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Bertaud / Bouché / Paul / Valastro
Palais Garnier - from 13 to 18 June 2017
Bertaud / Bouché / Paul / Valastro
Palais Garnier - from 13 to 18 June 2017
1h50 with 1 interval
About
In few words:
"Choreography is a curious and deceptive term. The word itself, like the processes it describes, is elusive, agile. To reduce choreography to a single definition is not to understand the most crucial of its mechanisms: to resist."William Forsythe
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Renaissance
The Little Match Girl Passion
Undoing World
Sept mètres et demi au-dessus des montagnes
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Renaissance
The Little Match Girl Passion
Undoing World
Sept mètres et demi au-dessus des montagnes
Performances
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Book your tickets today with the Season Pass
Available in audiodescription
Advantages
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Gallery
Videos clips
Backstage
© Julien Benhamou / OnP
Article
Tradition and creation
Encounter with Sébastien Bertaud
03’
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.
Your piece is entitled Renaissance. In what sense do you employ the term?
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.
To what style have you given preference?
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.
Why did you choose this score by Mendelssohn?
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.
You called upon Olivier Rousteing for the costumes. What prompted this choice?
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.
Where does this piece fit into your career as a choreographer?
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.
In your opinion, where does the work of the dancer stop and that of the choreographer begin?
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.
© Julien Benhamou / OnP
Article
A dialogue between the arts
Encounter with Nicolas Paul
03’
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.
How did this project – the creation of a work on several pieces of sacred music by Josquin des Prés – come into being?
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.
Does the title directly evoke the episode of the Flood in Genesis?
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.
What references do you make in your choreography to medieval iconography?
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.
How is the video footage you created with Jean-Christophe Guerri articulated around the dancers on stage?
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.
Does video provide a bridge between this period of history and today?
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.
You joined the Paris Opera School of Dance in 1989 and the Corps de Ballet in 1996. What does it mean to you to take part in the House’s official season?
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.
© Ann Veronica Janssens
Podcast
Podcast Bertaud / Bouché / Paul / Valastro
"Dance! Sing! 7 minutes at the Paris Opera" - by France Musique
07’
"Dance! Sing! 7 minutes at the Paris Opera" offers original incursions into the season thanks to broadcasts produced by France Musique and the Paris Opera. For each opera or ballet production, Judith Chaine (opera) and Stéphane Grant (dance), present the works and artists you are going to discover when you attend performances in our theatres.
© Julien Benhamou / OnP
Article
Choreography as a means of resistance
Encounter with Bruno Bouché
03’
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.
With Undoing World, what themes do you tackle?
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.
Is your piece political?
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 music, which combines a composition by Nicolas Worms and a song by the Klezmatics, is accompanied by a text by Deleuze. Why?
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.
Has this year with the Academy helped you to advance in your work as a choreographer?
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.
How does one go from being a dancer to being a choreographer?
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.
© Julien Benhamou / OnP
Article
As in a Dream
Encounter with Simon Valastro
03’
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.
The Little Match Girl is a tale that has often been revisited. Why did you choose David Lang’s version, The Little Match Girl Passion?
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.
Four singers and two percussionists accompany the dancers. How have you shared the space between them?
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.
What were your sources of inspiration?
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.
What were your different aims in this creation?
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.
How does one become a choreographer with the Paris Opera Ballet?
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.
Partners
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With the support of AROP