Ballets are reborn from season to season, each time neither quite the same, nor altogether different. For the first time, Alice Renavand, Léonore Baulac, Germain Louvet and Paul Marque are performing, on alternate nights, the roles of Lise and Colas. An opportunity to see how a choreography is passed on from one generation to the next. Encounter with Clotilde Vayer, ballet master with the Department of Dance, Monique Loudières, former Étoile IN the Paris Opera Ballet and Emmanuel Thibault, repetiteur.

Clotilde Vayer: The ballet master is like a conductor. Whereas we see the conductor in the pit during the performance, we no longer see the ballet master once the ballet is on stage. S/He prepares, amongst other things, the rehearsal schedule with an entire team of assistant ballet masters. It’s team work and requires trust, in this case with Lionel Delanoë and Viviane Descoutures. We share out the tasks so that each person can pass on whatever s/he has to offer and the result is successful.

Monique Loudières: As a repetiteur, I always begin by giving the dancers a clearly defined canvas so that the choreography be respected. Next, I urge the performers to bring their own touches of colour to the variation. I leave them what I call “little pearls of freedom” so that they can offer their own interpretation. This is essential given that the work survives thanks to them.   

M.L. It is important to remain humble with regard to the great repertoire works. We must first of all understand the choreographer’s vision, have a knowledge of his work and read up on the subject. I try to remain faithful to the demands of the choreographer and to my memories of them, to their way of moving and to how they imagined things. It is essential to maintain the same rigour with regard to choreography and musicality whilst also adopting an educational approach adapted to our society. You can surpass yourself and be surprised by your own performance if you continue to respect certain constraints.

Emmanuel Thibault: There is no mystery: the best thing is always to be in contact with people who have worked with the original performer of the role. Before dancing this ballet, for example, I worked with Alexander Grant, who first performed the role of Alain. The steps in La Fille mal gardée are not particularly complicated from a technical point of view. It’s the combination of steps that is difficult to assimilate for the dancers in the Company, because it is not their “school”. As well as that, managing all the props adds a supplementary difficulty. This must be learnt like the steps themselves, since the ribbons, for example, form an integral part of the choreography. With bottles, or a fork in your hands, you cannot use your arms in the same way as if you didn’t have any props. The body has to compensate. I have been lucky enough to encounter this ballet both from the point of view of the performer and of the repetiteur, since I danced the role of Colas several times before being put in charge of rehearsals for a pair of young soloists in 2015. For a dancer, this ballet is very different from any other. There are very precise combinations of steps which is what makes its choreography unique. La Fille mal gardée is a very enjoyable ballet to dance and very “logical”. It is relatively easy to learn because everything is written in the music. It’s a piece of danced theatre, in which the choreography of each character is regulated as if written on manuscript paper. It only remains to add one’s own personality.

E.T.: Colas is the most likeable of the villagers and above all, the sweetheart of Widow Simone’s daughter, Lise. It is essential to work on your technical resources in order to make him endearing – and then you must be able to get the right dose of humour. Colas is not a clown after all! For “La Fille”, it is essential not to resort to slapstick at the risk of turning it into a grotesque farce. The constant oscillation between comedy and romance has to be managed with great subtlety where the characters of Lise and Colas are concerned.
    

E.T.: The ballet is joyful and very pleasing. I would say that La Fille mal gardée is a ballet for all the family, par excellence. It appeals to all age groups. Young children and grandparents alike, everyone leaves the theatre with a smile on their faces!    

Realism, simplicity and gaiety are at the heart of Frederick Ashton's poetry and his ballet La Fille mal gardée. His characters' dramatic force, their comic potential and spontaneity go hand in hand with a major dose of technique. Series of batteries, arabesques, pirouettes and attitudes offer spectators truly virtuoso variations and adages. Alongside performance and technical mastery, accessories play an important role. When he enters in Act I, young Colas is holding his walking stick firmly in his hand, contributing to a joyful countryside atmosphere. On it he hangs the ribbon that Lise has left for him and then launches into a bravura piece portraying his love for the young girl. In rehearsal, Emmanuel Thibault, former Paris Opera Ballet Premier Danseur - to whom the Ballet was handed down by Alexander Grant, Ashton's rights-holder - gives some final advice to François Alu. Spontaneity and freshness are ever-present.

In both the ballets Onegin and La Fille mal gardée, the wide variety of costumes for the male dancers contributes to the theatrical illusion, transporting the spectator to a 19^th century bourgeois milieu and an 18^th century village at harvest time respectively. In his Lettres sur la Danse, published in 1760, Jean-Georges Noverre defended realistic costumes as opposed to tonnelets and masks. “Even if the costume is not absolutely realistic, there should at least be a semblance of truth. […] By costume, one should comprehend anything that can contribute, through faithful imitation, to procuring the delight that illusion affords the eye…”. What has characterised the dancer’s wardrobe since this reform in the history of ballet costumes? Encounter with Martine Kahane, former director of the Museum-Library of the Paris Opera and Roberta Oakey, in charge of the Tailoring Workshop at the Palais Garnier.   

Martine Kahane: We have, alas, very little detailed information on either the history or the evolution of costumes for male dancers. There is a great lack of source material: we know even less about men’s costumes than women’s. One thing is certain: the male costume varied according to the role. With the rise of Romantic ballet, masculine dance virtually disappeared until Serge Lifar gave increased importance to the masculine roles during the 1930s. We haven’t been able to establish a parallel between the history of feminine ballet costumes, in which the tutu is a characteristic feature, and that of the costumes for men. As early as the Baroque period, costume served as a means of indicating the role: a knight wore his tonnelet over his armour; the wizard over a long robe, whilst an oriental would have worn trousers. Roles like those of a knight, prince, peasant etc., were to take shape essentially from the French Revolution and the Romantic period onwards.   

M.K.: Military dress has had most influence on ballet costumes because the military silhouette, particularly that of the cavalry, was considered to give soldiers a “manly bearing”. Aristocratic cavalry men wore boots, close-fitting trousers and an extremely tight tunic which in fact served as a corset to support the back. Sometimes, moreover, the man wore a corset under his dolman. Often used as a costume for dancers, the military dolman clearly resembled a corset – or the top part of a tutu with long sleeves. There has always been a correlation between the soldier’s art (ars militaris) and that of the dancer (ars dansandi). The first dancing masters were military men. And in the 19^th century, the great majority of directors of the costume workshops at the Paris Opera were military tailors, as were their assistants. Then, sports clothing began to influence dance costumes. For the men, their working apparel, that worn in dance classes, corresponds exactly to the clothes worn for fencing, with a culotte (a term for trousers) that came down to the knee.   

Roberta Oakey: The cut of the suit is radically different for a dancer. The manufacture is very particular because the suit has to be strong, comfortable and attractive, and in addition to all that it must be adaptable to all kinds of fabric! Each of the six costumes in Onegin, for example, was made from a different material (wool, leather, ottoman silk, velvet, corduroy and crinkled chiffon) and it is up to us to transform these materials to make a dance costume. Even if the characters in La Fille mal gardée are peasants, most of the costumes are made with rich fabrics because they are easier to dye and to cut. We cut the costume in accordance with the performer’s build, so that he can still move freely. Lightness is an essential quality for dance costumes. The revolution in fabric technology has allowed us to reduce the weight of costumes: the use of Lycra completed changed the making of men’s costumes. Before the 1970s, the same fabrics were used for both everyday suits and theatrical costumes. And we still used the same techniques as for 19^th century everyday apparel! Amongst other things, Lycra allows the creation of shirts that are lighter and easier to care for. In the case of Onegin, we made a plastron to go under the shirt. The front looks like a real shirt in poplin with a bowtie or a necktie, but the back is in Lycra to reduce the amount of fabric.   

R.O.: We begin with a model. Next, using the dancer’s measurements, we make a paper pattern which forms the basis for the creation of a "toile" (canvas prototype). The workshop then prepares the costumes for fittings. This is a key moment in the making of a dancer’s costume, given that their build is very specific. During the fittings, we can see if we need to add more room or if the trousers are too tight. Double stitching in the crotch of the trousers is typical of dance costumes. Next, we make our alterations and send them off for the finishing touches and the decorative elements. This process is very specific to dance costumes; it doesn’t happen at all like that in the world of fashion. The two milieus are very different from one another because of the way costumes are used. At the Paris Opera, our primary concern is to think in terms of an athlete’s build and freedom of movement.