To mark the 50th anniversary of Rudolf Nureyev’s legendary production of Tschaikovsky’s ballet in 1964, the Vienna State Opera is now reviving it with new sets and costumes designed by Julia Spinatelli, whose concept is inspired by the fairytale phantasy world of King Ludwig II incorporating simple, painted backdrops and few accessories, to present a new Swan Lake.
Black & White
Wings of Wax
Jirí Kylián is a living legend. He is the creator of more than a hundred works, several of which form part of the repertories of some of the greatest dance centres in the world. Due to the choreographer’s extreme reluctance to engage in a documentary, this film is exceptional. For the first time one can have a real close look at Kylián’s life, his way of thinking and at his most significant creations. The fi lm was shot in Den Haag, Prague, Monte-Carlo and Paris.
The Best of the Bolshoi Ballet
Coppel-i.a.
While love is breaking into the lives of two young people, an artificial being will challenge what they believed they knew about it… Revisiting this classic of the Romantic repertoire, Jean-Christophe Maillot gives us, with an original musical score, a reflection on the search for the ideal partner in a technologically advanced society. Is it still the flesh and blood being with which we are familiar or a different being, making us question our allegiance to the human race? “Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo magnificent as always” (La Stampa)
Kalédoscope
In almost thirty years, Mourad Merzouki has blown up the bars of the cage. As a pioneer in the transition of hip-hop dance from the street to the stage, he has contributed to the evolution of this aesthetic and given it a prominent place in the contemporary choreographic landscape. From boxing to circus, passing through classical music or aerial dance, from one creation to the next, the audience is immersed in a new universe, always singular, poetic and visual. In this vast artistic blending constituting his repertoire, Mourad Merzouki appears as a creator-alchemist. On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Kalypso festival and the end of his term of directorship at the Centre chorégraphique national de Créteil et du Val-de-Marne, Mourad Merzouki offers a kaleidoscopic tour of his artistic career. From Käfig (1996) to Zéphyr (2021), he has taken extracts from his repertoire, echoing their universes for the first time live on stage. Placed side by side, they reveal a delightful palette of colours.
In C – A ballet by Sasha Waltz
Terry Riley’s landmark work of musical minimalism In C comes to life in this choreography by Sasha Waltz. Captured on film at the Philharmonie de Paris, no two performances of this work are ever the same. In C, consisting of 53 melodic phrases played in sequence, is translated into 53 movements with a set of rules. Within these rules, each dancer has the freedom to decide how often to repeat a certain figure. As the performers on stage execute and repeat the movement patterns, they develop a sort of “danced fugue” (NDR): “All the time, Waltz and her ensemble show us a dialogue between music and dance. What makes In C extra fascinating is that what we also have here is a conversation with space and time, the looping and overlaying movement, especially when laid over the repeating and overlapping sound, disrupting the latter in particular” (Seeing Dance).
Zéphyr
Dance against the wind: French choreographer Mourad Merzouki sails towards a new adventure in the direction of the “Everest of the seas” – the sailing race Vendée Globe. After Vertikal, which propelled hip-hop into the air, Merzouki continues to exalt this dance in a play with natural forces: from weightlessness to the breath of the wind, from vertical to horizontal, he performs a 90-degree rotation and imagines a new poetics of space in which a gentle wind of lightness blows from the west: the Zephyrus. César Award winner Armand Amar (“Le Concert”) wrote the music. “A great fresco on life […] And the magic works.” Le Figaro
Le Ballet royal de la nuit
A unique and extravagant spectacle at the crossroads of opera, ballet and artistry, captured on film for the very first time: Conductor Sébastien Daucé recreates the Sun King’s opulent Ballet royal de la nuit and evokes the splendour of the 17th century’s French court at the Théâtre de Caen. To recreate this total work of art, which brings together music and imagery, lavish decorations and opulent costumes, Daucé enlists the help of 20 singers, twelve acrobats and three jugglers as well as dancer Sean Patrick Mombruno and the musicians of Ensemble Correspondance, distinguished specialists in the music of the French Grand Siècle. And when Ballet royal de la nuit culminates in the rise of the radiating Sun, there’s nothing left but “unreserved admiration” (Le Monde) for this “exquisite Gesamtkunstwerk” (Welt.de). “A king-like, no, a veritable Sun-King-like delight!” (br.de)
BABEL 7.16
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet’s Babel 7.16 unites 22 dancers from 15 nations in a performance that explores language and its relationship with nationhood, identity and religion. The ballet takes its title and tone from the apocalyptic Bible story in which God punitively divides his people into competing nations and tongues. The imposing three-dimensional structures of Antony Gormley’s stage design suggest a nameless intersection in a city near the borders of a no man’s land. The choreography elaborates the dynamic of connection and withdrawal, sustained by the installation of light-catching steel cubes. By inviting the “astonishingly multitalented cast of dancers” the two Belgian choreographers have put the concept of masses, of history and of territory in the Cour d’Honneur du Palais des Papes in Avignon, and thus created “the most fiercely resonant dance theatre of the decade” (The Guardian).