Bertaud /​ Bouché /​ Paul /​ Valastro

Sébastian Bertaud, Bruno Bouché, Simon Valastro and Nicolas Paul, all dancers with the Paris Opera, offer us their creations for the company’s dancers on the stage of the Palais Garnier. An opportunity to examine the choreographer’s profession and, more importantly, to reveal to the public four personalities, four of today’s dancers and four choreographers of tomorrow.

I was trained at the Paris Opera Ballet School and I carry that heritage within me. Having worked with a lot of contemporary choreographers over the last few years, I feel the need to return to the sources of my experience. With Renaissance, I’m seeking to revive a tradition by inscribing it in our own epoch.

I wanted to create a classical ballet for today, offering an up-to-date piece that highlights the particular skills of the Opera Ballet’s dancers. I also wanted to revive a certain form of visual virtuosity that I have found in our history, from Louis XIV to our own times, from Versailles to the Opéra Garnier.

I chose Mendelssohn’s Concerto for violin for its refinement and elegance. Moreover, the virtuosity of the violin, the solo instrument, echoes the point work of the ballerinas.

Fashion and dance have often maintained a special relationship. Pierre Balmain dressed many dancers during the fifties, collaborating notably with Serge Lifar. Olivier Rousteing is currently director of the Maison Balmain and his style, which continues in that tradition of audacity and refinement, corresponds to our epoch.

Renaissance is certainly the culmination of a cycle. For the first time, I have created a group piece for dancers with whom I have been sharing the stage of the Palais Garnier for seventeen years.

I feel just as much a dancer as I do a choreographer. My work as a choreographer forms a continuum with my work as a dancer and I certainly do not see it as a change of career. The year I’ve spent at the Academy, in parallel with my season as a dancer, has allowed me to stretch myself.

Sébastian Bertaud, Bruno Bouché, Simon Valastro and Nicolas Paul, all dancers with the Paris Opera, offer us their creations for the company’s dancers on the stage of the Palais Garnier. An opportunity to examine the choreographer’s profession and, more importantly, to reveal to the public four personalities, four of today’s dancers and four choreographers of tomorrow.

This project was born out of research in several areas: research on the historic periods of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance which have fascinated me for a long time, and also on the theme of the Flood and its representations in those periods, which struck me as being surprisingly modern by their simplicity and starkness. Alongside that, Jean-Christophe and I developed work on the body and water using video.

Yes, the description of the water which, during the flood, reaches “seven and a half metres above the mountains”. The modernisation of this passage from the Bible amused me (translations tend to refer to cubits which was the basic unit of measurement) and on a more serious note raises the issue of the modernisation of narrative.

In the notation of movement one finds hand positions directly inspired by pictorial representations from the Middle Ages which accord a crucial importance to this part of the body. A certain treatment of colour also seemed to me to be very specific to this period, as is the question of perspective.

The video is treated as a series of tableaux and forms a direct contrast with what is happening on stage. Whilst the choreography, characterised by its profusion, is very dense and rapid, the video offers a succession of fixed images, rather slow with imperceptible movements. Through this contrast, I’m hoping that the two art forms will create a dialogue.

The image of a drowned corpse immediately evokes recent events and a series of geopolitical situations. It is absolutely necessary to be aware of this mirror effect. However, I was seeking to evoke an intimate perception of the flood which might be psychological or social, not necessarily political.

For me, this production exemplifies the diversity that an institution like the Paris Opera Ballet is capable of generating, - the different personalities that have developed and flourished with its support. On a more personal level, I have another three years with the company before I retire. This piece, therefore, is probably that last that I shall create for the Company before I end my career as a dancer.

Sébastian Bertaud, Bruno Bouché, Simon Valastro and Nicolas Paul, all dancers with the Paris Opera, offer us their creations for the company’s dancers on the stage of the Palais Garnier. An opportunity to examine the choreographer’s profession and, more importantly, to reveal to the public four personalities, four of today’s dancers and four choreographers of tomorrow.

For this piece, which in a way marks my farewell to the Paris Opera, the theme of a quest seemed an obvious one: the quest for elsewhere, a change of direction, another reality. I placed this quest at the heart of my work, with all that it implies in terms of physical and mental trials: wilderness, exile, the loss of familiar landmarks and even a certain chaos engendered by these changes of direction. One can interpret this in the light of recent events but also in a more metaphysical sense. To go through trials to attain a certain exultation, isn’t that the story of our lives? is Garnier.

I have been directly confronted with the refugee issue in my own life but I didn’t want to pass on a message or create a polemical work. I’m more concerned by poetic constructions. I wanted to open up pathways, widen horizons of interpretation. My sources of inspiration were as much Dante and the passage through hell in The Divine Comedy as recent events, which have touched me a lot. The capacity to care for others has been part of my thinking in my work with the dancers.

The song Doyna and Deleuze’s text are there precisely to broaden the message. The Klezmatics, a group inspired by the traditional Yiddish music, Klezmer, reminds one of the migrations of a people long deprived of territory. The text, with brings together extracts from Gilles Deleuze’s lectures on Spinoza entitled “Immortality and Eternity”, extends the vision of that quest to our own condition: that of being mortal and aware of the finite nature of our existence.

Meeting William Forsythe was a determining factor. The more my work progresses, the better I understand his way of seeing choreography as a means of resistance. To develop his ideas, the artist is in permanent confrontation with a reality that imposes its own resistance. With Undoing World, I wanted to go towards something unknown and take the dancers with me in order to attain the complexity and freedom of new forms. istence.

I come from classical ballet and I have been forged by my experience as a dancer. My training helps me just as it can hinder me. Even if I sense continuity between the two activities, they remain completely distinct for me. It is very important that the Paris Opera encourage and support dancers who wish to be chorographers.

Sébastian Bertaud, Bruno Bouché, Simon Valastro and Nicolas Paul, all dancers with the Paris Opera, offer us their creations for the company’s dancers on the stage of the Palais Garnier. An opportunity to examine the choreographer’s profession and, more importantly, to reveal to the public four personalities, four of today’s dancers and four choreographers of tomorrow.

I discovered David Lang’s piece in 2008. The fairytale, for the force of the themes it reveals, had always interested me; the way in which David Lang rearticulated the narrative by creating a parallel between the little girl and the Passion of Christ also seemed to me pertinent. The piece borrows from oratorio by alternating recitative and aria. Fifteen sequences structure the work: the recitatives are composed from texts in English taken from the famous tale by Andersen. The arias often take up quotations from the Gospels.

In the original version, the percussion is entrusted to the singers. However, to allow greater freedom of movement on stage, I chose rather to give the two instruments to percussionists who will be in the orchestral pit. I chose to rehearse separately. The singers and the dancers share the stage but evolve in two distinct spaces.

I was very much inspired by Lars von Trier and David Lynch for the conception of the image. I wanted to get away from narrative and evoke elements of the tale (the cold, the snow, the matches and the Christmas Tree) in a random way, as in a strange dream or the delirium resulting from hypothermia. I was also inspired by religious iconography: positions and gestures that evoke religious worship, as much in Renaissance painting as in more contemporary sculptures.

The stage of the Palais Garnier is very old and very well equipped. I wanted to exploit it to the maximum. It is a testimony to all the productions that have been performed there and it permits the use of interesting special effects. This also meant I had to increase the number of dancers in order to fill such a big stage.

I have felt had the desire to choreograph but it is only recently that it became something concrete. To concentrate entirely on one’s career as a dancer can be an obstacle to creativity. Today, I am looking for a language that I would like to develop, to build on progressively. It is something that takes time and evolves gradually.