Review: Paris Opera Ballet Kicks Off New Season With Futuristic Choreography
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Version 0 of 1. PARIS — Tropical flowers dripped off the gilded balconies and balustrades of the Palais Garnier. Huge parrots presided over the brightly hued display, and a tiger prowled through the plant-filled basin of a fountain. French pop stars and actors posed for photographs; women in couture on needle-sharp heels negotiated the crowds. (The parrots and tiger were stuffed. The women were real.) All the effort was for Saturday night’s gala opening of the Paris Opera Ballet season, with a new piece, “The Seasons’ Canon,” by Crystal Pite, and William Forsythe’s recent “Blake Works I,” following the traditional “Défilé,” a ceremonious presentation of the Paris Opera Ballet School and the company. But the show was only partly onstage. It’s the second year that the Opera has put on a splashy season-opening event. The inaugural gala, last year, celebrated the start of the first season planned by Benjamin Millepied, who had become the director of dance in 2014, and who introduced, among other things, the notion of a glamorous, American-style event that would attract major donors, corporate sponsors and a glittering crowd. It was a celebrity studded, spectacular affair, with the French president, François Hollande, in attendance, as well as Natalie Portman, Mr. Millepied’s wife, and it made the most of the opulence and history of the Palais Garnier. But before the end of that season, Mr. Millepied announced his resignation, and in July he left, replaced by the former Paris Opera étoile Aurélie Dupont. It was Ms. Dupont, with Stéphane Lissner, the director of the Paris Opera, who presided over this year’s event, and although the ballets on the program were commissioned by Mr. Millepied, and his gala format was closely followed, his name was never mentioned. (An Opera spokeswoman said that the gala raised “about the same” amount as last year, around $1.12 million.) In a post-performance speech, Ms. Dupont praised the diversity of the company’s repertory as “unique in the world”; it’s worth remembering that whatever Mr. Millepied may have done well or badly during his short tenure, it was he who convinced Mr. Forsythe to create his first ballet in 17 years for this company, and he who invited the Canadian-born Ms. Pite, an established figure in the Anglo-Saxon dance world who was virtually unknown in France. The audience leapt to their feet (unusual here), applauding wildly at the end of “Seasons’ Canon,” set to Max Richter’s adaptation of Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons.” It’s not hard to understand why. Working with 54 dancers, Ms. Pite has created massed blocks of movement that focus on large-scale patterning to often thrilling effect. Bodies ripple in waves across the stage; complex formations swirl headily as multiple groups run in different directions, taking up sequential positions, then abruptly running again. Dancers fall like dominoes; line up and windmill their arms down; stop suddenly and twitch heads, necks and upper bodies in abrupt, robotic unison. It’s tribal, futuristic and a bit like an opening ceremony for a post-apocalyptic Olympics. The performers, dressed by Nancy Bryant, each wear baggy khaki green trousers; the women have sheer flesh-toned tops, the men are bare-chested. Their throats are painted blue-green; the only flash of color on the dark stage, animated to often-brilliant effect by a backdrop of smoky swirling lights and glowing color. (The set is by Jay Gower Taylor, lighting by Tom Visser.) But the piece feels all about effect. (It is not helped by the rousing familiarity of Mr. Richter’s score, which is inexplicably not played live.) Ms. Pite has done this visceral crowd-stirring stuff before, both in “Emergence” (2009) and in “Polaris” (2014), and there is no doubt of her expertise. Oddly, the result reminded me of work by the provocative choreographer Maurice Béjart, hugely popular in France from the 1960s through the ’80s. This is not a likely association with the ballet-trained Ms. Pite, who danced with Mr. Forsythe’s Frankfurt Ballet for five years early in her career, and whose earlier repertoire has included works of far more intimacy, dramatic subtlety and choreographic invention. There is little in “Seasons’ Canon” to suggest an interest in movement innovation or in using the Opera dancers’ advanced ballet technique. Although there are several principal dancers (Marie-Agnès Gillot, François Alu, Ludmila Pagliero and Alice Renavand among them) in the piece, and solos or duets for them pop up briefly, mass movement keeps swamping all. The bombast of “Seasons’ Canon” feels all the more marked next to Mr. Forsythe’s “Blake Works I,” a detailed and joyous homage to French classicism, beautifully danced by its original cast on Saturday. “Seasons’ Canon” will be a hit for the Paris Opera Ballet, but I wish Ms. Pite had choreographed something really new. |