mains sur les hanches, et puis autour et puis dans et puis hors de la faille dans la colline, et puis encore en haut puis en bas et puis on se laisse glisser…

Assis en rang, dos au public, la compagnie retire lentement ses leggings et fixe intensément les chapeaux de paille disséminés sur le flanc de la colline.

C’est fini ?

Oui. Voulais-je que cela soit fini ? Étonnamment non. Retournant au soleil, mon esprit errait encore en cercle, en quête de sens.

Commentaires fermés sur Le Temps d’Aimer la Danse 2022 (3) : Tumulus. Wondering in the round

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par | 2 août 2022 · 9 h 30 min

“Some enchanted evening/you may see …” (My spring season at the Paris Opera)

Just who wouldn’t want to be wandering about dressed in fluffy chiffon and suddenly encounter a gorgeous man in a forest glade under the moonlight? Um, today, that seems creepy. But not in the 19th century, when you would certainly meet a gentleman on one enchanted evening…« Who can explain it, who can tell you why? Fools give you reasons, wise men never try. »

Notes about the classics that were scheduled for this spring and summer season — La Bayadère, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Giselle — on call from April through July.

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After the confinement, filmed rehearsals, and then two live runs in succession, DOES ANYONE STILL WANT TO HEAR ABOUT LA BAYADERE? But maybe you are still Dreaming or Giselling, too?

Here are my notes.

Bayaderes

« Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger across a crowded room. And somehow you know, you know even then, That somehow you’ll see her again and again. »

April 21

In La Bayadère, if Ould-Braham’s Nikiya was as soft and naïve and childlike as Giselle. Bleuenn Batistoni’s  Gamzatti proved as hard and sleek as a modern-day Bathilde: an oligarch’s brat. [Albeit most of those kinds of women do not lift up their core and fill out the music]. Their interactions were as clear and bright and graphic as in a silent movie (in the good sense).

OB’s mind is racing from the start, telling a story to herself and us, desperate to know how this chapter ends. Partnering with the ardent Francesco Mura was so effortless, so “there in the zone.” He’s one of those who can speak even when his back is turned to you and live when he is off to the side, out of the spotlight. Mura is aflame and in character all the time.

OB snake scene, iridescent, relives their story from a deep place  plays with the music and fills out the slow tempi. Only has eyes for Mura and keeps reaching, reaching, her arms outlining the shape of their dances at the temple (just like Giselle. She’s not Nikiya but a  Gikiya).

Indeed, Batistoni’s turn at Gamzatti in the second act became an even tougher bitch with a yacht, as cold-blooded as Bathilde can sometimes be:  a Bamzatti. There was no hope left for Ould-Braham and Francesco Mura in this cruel world of rich fat cats, and they both knew it.

April 3

Park  as Nikiya and later as Giselle will channel the same dynamic: sweet girl: finallly infusing some life into her arms in Act 1, then becoming stiff as a board when it gets to the White Act, where she exhibits control but not a drop of the former life of her character. I am a zombie now. Dry, clinical, and never builds up to any fortissimo in the music. A bit too brisk and crisp and efficient a person to incarnate someone once called Nikiya. Could the audience tell it was the same dancer when we got to Act 3?

Good at leaps into her partner’s arms, but then seems to be a dead weight in lifts. When will Park wake up?

Paul Marque broke through a wall this season and finds new freedom in acting through his body. In Act Three: febrile, as “nervosa” as an Italian racecar. Across the acts, he completes a fervent dramatic arc than is anchored in Act 1.

Bourdon’s Gamzatti very contained. The conducting was always too slow for her. Dancing dutifully. Where is her spark?

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Midsummer Night Dreams

« Some enchanted evening, someone may be laughing, You may hear her laughing across a crowded room. And night after night, as strange as it seems, The sound of her laughter will sing in your dreams. »

June 30

Very baroque-era vivid conducting.

Aurelien Gay as Puck: feather light.

Pagliero’s Titania is clearly a queen, calm and scary. But also a woman, pliant and delightful.

Jeremy Loup-Quer as Oberon has heft and presence. Dances nicely. Smooth, but his solos are kind of like watching class combinations. (Balanchine’s choreography for the role is just that, basically)

First Butterfly Sylvia Saint-Martin displayed no authority and did the steps dutifully.

Paris Opera Ballet School kiddie corps has bounce and go and delicate precision, bravo.

Bezard/Demetrius in a wig worthy of a Trocks parody. Whyyyy? Particularly off-putting in the last act wedding scene. Who would want to marry a guy disguised as Mireille Matthieu?

Bourdon/Hyppolita unmusical fouettés. I miss her warmth and panache. Gone.

Act 2 Divertissement Pas where the couple appears out of nowhere in the “story.” (see plot summary). The way Louvet extends out and gently grasps Ould-Braham’s hand feels as if he wants to hold on to the music. Both pay heed and homage to the courtly aspect of the Mendelssohn score. That delicacy that was prized by audiences after the end of the Ancien Régime can be timeless. Here the ballerina was really an abstract concept: a fully embodied idea, an ideal woman, a bit of perfect porcelain to be gently cupped into warm hands. I like Ould-Braham and Louvet’s new partnership.  They give to each other.

July 12

Laura Hequet as Helena gestures from without not from within, as is now usual the rare times she takes the stage. It’s painful to watch, as if her vision ends in the studio. Does she coach Park?

Those who catch your eye:

Hannah O’Neill as Hermia and Célia Drouy as Hyppolita. The first is radiant, the second  oh so plush! Hope Drouy will not spend her career typecast as Cupid in Don Q.

In the Act II  Divertissment, this time with Heloise Bourdon, Louvet is much less reverential and more into gallant and playful give and take. These two had complimentary energy. Here Louvet was more boyish than gentlemanly. I like how he really responds to his actresses these days.

Here the pas de deux had a 20th century energy: teenagers rather than allegories. Teenagers who just want to keep on dancing all night long.

NB Heloise Bourdon was surprisingly stiff at first, as if she hadn’t wanted to be elected prom queen, then slowly softened her way of moving. But this was never to be the legato unspooling that some dancers have naturally. I was counting along to the steps more than I like to. Bourdon is sometimes too direct in attack and maybe also simply a bit discouraged these days. She’s been  “always the bridesmaid but never the bride” — AKA not promoted to Etoile — for waaay too long now.  A promotion would let her break out and shine as she once used to.

My mind wandered. Why did the brilliant and over-venerated costume designer Karinska assign the same wreath/crown of flowers (specifically Polish in brightness) to both Bottom in Act I and then to the Act II  Female Allegory of Love? In order to cut costs by recycling a headdress ? Some kind of inside joke made for Mr. B? Or was this joke invented by Christian Lacroix?

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Giselles

« Some enchanted evening, when you find your true love, When you hear her call across a crowded room, Then fly to her side and make her your own, Or all through your life you may dream all alone.. »

 July 6

 Sae Eun Park/Paul Marque

 Sae Eun Park throws all the petals of the daisy already, does not lower the “he loves me” onto her skirt. There goes one of the main elements of the mad scene.

Her authoritative variations get explosions of applause due to obvious technical facility , plus that gentle smile and calm demeanor that are always on display.

What can Paul Marque’s Albrecht do when faced with all this insipid niciness? I’ve been a bad boy? He does try during the mad scene, shows real regret.

Ninon Raux’s Berthe:  gentle and dignified and not disdainful.

Park’s mad scene was admired by those around me at the top of the house. Many neophites. They admired from afar but not one of those I surveyed at the end of Act I said they had cried when her character died. Same thing at the end of the ballet while we reconnected and loitered around on the front steps of the Palais Garnier.  I asked again. No tears. Only admiration. That’s odd.

On the upside, the Paris Opera has a real thing with bourrées (piétinées), Each night, Myrtha and Giselle gave a plethora of what seemed almost like skateboard or surfing slides. They skimmed over a liquid ground with buttery feet whether forward, backward, or to the side. I think a new standard was set.

In her variations, Hannah O’Neill’s Myrtha gave us a will o’ the wisp of lightly churning jétés. She darted about like the elusive light of a firefly. Alas, where I was sitting behind a cornice meant a blocked view of downstage left, so I missed all of this Wili Queen’s acting for the rest of Act II.

Daniel Stokes’s Hilarion was not desperate enough.

Despite the soaring sweep of the cello, I don’t feel the music in Park-Marque’s Giselle-Albrecht’s pas de deux.  Not enough flow. Marque cared, but Park so careful. No abandon. No connection. The outline of precise steps.

July 11

 Alice Renavand/Mathieu Ganio

Act I

Battistoni/Magliono peasant pas: Turns into attitude, curve of the neck, BB swooshes and swirls into her attitudes and hops. As if this all weren’t deliberate or planned but something quite normal. AM’s dance felt earthbound.

Renavand fresh, plush, youthful, beautiful, and effortlessly mastering the technique (i.e. you felt the technique was all there,  but didn’t start to analyse it). I like to think that Carlotta Grisi exhaled this same kind of naturalness.

ACT II

The detail that may have been too much for Renavand’s body to stand five times in a row: instead of quick relevé passes they were breathtakingly high sissones/mini-gargoullades…as if she was trying to dance as hard as Albrecht in order to save him (Mathieu Ganio,, in top form and  manly and protective and smitten from start to stop with his Giselle. Just like all the rest of us)

Roxane Stojanov’s Myrtha? Powerful. Knows when a musical combination has its punch-line, knows how to be still yet attract the eye. She continues to be one to watch.

July 16

 Myriam Ould-Braham/Germain Louvet

Act I :

A gentle and sad and elegant Florent Melac/Hilarion, clearly in utter admiration of the local beauty. Just a nice guy without much of a back story with Giselle but a guy who dreams about what might have been.

Ould-Braham a bit rebellious in her interactions with mum. This strong-minded choice of Albrecht above all will carry into the Second Act. Myrtha will be a kind of hectoring female authority figure. A new kind of mother. So the stage is set.

Peasant pas had the same lightness as the lead couple. As if the village were filled with sprites and fairies.

Peasant pas: finally a guy with a charisma and clean tours en l’air:  who is this guy with the lovely deep plié? Axel Magliano from the 11th!  This just goes to show you, never give up on a dancer. Like all of us, we can have a day when we are either on or off. Only machines produce perfect copies at every performance.

Bluenn Battistoni light and balanced and effortless. She’s not a machine, just lively and fearless. That spark hasn’t been beaten out of her by management. yet.

O-B’s mad scene: she’s angry-sad, not abstracted, not mad. She challenges Albrecht with continued eye contact.

Both their hearts are broken.

Act II:

This Hilarion, Florent Melac, weighs his steps and thoughts to the rhythm of the church bells. Never really listened to a Hilarion’s mind  before.

Valentine Colasante is one powerful woman. And her Myrtha’s impatience with men kind of inspires me.

O-B and Germain Louvet both so very human. O-B’s “tears” mime so limpid and clear.

GL: all he wants is to catch and hold her one more time. And she also yearns to be caught and cherished.  All of their dance is about trying to hold on to their deep connection. This is no zombie Giselle. When the church bells sang the song of dawn, both of their eyes widened in awe and wonder and yearning at the same time. Both of their eyes arms reached out in perfect harmony and together traced the outline of that horizon to the east where the sun began to rise. It was the end, and they clearly both wanted to go back to the beginning of their story.

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What would you do, if you could change the past?

« Once you have found her, never let her go. Once you have found her, never let her go. »

The quotations are from the Rogers and Hammerstein Broadway musical called
« South Pacific » from 1949.

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par | 16 novembre 2021 · 10 h 39 min

Malandain Ballet Biarritz at Chaillot : Of Birds and Men

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L’Oiseau de feu. Claire Lonchampt (Claire), Hugo Layer (l’Oiseau) et Mickaël Conte (François). Photographie ©Olivier Houex

Programme Stravinski. Théâtre National de Chaillot. L’Oiseau de feu (Firebird), Thierry Malandain. Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), Martin Harriague. 2021, 4th of november.

La traduction de l’article ce trouve ci-dessous.

With Thierry Malandain, take your time.  Always watch his ballets the first time as open and as naïve as a lamb, just take it in and try to get the big picture, do not even open the program. Malandain’s Oiseau de feu [The Firebird] is all about finding one’s soul. Or maybe not…

And at first it seems all ‘bout breathing and release and squatting and falling and running and….cassocks. As if you were trapped in one of Graham’s or Wigman’s or Limon’s dark and austere moods. Rapidly you become desperate to take a breather. But a stubborn set of a man and a woman keep kneeling and reaching, holding out their arms, opening hands, in front of a scarlet-clad apparition (an infinite imbrication of arms and legs: Hugo Layer) who has arrived to offer them salvation. Perhaps.

But I had cheated a bit and did glance at the program as I sat down. One name popped out: Saint Francis of Assisi. Ah, yes, that guy who was already talking to birds and hugging trees way back then in the 13th century.

A friend in the audience had simply bathed in the atmosphere that developed in the piece and had adored being progressively “enveloped in an ambiance that slowly but strongly moved in the direction of a deep feeling of peace.” She didn’t need a narrative all. But she did wonder, “Why do ravens chase off canaries and little sparrows? Their flighty dance was delightful.”

Back home after the performance, a phrase from Saint Francis’s Canticle of the Creatures began to haunt me. When I looked it up, the full text proved illuminating and awards the two anonymous leading dancers in the cast with beautiful names. Brother Sun, “who is beautiful and radiant with great splendour,” turns out to be Mickaël Conte, a marvellous chameleon of a dancer. He glows differently in every piece he performs to the point of seeming taller or shorter, looser or more muscled. I think I would be unable to recognize him offstage. His Sister Moon was Claire Lonchampt:  “bright, precious, and fair.” More than that: she is powerfully percussive yet always delicately nuanced.

One more phrase of Saint Francis’s text I needed to pin down in order to settle my brain around what I had just seen goes like this: “Praised be You my lord though Brother Fire, though whom You light the night and he is beautiful and playful and robust and strong.” Just like this ballet.

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Le Sacre du printemps. Le Sacrifice. Photographie©Olivier Houeix

So what is Martin Harriague’s Le Sacre du printemps about?

As I had explained to my friend in the audience earlier, the original story to which Stravinsky composed his music is very simple: a primitive society believes that sacrificing one human (female) body in the spring will ensure a bountiful harvest in the fall.

My friend was perplexed. Why does she keep being forced to passively witness violence against women again and again every time she goes to the theater? We paused and stared at each other and I scrambled around my brain, looking to find a means to make this young woman look beyond “Me Too.”  But her query is indeed one that poses a valid challenge to the, once again, traditional manner in which Martin Harriague chose to frame this umpteenth version of Le Sacre du printemps [The Rite of Spring]. I said, “No we don’t. Both Maurice Béjart and Paul Taylor managed to fight back against the Virgin Sacrifice scenario that Stravinsky’s music first illustrated. But, hey, even Pina Bausch got sucked in by the trope. So in her version, too, a random girl slaps herself around until she dies.”

Here, in Harriague’s choreography, the Chosen Woman gets manhandled quite violently in a striking and airborne way: the exact opposite of the way that girl in Paul Taylor’s Esplanade runs and leaps up into the air and joyously dares a man to open his broad shoulders and welcoming arms.   Instead here Harriague’s token woman [Patricia Velásquez, to me a divine reincarnation of Taylor’s irreplaceable and eruptive Lila York] gets thrown horizontally about from man to man with that same beyond-extreme energy but with an emotionally ugly yet oddly ambiguous result. Not quite dead yet, the Female Victim is then placed upon a pedestal and ascends to the heavens draped in shiny satiny red ribbons. That was not, um, cathartic. Nor coherent.

Outside in the cold air after the performance, continuing our perplexed discussion of the aesthetic uses of female suffering, we debated about to what extent this choreography added something to an old template or to what extent this just relied upon acrobatic and theatrical tricks?

I tried to turn the questions around again. “But didn’t one situation upset you more than that? I know when I wanted to cry. Can you guess what was really the most painful thing for me to watch this evening. Honestly?” I already knew the answer. “Yeah,” she said, “it happened earlier, when that little old man lost his hold on the mob and then stood trembling center stage as dancers rushed across in front and behind him. Even if they never ran him over but only brushed by him, the whiff of violence was extraordinary. Right?” Then I asked her, “Well, what if the final sacrifice had been about throwing around, manhandling, and driving an old man to his death instead of the usual young girl?”  “I would have walked out and vomited.”

So maybe killing off grandpa could have made today’s audience howl as deeply and as loudly in anger as it once had way back in 1913. Just what does it take to shock an audience nowadays, so inured to yet another feminicide…

Avec Thierry Malandain, prenez votre temps. La première fois, regardez ses ballets aussi ouvert et naïf que l’agneau. Recevez le juste et essayez d’en comprendre le sens général ; n’ouvrez même pas le programme. L’Oiseau de feu est centré sur la découverte de l’âme. A moins que…

Car tout d’abord, tout tourne autour du respiré, du relâché, du plié et de la chute, et de la course et … des soutanes. C’est comme si vous étiez enfermé dans la sombre ambiance d’une pièce de Graham, de Wigman ou de Limón. Très vite, vous aspirez à une bouffée d’air. Mais voilà qu’un têtu duumvir masculin-féminin s’agenouille, ouvre les bras, accueille, ouvre ses mains devant une apparition vêtue de pourpre, une infinie intrication de bras et de jambes [Hugo Layer] arrivée peut-être pour leur offrir le salut. A moins que…

Bon, d’accord, j’avais un peu triché et jeté un œil sur le programme tandis que je m’asseyais. Et un nom m’avait sauté aux yeux : Saint François d’Assise. Mais oui, ce gars qui parlait déjà aux oiseaux et embrassait les arbres au 13e siècle !

Une amie dans le public a juste flotté dans l’atmosphère distillée par cette pièce et a adoré être progressivement « enveloppée dans une ambiance qui, lentement mais surement, [la] conduisait vers un profond sentiment de paix ». Elle n’avait pas du tout besoin d’argument. Elle a juste demandé, « Pourquoi les corbeaux chassaient-ils les canaris et les petits moineaux ? Cette danse voletante était délicieuse. »

De retour à la maison après la représentation, une phrase du cantique des créatures de Saint François a commencé à me hanter. Lorsque je l’ai consultée, le texte s’est avéré lumineux et a conféré aux deux danseurs anonymes de beaux noms. Frère Soleil « beau, rayonnant d’une grande splendeur », n’était autre que Mickaël Conte, un merveilleux danseur-caméléon qui rayonne différemment dans chaque pièce qu’il interprète au point d’y paraître plus grand ou plus petit, plus fin ou plus musculeux. Je serais bien incapable de le reconnaître hors de scène. Sa Soeur-Lune était Claire Lonchampt : «claire, précieuse et belle ». De surcroit, elle a une réelle force percussive quoique toujours délicatement nuancée.

J’avais besoin de cerner une autre phrase du texte de saint François afin de calmer mon esprit confronté à ce que je venais de voir. Elle disait : « Loué sois-tu, seigneur, pour Frère-Feu, par qui tu éclaires la nuit : il est beau et joyeux, indomptable et fort »… comme ce ballet.

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Et qu’en est-il du Sacre du Printemps de Martin Harriague ?

Comme je l’expliquais plus tôt à mon amie dans le public, l’histoire originale sur laquelle Stravinski a composé sa musique est très simple : une société primitive pense que le sacrifice d’un seul être humain (féminin) au printemps assurera une abondante récolte à l’automne.

Mon amie était perplexe. Pourquoi, à chaque fois qu’elle va au théâtre, est-elle forcée d’assister encore et encore à de la violence faite aux femmes ? On fit une pause et nous nous jaugeâmes tandis que j’essayais de trouver dans ma tête quelque chose à dire pour la faire penser au-delà de « Me Too ».

Mais son interrogation est en fait tout à fait valide face à cette approche une fois encore traditionnelle qu’a choisi d’embrasser Martin Harriague pour envisager le Sacre du Printemps. Je répondis « en fait, non. Maurice Béjart ou Paul Taylor ont réussi à résister au « sacrifice de la vierge » du scénario original illustré par Stravinski. Mais, eh, même Bausch a succombé à ce motif de la fille lambda qui se gifle elle-même jusqu’à ce que mort s’ensuive.

Dans la chorégraphie de Harriague, l’Élue est manipulée très violemment d’une manière à la fois frappante et aérienne ; l’exact opposé de cette fille dans Esplanade de Paul Taylor qui court et se jette joyeusement dans les airs, mettant l’homme au défi d’ouvrir ses larges épaules et de l’accueillir dans ses bras. Au lieu de quoi, l’Élue de Martin Harriague [Patricia Velasquez, à mon sens une divine réincarnation de l’irremplaçable et explosive Lila York] est jetée horizontalement d’homme en homme avec cette même énergie mais avec un résultat émotionnellement aussi peu ragoûtant qu’il est ambigu. Pas encore morte, la victime féminine est ensuite placée sur un piédestal et monte aux cieux drapée de rubans de satin rouge. Voilà qui n’était ni cathartique ni cohérent.

Sorties à l’air libre après la représentation, continuant notre discussion perplexe sur les usages esthétiques de la souffrance féminine, on débattit jusqu’à quel point cette chorégraphie ajoutait quelque chose de signifiant à cette vieille histoire maintes fois racontée ou si elle reposait seulement sur des acrobaties et astuces de théâtre.

J’essayais de retourner encore une fois la question. « Mais une situation ne t’a-t-elle pas émue plus qu’une autre ? J’en sais une où j’ai eu envie de pleurer.  […] C’est quand le petit vieillard a perdu son contrôle sur la meute et qu’il restait debout au milieu de la scène tandis que les danseurs le bousculaient de tous côtés. Même s’ils ne l’ont jamais renversé mais l’ont seulement effleuré, l’odeur même de la violence était extraordinaire. […] »

Peut-être le meurtre de pépé aurait-il pu faire mugir le public de colère aussi profondément et fort que cela était arrivé, il y a bien longtemps en 1913. Qu’est ce qui peut bien choquer le public aujourd’hui, si immunisé face à un féminicide de plus ?

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par | 22 juin 2021 · 8 h 45 min

Romeo and Juliet, Diop and Baulac : “Who straight on kisses dream.”

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Romeo & Juliet. Curtain calls. Guillaume Diop, Léonore Baulac and Company.

Paris Opera Ballet, Tuesday, June 15th 2021.

In the unexpected debut of Guillaume Diop — a youngster still only in the corps de ballet – he, along with his Léonore Beaulac, opted for a less-often used interpretation of the “star-cross’d lovers.” The sweet and tender thrum of their connection re-centered this ballet around youthful innocence rather than around the obsessive force of sexual desire. Shakespeare’s text leaves room for just how young these youngsters might be, even if he specifies that Juliet is a ripe thirteen…

Diop, de même que Léonore Baulac, a opté pour une interprétation moins usitée des amants « nés sous une mauvaise étoile ». Le doux et tendre continuo de leur connexion a recentré ce ballet autour de la juvénile innocence plutôt que de la force obsédante du désir. […]

“Love goes toward love, as schoolboys from their books.”

Guillaume Diop’s way of dancing reminds me of the Hugo Marchand of maybe five years ago. Like Marchand back then, Diop has style already and everything else ready to go. Unaffectedly expansive épaulement giving you the impression that his arms actually start down there at the belly-button. Long legs performing effortless and unpretentious, but huge, leaps that end in silent and soft landings only to then extend out into high arabesques without any ostentation or exaggeration.  But, like Marchard back then, Diop just needs to concentrate a little bit more on enriching the control of his feet. Not that his are limp, not at all, he can certainly point them but…if he could just send a bit more energy down there and out from there, play more with the relevé, he could give them the same force as those of his unostentatiously powerful hands. And yes he will need to continue to burnish and polish those little details that only come from practice (holding on to turn-out when coming out of a phrase).

At the tender age of twenty (when men’s bodies only become fully mature and resilient around age twenty-three), Diop proved that he is already a reliable and attentive partner: reactive, confident and not stiff. With a few more years of experience in the spotlight, it is clear that he will make his partnering really swing.

But what matters more than these details is that Diop already holds the stage. He demonstrated that technique is meant to be a means, not an end in itself.

So now let us revisit the dramatic events.

Guillaume Diop […] comme l’Hugo Marchand d’il y a 4 ou 5 ans […] a déjà tout et même un peu plus ; des épaulements généreux sans être affectés qui vous donnent l’impression que ses bras sont connectés à son nombril, de longues jambes exécutant des sauts faciles et sans prétentions, quoique prodigieux, s’achevant dans de silencieuses réceptions pour enfin se développer en hautes arabesques sans ostentation ni exagération aucune. Mais comme Marchand alors, Diop doit se concentrer un peu plus pour enrichir le contrôle de ses pieds ; non pas qu’ils soient mous, car il les pointe tout à fait… mais on aimerait qu’il y transmette un peu plus d’énergie… […]

Au tendre âge de 21 ans, […] Diop s’est montré un partenaire solide et attentif : réactif, sûr de lui et sans raideur. […] [La pratique de la scène]  donnera à son partnering plus de « swing ».

Diop a déjà la maîtrise de la scène. […]

“O! That I were a glove on that hand/That I might touch that cheek.

When Léonore Baulac’s Juliet pulled the curtain back on the Nurse having sex, her reaction was not about awakened senses but definitely about “eew that’s icky, I don’t want it.”

In the “morning after the wedding night” scene, here it was not about “I am physically-sated and I want more of this action until the end of days.” Instead, the rapport between R&J made you imagine that during all those hours in the dark, what they had been getting up to was exactly what you had once done: stayed up all night whispering more intently than you’d had ever even talked to anyone before, clinging to each other, whispering so as not to wake up the parents. While certainly a bit of exploring boobies and more kissing were probably involved, you sensed their innocence remained intact. My mind drifted back to a childish pact that was once sacred: make a tiny cut, smear pinkies together = blood brothers for life. The French have a great expression for this. You have discovered your “âme soeur,” your soul-mate.

Au lendemain de la nuit des noces […] R&J vous donnaient l’impression que, durant ces heures passées dans le noir, ce qu’ils avaient fait n’était rien d’autre que ce que nous avons tous fait jadis : veiller toute la nuit, murmurant intensément comme on ne l’avait jamais fait avec quelqu’un d’autre, restant collés et chuchotant de peur d’alerter les parents. Bien que cela ait sans doute entraîné un peu plus de frotti-frotta et de gros palots que d’habitude, on sentait que leur innocence était intacte. […]

“A word and a blow”

As Rosalind, a role where you don’t move very much and that has come to constitute an artistic ghetto unto itself for talented ballerinas (Isabelle Ciaravola was stuck in it for years), Hannah O’Neill gave this avatar a pleasing and cheery “oh well why the hell not” elegance.

Lady Capulet and Tybalt had clearly connived to protect Juliet from this mean and ugly world from the day she was born, but you saw nothing Oedipal in their interactions. Emilie Cozette’s pensive and emotionally-exhausted Lady Capulet made me wonder whether she too had once been a headstrong Giulietta with all the joy since worn out of her. Her impulsive slap at Juliet’s refusal to marry Paris, as well as her shocked reaction to her own gesture, illustrated that of a loving mother undone by her so-far-so-perfect child’s first public tantrum. Indeed, the most rough-handed and grouchy person in the room kept turning out to be Yannick Bittancourt’s heavy-spirited Paris.

Florian Magnenet’s Tybalt was in no way sadistic nor mean either. You could just imagine him as a strict but benevolent pater-familias of six clingy kids six years hence.  He, too, cared more about protecting his little cousin than about the whole big fat fuss between the Capulets and Montagues. You could sense that the whole “us vs. them” had bloomed out of provincial boredom [Verona, even today, is a very, very, small town] and that everyone involved in the feud took it only half-seriously.

In the same interpretive vein, Pablo Legassa’s shimmering and sharp-legged Mercutio was “the guy no one can really get mad at.” [Legassa is so ready to play real leading roles, his body and soul are in that “sweet spot.”] And Marc Moreau’s  “I get the joke, guys” Benvolio gave real bounce to the repartee of the boys. As Benvolio, “the nice guy,” too many dancers get too serious and fade into the background while mentally preparing to catch “the big guy’s” grand anguished backward leaps in Act III.  While the back-flips were smoothly-managed rather than frightening, this fit the rapport that had been established between this sweet-dreaming Romeo and this “I have so got your back” Benvolio.

So the duel between Tybalt and Mercutio took on a specific vibe, more school-yard fight between two people saying “don’t be such an ass-hat” than the predictable fight to the death, which made their deaths all the sadder.

Rosalinde : Hannah O’Neill plaisante et joviale

Emilie Cozette, une lady Capulet pensive et émotionnellement épuisée m’a fait me demander si elle n’avait pas été jadis une Giulietta entêtée. […] Yannick Bittancourt Pâris : grognon et la main lourde. Autoritaire.

Le Tybalt de Florian Magnenet : ni méchant ni sadique. Un père de famille strict mais bien intentionné.

Le Mercutio scintillant au jeu de jambe acéré de Pablo Legassa / Marc Moreau : Benvolio, « j’ai compris la blague, les gars ! » donnait parfaitement la répartie aux autres personnages.

Du coup le duel entre Tybalt et Mercutio prit une résonnance particulière, plus querelle de cours d’école que […] prédictible combat à mort, ce qui a rendu leur mort plus triste encore.

“O! She doth teach the torches to burn bright!”

Léonore Baulac’s  Juliet  floated on this bubble of love and friendship and good humor. She was that well-brought-up girl whose biggest personal challenge so far had been always winning the dare of “who will jump off the swing at its highest and land the furthest out!”

From the ballroom scene to the balcony scene to the bedroom scene each step of the interplay between these two reminded me of the infinite possibilities that Breughel the Elder’ proffers in  his “Children’s Games” {Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna}. It’s there in the choreography, but usually highlighting “patty-cake” suffices for most dancers. Here, while watching the dancers I started to make an inventory of references and to float back to those happiest days of childhood. Oh, hop-scotch, marbles, summersaults….just like when we were all just kids.

As the gentleness of a Tony from West Side Story infused Diop’s Romeo– absolutely a dreamy kid rather than a teenager with raging hormones — his connection to Baulac [she can become so responsive to what her partner is all about] replaced the expected over-heated sensual excitement with something often more true in real life: that lower-key mutual vibe that is the secret for lasting marriages. Your adored partner is in fact your best friend. This does not mean these young people were devoid of strong emotions, quite the opposite.

“When he shall die,/Take him and cut him out in little stars,/And he will make the face of heaven so fine.”

Cute detail: just before kissing Juliet for the first time, Diop’s mouth went wow into an adorable “O” as he inhaled. It was really like that boy aiming his face at you for his first kiss ever, not quite certain where it would land. So sweet.

An oft-cited quote from Nureyev speaks of a boy evolving into a man because of a young woman who “decides everything. She is passionate, head-strong, and more mature than he is.” Here with Guillaume Diop and Léonore Baulac, it was the opposite: a young man and a young woman who are equals in naïvité, equally astonished by a fate they had not anticipated. Neither really wanted to die, but just felt too ashamed to go and talk to their parents and ask for help.

Ces deux-là m’ont évoqué les infinies possibilités que Breughel le jeune présente dans sont « Jeux d’enfant » du Kunsthistorisches Museum de Vienne.

[…]

Le Roméo de Diop est plus un enfant rêveur qu’un adolescent tourmenté par sa poussée d’hormones. Sa connexion à Baulac a remplacé l’attendue excitation des sens par quelque chose de plus réaliste dans la vraie vie : cette connexion plus modérée qui est le secret des mariages qui durent. […] Un jeune homme et une jeune femme qui sont égaux en naïveté, également stupéfiés par ce sort qu’ils n’ont pu anticiper ; aucun des deux n’a jamais vraiment voulu mourir mais ils étaient trop timides pour confronter leurs parents et leur demander de l’aide.

The next day, I began describing what I saw to James. “Ah,” he said, “At the end, then, you wanted them to live so much you were ready to send them a link to a suicide hotline?” Yes, indeed. All of these kids – from Romeo to Juliet to Tybalt to Mercutio to Paris down to the Friar’s messenger – so totally didn’t deserve to, or want to, or need to, die.

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Pieter Breughel the Elder : « Children’s Games ». Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

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par | 4 juin 2021 · 8 h 50 min

Carla Fracci (1936-2021). Seen

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Carla Fracci, curtain call after La Sylphide at the MET. Late 1970’s. Photography Louis Peres

L’article est traduit en français. Voir plus bas. 

One Saturday in the early 80’s in Manhattan, I ambled over to the wonderfully eccentric Ziegfield Stationary Store on 7th Avenue off 58th street to once again dig into their bins of 8×10 photographers’ prints for sale.  And there she was. That snap you can see to the side :  Carla Fracci, La Sylphide, bowing in front of the gilded weight of the curtain at the Met. And the print was by Louis Peres! He had always been the kindest person hanging around in standing room. Years before that shot, he once lifted tiny me up to see better in Orchestra standing room while pushing aside a larger dance fan, losing the chance at a perfect shot. When we would find each other in the viciously contested Grand Tier standing zones, all I had to do was put my chin on the red velvet hand rest and lean into him in order not to be squashed. Louis Peres was a real gentleman with an impeccably reactive eye for dancers.

Reactive eyes, yes. Fracci had them, too. And the best of arms, which always seemed to be touching and curling around something inside or just beyond the air. Whether as Giselle or as Swanhilda or as La Sylphide, she would unfold and extend them out with unaffected purpose, like a master sailor putting out two sails and letting them be aloft, trusting them to waft in tune with the soft breeze.

I am sure that Paolo Bortoluzzi, Michaël Denard, Ivan Nagy, or Erik Bruhn, along with thousands of spectators, would say she was the best of partners. Those eyes that saw. And then the way that torso would lift up and out. Those long arms always gently billowing out as if unwilling to hurt the air. Her lovely heart-shaped face and heart-shaped feet.

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Playbill : Carla Fracci’s last performance with ABT. Early 1990’s.

The last time I saw Carla Fracci dance was at her farewell performance for ABT in Antony Tudor’s Jardin aux Lilas.  The reluctant Edwardian-era damsel has finally resigned herself to being married against her will to an older man she does not and cannot love. I don’t remember how old she was that night — fifty-five maybe?  — yet she remained the very image of a young dark-eyed heiress straight out of Henry James, passionate and innocent in equal degrees. But something more happened, as it always did with Fracci… .The music was normal tempo — Fracci had never been one to hold up a conductor –but time slowed down as in the best-edited Hollywood movies. The way that Fracci inclined her head to the cast one by one during those last measures insinuated itself to Chausson’s. The way I saw the despairing violin softly weep will always remain seared into my mind’s eye. Music made visible.

As she slowly addressed each member of the wedding party exactly and as simply as Tudor’s choreography dictates – to one politely with a tip of the head,  to another yearningly from the bottom of the neck, then rigid from fear from deeper down the spine, the chest sucked in  — time seemed to stop. Because we in the audience were the ones who had stopped breathing, all desperate to hold out a comforting hand to this young woman who seemed so real. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen her have that effect on a full house  — the mad scene of Giselle with that one strand of hair! — but as I knew this was the last time that I would ever be able to feel her grace extending out to me from a stage…

Did I actually see what I thought I saw? Any photograph by Louis Peres must have the answer.

Un samedi du début des années 80, à Manhattan, je déambulais en direction du merveilleusement excentrique Ziegfeld Stationary Store au croisement de la 7eme avenue et de la 58e rue pour, une fois encore, farfouiller dans leurs bacs de soldes de tirages de professionnel au format 8 par 10. Et elle était là, cette photo ci-contre : Carla Fracci, La Sylphide, saluant devant le rideau lesté d’or du Met. Et le cliché était de Louis Peres! Louis avait toujours été le plus attentionné des habitués qui hantaient les standing rooms. Des années avant cette photographie, il avait soulevé la petite fille que j’étais alors pour me permettre de voir depuis les places debout de l’orchestre, poussant même un imposant membre du public et ratant par là-même l’occasion d’un clic parfait. Lorsque nous nous retrouvions dans l’aire impitoyablement disputée des places debout du Grand Tier, tout ce que j’avais à faire était de mettre mon menton sur le rebord en velours rouge et me coller à lui afin de ne pas finir écrasée. Louis Peres était un vrai gentleman ET un œil impeccablement réactif aux danseurs.

Des yeux réactifs, oui, Fracci en avait elle aussi. Et les plus jolis des bras, qui paraissaient effleurer et s’enrouler à l’intérieur et même au-delà de l’air. Que ce soit en Giselle, en Swanilda ou en Sylphide, elle les déplierait et les étendrait avec une attention sans affectation, comme un marin déploierait sa voile et la laisserait prendre le vent, confiant dans sa capacité à se mettre à l’unisson de la brise légère.

Je suis certaine que Paolo Bortoluzzi, Michaël Denard, Ivan Nagy ou Erik Bruhn, comme les milliers de spectateurs qui l’ont vue, diraient qu’elle était la meilleure des partenaires.

Ces yeux qui voyaient… et puis la façon dont son torse s’élevait puis se déployait ; ces longs bras flottant toujours comme s’ils voulaient éviter de blesser l’air; son joli visage et ses jolis pieds en forme de cœur.

La dernière fois que je vis Fracci danser fut pour ses adieux à ABT dans Jardin aux Lilas d’Antony Tudor. La réticente demoiselle de la période édouardienne s’est finalement résignée à un mariage, en dépit de son inclination, avec un homme plus âgé qu’elle n’aime et ne pourra aimer.

Je ne me souviens plus de l’âge qu’elle avait ce soir là – 55 ans, peut-être? – cependant, elle demeurait l’image même d’une jeune héritière à l’œil noir tout droit sortie de Henry James, à la fois passionnée et innocente. Mais quelque chose de plus arriva, comme souvent avec Fracci… La musique était au tempo normal – Fracci n’a jamais été du genre à diriger un chef d’orchestre – mais le temps lui-même s’est ralenti comme dans ces films hollywoodiens au montage impeccable. La manière dont Fracci inclinait sa tête en direction de chacun des membres de la distribution s’insinuait dans les dernières mesures de la partition de Chausson. La façon qu’avait le violon désespéré de doucement sangloter restera toujours scellée dans mon esprit. La musique rendue visible.

Tandis qu’elle s’adressait à chacun des membres de la noce aussi exactement et simplement que la chorégraphie de Tudor le requiert – à l’un poliment avec un signe de tête, à un autre tendrement depuis la naissance du cou, puis rigide de peur plus bas dans la colonne vertébrale, la poitrine rentrée, le temps semblait arrêté, parce que nous, dans le public avions retenu notre souffle, voulant tous désespérément tendre une main réconfortante à cette jeune femme si réelle. Ce n’était pas la première fois que je l’avais vu avoir cet effet sur une salle entière – cette scène de la folie avec juste une mèche de cheveux lâchée! – mais comme je savais que c’était la dernière fois que je serais en mesure de ressentir sa grâce se propager de la scène jusqu’à moi …

Ai-je vraiment vu ce que j’ai cru voir ? Toute photographie de Louis Peres contiendra la réponse.

Libre traduction de Cléopold

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