Dance for You Magazine Issue 76 (2017)

The Paris Opera Ballet in 'Bella Figura' © Ann Ray - ONP
Jiří Kylián at the Paris Opera
ALESSANDRO BIZZOTTO considers the program that includes three works by the Czech choreographer
As far as the artistic choices of the seasons are concerned, Aurélie Dupont’s
first move as the new director of the Paris Opera Ballet was
to cancel the program that Benjamin Millepied had scheduled to go
on stage at the Palais Garnier during the holiday season, a very interesting
one including Antony Tudor’s “The Leaves are Fading” and a new Millepied’s
creation. And to replace it with this mixed bill wholly devoted to the Czech
choreographer who worked a lot with the Paris Opera Ballet in the 1990s
and in the early 2000s, creating his “Feuillet d’automne”, “Doux mensonges”
and “Il faut qu’une porte” for the French company.
Whatever the reason, the fact remains that the audience (and maybe the
company as well) would have benefited much more by Millepied’s first
choice, or at least by Tudor’s splendid work.
The whole advertising campaign of this bill used “Bella Figura”, the first ballet
of the night, as a lever to win the audience. As this ballet is not just the
best of the bill, but probably also one of Kylián's most famous and loved
works. Set to baroque music that include selections of Pergolesi, Vivaldi,
Marcello, it plays with the dancers’ bodies between light and shadows, with
one of them (on December 30 the fantastic Muriel Zusperreguy) who even
happens to be embraced by the curtain, held aloft and then released. With
“Bella Figura” Kylián shows he knows what theatricality is – the ballet explores
the idea of performance while a curtain opens and closes, rises and falls
in a sort of oneiric atmosphere.
The dancers, that start the performance in advance with lights up and people
still taking their seats, as if they were having a last stage rehearsal, wear long
red skirts or violet leotards and smoothly move with classical elegance and
modern overtones. The whole ballet seems somehow too enigmatic, coldly
cerebral, but the Parisian dancers give powerful intensity to Kylián’s imagination.
Muriel Zusperreguy leads the cast dancing with determined energy, being
graceful and sublimely delicate as well. She brings on stage both fragrance and
elegant enthusiasm: mysterious and passionate, Zusperreguy is as sensational
as always. It is great to see also how Valentine Colasante enjoys the experience
of dancing each second of this ballet – she always brings romantic drama and
tension with her. Colasante’s glances and intentions are wholly devoted to the
choreography, her charm is dazzling and her duet with Zusperreguy, set to Lukas
Foss’ Lento from the “Salomon Rossi Suite”, is genuinely touching.
“Tar and Feathers” adds no beauty at all to this bill. The cast, with Alice
Renavand in the main female role, barely dances. The dancers walk and sit
down as pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama improvises while perched on a two
meter-high platform. Music is sometimes overlaid with spoken fragments
from Samuel Beckett’s “What is the word” and growls of wild beasts. Some
cautious movements pop on a bubblewrap carpet – as annoyingly interruptive
as the beasts’ sounds.
So the whole ballet, hardly understandable, ends up being just irritating.
Marion Barbeau does her utmost so to be as elegant as possible. 23-year-old
Hugo Marchand, a Millepied favorite, this time is underused by Dupont
in a role that makes him lying down for nearly half of the performance.
When eight couples enter the stage for the last ballet of this mixed bill,
“Symphony of Psalms”, the attention slightly picks up again. But “Tar and
Feathers” has already tired the audience.
Set against an overlay of suspended tapestries, the couples sweep across
the stage in a kind of ritualistic way. With chairs lining the back and one
side of the stage, Kylián shows us a kind of ceremony – a group marriage? A
form of funeral? Or is it just a courtship dance, after all? Probably influenced
by folk dance, the turbulent choreography of “Symphony of Psalms” makes
the dancers lean on each other, walk on their knees, held out their arms,
moving in a heavy way.
Ambiguity can be intriguing to some extent, but not for 25 minutes and at
the end of such a cryptic program.
Well partnered by Aurélien Houette, Valentine Colasante is the only one
who truly shines – her duets are magnificent, gently combative.
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