Agathe Poupeney / OnP

Ballet

New

Marion Motin /​ Xie Xin /​ Crystal Pite

Palais Garnier

from 23 September to 12 October 2023

1h55 with 1 interval

Marion Motin /​ Xie Xin /​ Crystal Pite

Palais Garnier - from 23 September to 12 October 2023

Synopsis

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Three female choreographers feature in this contemporary dance programme. Crystal Pite’s The Seasons’ Canon, which premiered successfully in 2016 at the Paris Opera, is bathed in stormy light. Her overwhelming choreography in “canons” unleashes chain reactions and mirrored movements. Organically swarming human bodies merge with Vivaldi’s string music enhanced by Max Richter’s electronics. In The Last Call, her first creation for the Opera Ballet, Marion Motin tells the story of a phone call that upends a man’s life. Between distortion and vitality, the choreography plunges the audience into a supernatural dimension. Lastly, Chinese artist Xie Xin signs her first creation for the dancers of the Paris Opera. Her piece Horizon plays on illusions and mirages between natural elements.

Duration : 1h55 with 1 interval

  • Opening

  • First part 30 min

  • Second part 30 min

  • Intermission 20 min

  • Third part 35 min

  • End

Artists

Creation

Recorded musics

Creative team

Creation

Recorded musics

Creative team

Creative team

The Étoiles, the Premières Danseuses, the Premiers Danseurs and the Paris Opera Corps de Ballet

Media

[TRAILER] Marion Motin /​ Xie Xin /​ Crystal Pite
[TRAILER] Marion Motin /​ Xie Xin /​ Crystal Pite
  • The heart and abstraction: interview with Xie Xin

    The heart and abstraction: interview with Xie Xin

    Watch the video

  • Xie Xin between heaven and earth

    Xie Xin between heaven and earth

    Watch the video

  • Marion Motin, a moving phone call

    Marion Motin, a moving phone call

    Watch the video

  • Disappearing in a second: interview with Marion Motin

    Disappearing in a second: interview with Marion Motin

    Watch the video

  • The Creative Universe of Crystal Pite

    The Creative Universe of Crystal Pite

    Read the article

The heart and abstraction: interview with Xie Xin

Watch the video

6:19 min

The heart and abstraction: interview with Xie Xin

By Isabelle Stibbe

An interview with the Chinese choreographer Xie Xin, whose Horizon, inspired by nature and playing with illusions, is her first creation for the Paris Opera's dancers.

© Julien Benhamou / OnP

Xie Xin between heaven and earth

Watch the video

Yvon Demol rehearses Horizon

01 min

Xie Xin between heaven and earth

By Antony Desvaux

Xie Xin, the first female Chinese choreographer to be invited to the Opéra national de Paris, creates Horizon for the Ballet's dancers to mark the opening of the season. Yvon Demol, Coryphée in the Corps de Ballet, explains the particular choreographic language that gives shape to this ode to nature.

Circular movements and gestural lines evoke in turn the cycle of day and night, and the mountain ridge line. Yvon Demol discusses the breathing technique transmitted by Xie Xin in the studio, and more broadly the choreographic tools that enrich each dancer's palette during creative periods.

© Julien Benhamou / OnP

Marion Motin, a moving phone call

Watch the video

Caroline Osmont rehearses The Last Call

6:29 min

Marion Motin, a moving phone call

By Antony Desvaux

Hip-hop dance star Marion Motin creates The Last Call, her first work for the Paris Opera Ballet. Caroline Osmont, Sujet in the Corps de Ballet, introduces the characters and the story told by this ballet, in which a phone call turns a man's life upside down.

Structured in five tableaux that evoke the five stages of grief, The Last Call offers a colorful, phantasmagorical universe. Caroline Osmont explains the earthy, electric side of Marion Motin's language and the impulsive way she works in the studio.

Disappearing in a second: interview with Marion Motin

Watch the video

6:06 min

Disappearing in a second: interview with Marion Motin

By Isabelle Stibbe

In The Last Call, her first work for the Paris Opera Ballet, Marion Motin tells the story of a phone call that upends a man's life. Fascinated by the distortion of space and time, the choreography plunges the audience into a supernatural dimension.

© Julien Benhamou / OnP

The Creative Universe of Crystal Pite

Read the article

Nature as Experience

06 min

The Creative Universe of Crystal Pite

By Antony Desvaux

From one ballet to another, the Canadian choreographer, Crystal Pite, powerfully deploys a universe in which zest for life ceaselessly confronts its darker side. Bodies traversed by contrary forces, individuals in a struggle with the outside world, communities alternately united and in conflict: Crystal Pite’s aesthetics transfigure on the stage the relationships that run through our lives. Fascinated by the “natural world and the beauty and brutality that it contains”, this choreographer explores with relentless passion the same group of themes. We look back over the creative universe of Crystal Pite through five of her works.



© Angela Sterling

Emergence (National Ballet of Canada)

Is the group a cocoon or a spider’s web, a refuge or a danger? In a natural world in which our gregarious instinct holds a strong attraction, will the individual have the strength to find itself? The title of this ballet, which was first performed in 2009, refers to a book by Steven Johnson that compares the different ways in which humans and insects manage groups. How does order emerge in the heart of nature? Combining human figures and the silhouettes of insects in an aggressive and worrying ensemble, Crystal Pite gives flesh to the affects and impulses that set us moving. She admits to being fascinated by the thirst for unity (fusion, eurythmy) which resounds strongly in all of us, but which can also swallow us up. With a love for choreographing big ensembles with the potential to embody contagion phenomena (a stimulus spreading through an entity that mutates, changes structure, evolves like a flock of birds in full flight), Crystal Pite allows us to experience, in ballets that are often epic, the multiple conflicts that lie at the heart of nature.

© Christopher Duggan / Jacob’s Pillow

Dark Matters (Kidd Pivot)

A double meaning for the title of this ballet first performed in 2009. Both an evocation of dark matter, “the unexplored territory of our era” according to Crystal Pite: the group of forces that act the universe as a whole. And also the position of the choreographer: “dark matters”, in other words darkness is precisely what counts, what it is important to apprehend in order to have a better grasp of the mysterious forces at work in our souls and our bodies. We are thus caught up in an holistic entity, a single release of waves and obscure movements. In order to embody this permanent game of creation and destruction, Crystal Pite chose to stage a group of puppeteers dressed in black in the style of Bunraku. But the wooden figure they control plays no less an active part in this same process. In its turn, it reverses the roles and turns against its creator. What part do free will and manipulation play in our lives? Is the dancer capable of attaining the grace of a puppet by renouncing his/her own impulses? These question, which are not without reminding us of Kleist’s major text (On Puppet Theatre), in a subterranean way, are at work within all of Crystal Pite’s ballets.

© Jorg Baumann

The Tempest Replica (Kidd Pivot)

First performed in 2011, The Tempest Replica duplicates on stage the world invented by Shakespeare, a world both magical and interiorised. The universe of the The Tempest is here “replied to” or duplicated, unfolding in two parallel spaces. The outline of the story is presented in a minimalistic way in the manner of a storyboard, on an island reduced to the scale of a model, by white faceless bodies as if their faces had not yet been drawn. In a completely different, urban and contemporary landscape, fully fleshed-out characters dance a series of portraits (Prospero, Ariel, Caliban...), developing the motifs and emotions only lightly sketched by the chalk figures. The articulations of these marionettes are also the articulations of the narrative, which the characters duplicate as they embody them. The story on one side, the bodies on the other, meet and influence each other: games of imitation and manipulation in the midst of the tempest, all themes that run through this choreographer’s work, underpinned here by an imaginative scenography that presents them in the form of theatre that is as narrative and figurative as it gets: for Crystal Pite, the totem of abstraction no longer has any reason for being.

© Julien Benhamou / OnP

The Seasons’ Canon (Paris Opera Ballet)

In an orange light, an individual emerges from a wave of interwoven human bodies amid the ramifications of Vivaldi strings, multiplied by Max Richter’s rewriting: a fugal writing process, in “canon”, sets off a series of chain reactions, of echoing gestures and counter-rhythms through the dancers and the sounds. In this 2016 ballet, Crystal Pite offers us a striking image of nature as matrix: both the source of germination, mutation and transformation and as a closed space from which one must partially extricate oneself: the fascination of synchrony, unity and imitation (“man is a mimetic animal”, says Aristotle) but also the opposite desire to detach oneself from the suffocating effect of the herd. Nature is presented here as a struggle: at its heart an incessant conflict ensues, which questions the human group as a whole and the place of each individual.

© Michael Slobodian

Revisor (Kidd Pivot)

In 1836, Nicolas Gogol imagined a play, in the style of a farce, about an inspector general. This revisor (the original title of the play) is sent by the Czar to inspect a local administration. A young traveller, who happens to be in the area, is mistaken for the dreaded functionary: he then reveals all the pettiness and corruption but finds himself, in his turn, caught up in the web of his own growing power. In a choreographic rereading of this farce, Crystal Pite explores the relationship between words and bodies. The ballet stages an entire gallery of costumed characters who react, through movement, to a recording of the play performed by a group of actors. The interplay between words and gestures (exaggerations, discrepancies, contradictions...) renews, in the register of the grotesque and of black comedy, the theme of free will and of the puppet: are we manipulated by words or master of our affects? Or is it always something more obscure that pulls the strings?


L'Opéra chez soi

Soirée Thierrée / Shechter / Pérez / Pite
Four contemporary choreographers come together for a programme that leads the Opera’s dancers to a new form of modernity where bodies vibrate with intensity.

  • [EXTRAIT] THE LAST CALL by Marion Motin
  • [EXTRAIT] HORIZON by Xie Xin (Yvon Demol, Nine Seropian, Takeru Coste, Victoire Anquetil)
  • [EXTRAIT] THE SEASONS’ CANON by Crystal Pite
  • [EXTRAIT] THE SEASONS’ CANON by Crystal Pite
  • [EXTRAIT] THE SEASONS’ CANON by Crystal Pite

Access and services

Palais Garnier

Place de l'Opéra

75009 Paris

Public transport

Underground Opéra (lignes 3, 7 et 8), Chaussée d’Antin (lignes 7 et 9), Madeleine (lignes 8 et 14), Auber (RER A)

Bus 20, 21, 27, 29, 32, 45, 52, 66, 68, 95, N15, N16

Calculate my route
Car park

Q-Park Edouard VII16 16, rue Bruno Coquatrix 75009 Paris

Book your parking spot

Imagined as benchmark, richly illustrated booklets, the programmes can be bought online, at the box offices, in our shops, and in the theatres hall on the evening of the performance.

BUY THE PROGRAM
  • Cloakrooms

    Free cloakrooms are at your disposal. The comprehensive list of prohibited items is available here.

  • Bars

    Reservation of drinks and light refreshments for the intervals is possible online up to 24 hours prior to your visit, or at the bars before each performance.

  • Restaurant

    CoCo is open every day from 12:00 pm to 2:00 am. More information on coco-paris.com or at +33 1 42 68 86 80 (reservations).

  • Boutiques

    A selection of works and items are available on our various boutiques: Online store and the Palais Garnier Shop.

    LEARN MORE.

  • Last-minute tickets

    €10 for seats with a limited view of the stage and special reduced rates are available. 

    LEARN MORE.

  • Parking

    You can park your car at the Q-Park Edouard VII. It is located at Rue Bruno Coquatrix 75009 Paris (in front of 23 Rue de Caumartin).

    BOOK YOUR PARKING PLACE.

At the Palais Garnier, buy €10 tickets for seats in the 6th category (very limited visibility, two tickets maximum per person) on the day of the performance at the Box offices.

In both our venues, discounted tickets are sold at the box offices from 30 minutes before the show:

  • €25 tickets for under-28s, unemployed people (with documentary proof less than 3 months old) and senior citizens over 65 with non-taxable income (proof of tax exemption for the current year required)
  • €40 tickets for senior citizens over 65

Get samples of the operas and ballets at the Paris Opera gift shops: programmes, books, recordings, and also stationery, jewellery, shirts, homeware and honey from Paris Opera.

Palais Garnier
  • Every day from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. and until performances end
  • Get in from Place de l’Opéra or from within the theatre’s public areas
  • For more information: +33 1 53 43 03 97

Palais Garnier

Place de l'Opéra

75009 Paris

Public transport

Underground Opéra (lignes 3, 7 et 8), Chaussée d’Antin (lignes 7 et 9), Madeleine (lignes 8 et 14), Auber (RER A)

Bus 20, 21, 27, 29, 32, 45, 52, 66, 68, 95, N15, N16

Calculate my route
Car park

Q-Park Edouard VII16 16, rue Bruno Coquatrix 75009 Paris

Book your parking spot

Imagined as benchmark, richly illustrated booklets, the programmes can be bought online, at the box offices, in our shops, and in the theatres hall on the evening of the performance.

BUY THE PROGRAM
  • Cloakrooms

    Free cloakrooms are at your disposal. The comprehensive list of prohibited items is available here.

  • Bars

    Reservation of drinks and light refreshments for the intervals is possible online up to 24 hours prior to your visit, or at the bars before each performance.

  • Restaurant

    CoCo is open every day from 12:00 pm to 2:00 am. More information on coco-paris.com or at +33 1 42 68 86 80 (reservations).

  • Boutiques

    A selection of works and items are available on our various boutiques: Online store and the Palais Garnier Shop.

    LEARN MORE.

  • Last-minute tickets

    €10 for seats with a limited view of the stage and special reduced rates are available. 

    LEARN MORE.

  • Parking

    You can park your car at the Q-Park Edouard VII. It is located at Rue Bruno Coquatrix 75009 Paris (in front of 23 Rue de Caumartin).

    BOOK YOUR PARKING PLACE.

At the Palais Garnier, buy €10 tickets for seats in the 6th category (very limited visibility, two tickets maximum per person) on the day of the performance at the Box offices.

In both our venues, discounted tickets are sold at the box offices from 30 minutes before the show:

  • €25 tickets for under-28s, unemployed people (with documentary proof less than 3 months old) and senior citizens over 65 with non-taxable income (proof of tax exemption for the current year required)
  • €40 tickets for senior citizens over 65

Get samples of the operas and ballets at the Paris Opera gift shops: programmes, books, recordings, and also stationery, jewellery, shirts, homeware and honey from Paris Opera.

Palais Garnier
  • Every day from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. and until performances end
  • Get in from Place de l’Opéra or from within the theatre’s public areas
  • For more information: +33 1 53 43 03 97

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3 min

Marion Motin / Xie Xin / Crystal Pite

5 questions about Xie Xin

First female Chinese choreographer at the Paris Opera, Xie Xin is the leading figure of contemporary dance in China. She draws her inspiration from nature…

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