THE PARIS OPERA AT VILLETTE

For 32 years, the open-air film festival at La Villette has been an essential part of the Parisian summer. On the 600m² inflatable screen, suspense, adventure, emotion, humour and conviviality are on offer every evening, to dream, laugh, cry or shiver under the stars. The Open-Air Cinema is a meeting, on an exceptional site, of a very wide range of audiences around the pleasure of cinema.
For this new edition, the Paris Opera will be present for the first time on 21 July at 10.30pm with the broadcast of Alexander Ekman's ballet Play recorded at the Palais Garnier, as well as every Saturday and Sunday, in the first part of the evening, with a short film from the collection of the 3e Scène, the Paris Opera's digital platform dedicated to creation.

Premier ballet du chorégraphe suédois Alexander Ekman pour les danseurs de l’Opéra, Play a été créé au Palais Garnier en décembre 2017. Le chorégraphe invite les interprètes sur un immense terrain de jeu où les émotions et l’imaginaire se libèrent. Sur une musique originale de Mikael Karlsson, les corps se transforment en silhouettescerfs ou plongent dans un champ de balles colorées. Spectacle à l’énergie communicative, Play mêle danse, théâtre, musique et chant dans un esprit festif, parfois burlesque, plein d’humour et non sans profondeur  

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
Observant en gros plan les élèves de l’École de danse de l’Opéra national de Paris qui construisent jour après jour leur «devenir» de danseurs et danseuses, Clémence Poésy propose un regard inédit qui laisse hors-champ les corps au travail. En saisissant l’intimité des visages, elle révèle une part du mystère de la quête à laquelle se dédie cet apprentissage.  

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
Contemporary artist Hiroshi Sugimoto leads us into a sensorial and spiritual experience for the Paris Opera’s 3e Scène with a new creation filmed at his Odawara Art Foundation in Japan.
At daybreak, on the Foundation’s glass roof, Aurélie Dupont performs the dance solo « Ekstasis », choreographed by Martha Graham and re-imagined by Virginie Mécène. Dance suspended between sea and sky in which the performance evolves as the sun rises.  

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
The Krump dance was born in Los Angeles ghettos after the 1995 riots. Clément Cogitore creates a battle between urban culture and Rameau’s music on the Bastille Opera stage.

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
In addition to his personal artistic projects, the photographer and film director Jacob Sutton works for illustrious magazines and fashion brands worldwide. After receiving the offer to cooperate with the Paris Opera, which he perceives as an institution steeped in tradition, but also a well of creative talent and an extraordinary setting for films, the son of a ballet dancer was “over the moon”.
While watching two young dancers, Hannah O’Neill and Germain Louvet, rehearse for a new ballet by Benjamin Millepied, an idea occurred to him : he wanted to explore the choreography and the music, a score by Jon Hopkins which he loves, in different contexts. In “Ascension”, the dancers soar up from the darkness beneath the stage at Bastille to the sumptuous Grand Foyer and eventually to the rooftop of the Palais Garnier, where they experience moments filled with heavenly, dreamlike luminosity. Jacob Sutton declares : “I think it is the most romantic project I have ever worked on.”  

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
The legendary Disney animator Glen Keane, who invented characters such as Ariel, Tarzan, Pocahontas and the Beast, perfectly remembers his first encounter with the Paris Opera : as he was sitting in a nearby café, he could not stop drawing “the most beautiful building I had ever laid eyes on”. Dancing has always inspired his art which circles around the creation of movement, and he was excited to lift the curtain and enter a world which seemed even more magical than the performances on stage.
His film “Nephtali”, which refers to Jacob’s blessings and Psalm 42, was born from the comparison between the grace of a dancer and that of a deer. In a choreography which Glen created with Marion Barbeau, he depicts the journey of a soul that is drawn towards a higher power, fights a struggle and is eventually liberated.
By using both film and drawing, Glen Keane and Marion Barbeau manage to overcome the constraints of gravity and attain the freedom towards which a dancer’s body and spirit always aspire.