In mid-June the Béjart Ballet Lausanne came out with the new, highly anticipated programme, which, in addition to Béjart’s famous classic (Boléro), comprised two ballet premieres: Valentina Turcu’s Hamlet and Giorgio Madia’s Rhapsody in Blue. All six performances (14-19 June 2024) in the stunning, elegant hall of the Beaulieu Theatre were sold out, making a special note about the fact that all the 1600 seats have the perfect view of the stage. The Béjart Ballet Lausanne remains faithful to its mission of preserving the works of the great wizard of dance theatre Maurice Béjart, however the company periodically enriches its repertory with new works by younger, contemporary choreographers. These are usually artists who have themselves, as Béjart’s former dancers, undergone the creative process of working with the company, absorbing the specific spirit, high level of technique and refined aesthetics of his ballets. In such an outstanding balance of new and anthological pieces, this great (currently according to the bulletin 15 female and 21 male dancers), historical ballet company is still fresh, exciting and – attractive to the audience.
Both Valentina Turcu and Giorgio Madia continued their careers across the world after leaving this magnificent ‘nursery’ of Béjart’s, exploring the new potentials of contemporary ballet. (We are lucky that the Zagreb Ballet was also on their creative itineraries; with Valentina it reached amazing peaks in the ballets Death in Venice (more here) and Madame Bovary (more here), and Madia gave it a touch of carefree playfulness with brilliant quirks in Peter Pan (more here) and Dangerous Liaisons (more here). An invitation to collaborate with the Béjart Ballet is a great honor and acknowledgment to the artists that they have made this particular step, a breakthrough in artistic maturation, sufficiently visible, intriguing and reputable on the international scene.
All in all, on Sunday, 16 June, we found ourselves, immensely excited, in the Beaulieu Theatre in Lausanne. The evening opened with Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Valentina Turcu’s physical, dance theatre reading, to the bravely selected soundtrack of Max Richter, Muse and Cigarettes After Sex. In an hour of overstretched running time on stage, during which you seem to stop breathing, with eleven outstandingly expressive, virtuoso dancers, the author lines up fascinating images, inscribing into the bodies the essence of every relationship with sharp choreo-dramatic moves. Her contemporary and engaged dialogue with the famous text is, as always, an authentic female point of view. All the characters are driven by love in their twisted versions of jealousy, endangerment, doubt, passion and manipulation. Relationships between parents and children, partners, brothers, friends, additionally nested inside the trap of the court community, in their archetypal pattern are derailed out of balance and emphasized to the breaking point. This derailment was caused by death, i.e. the King’s murder. And as Rosencrantz says: “The cess of majesty dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw what’s near it with it” (W. Shakespeare, Hamlet, act three, scene three).
Opening the black box (which is itself a real ‘mousetrap’) introduces us in the center of the tragedy. A hyperrealist black and white ‘group photo’ with chairs and an umbrella in an empty space. Everyone, the ten of them wearing black, are gathered around the late King (Julien Favreau), elegant and relaxed in a white suit, with an impenetrable gaze behind sunglasses. There are Hamlet (Óscar Eduardo Chacón), Ophelia (Min Kyung Lee), Gertrude (Solène Burel), Claudius (Jeronimas Krivickas), Laertes (Oscar Frame), Polonius (Angelo Perfido), Horatio (Zsolt Kovacs), Rosencrantz (Hideo Kishimoto) and Guildenstern (Kwinten Guilliams). And on the side, ‘El Sinor’ (Masayoshi Onuki), Mr. Death, the undertaker and Yorick in one, careful and obliging, mainly disinterested. All of them are royally stiff, tense, electrified in their emotionally torn position of doubting everybody else. And then, the ‘Ghost of Hamlet’s Father’ serenely makes the shape of a crown above his head with his hands. He is still the King, dangerously convincing, insulted, relentless, vengeful and cruel; he is about to launch chaos and unbudgingly sacrifice his son, and then (literally, dead, on his coat) drag him with him. He is also the Kingdom, and the Old Testament sullen god father, followed by the ‘flood’. In an onstage whirl of embodied desires, passions, misunderstandings, non-listening, misinterpretations, misconceptions, good intentions and bad decisions, a tragic ‘dropout’ game begins.
Valentina’s pure gestures are powerful and painful and significant, like when the Father puts his coat around the quivering Hamlet, as if to soothe the son, to warm him up, while in fact he perfidiously deftly ties the sleeves around him, leaving him exposed, like Isaac. Or the ‘mousetrap’ which is, for Hamlet’s sake, played by Ophelia (one pair of red gloves is all it takes to transform into the queen mother) and Horatio.
The central point of the ballet is Ophelia’s death: the gentle and fragile dancer is a visually powerful interplay with transparent foil which, only for a moment, might also evoke a wedding dress, but then it wraps her in an unbreakable membrane and ‘drowns’ her. Followed by silence, as though the world has stopped. And in this silence, El Sinor’s wondrous solo, like a dance monologue of the servant of Death, an undertaker touched for a brief moment by this destiny, only to make everything ready for ‘the grand finale’ with a mean grumble. He clears the scene, arranges and knocks down chairs, turns the light on the bottom of the chairs on. And on go the death tornado, interconnected duets and duels spinning increasingly wildly and frantically.
Rhapsody in Blue (1924) by George Gershwin in Giorgio Madia’s carefree, funny, musical and playful choreography and performed by a large cast was a perfect fit after the intermission following Hamlet. A new panache, swiftness, accentuated lightness (of being) and the pleasure of the body led by amazing music in a blue twilight when the lights turn on, gently evoking the glow of the Broadway scene for which Gershwin composed many musicals. Madia celebrates with Gershwin, who imagined Rhapsody a hundred years ago as a kaleidoscope of America, an enthused community of different cultures and musical traditions, considering it close to Béjart’s artistic view. The choreographer translated this freedom of choice of sources and rhythms into movement as a joyful caprice; skillfully, musically and with loads of charm he achieved a cheerful dynamics of dance forms.
And last but not least: a return to Béjart. We saw Boléro seven months ago in Zurich (more here), also performed by Elisabet Ros (the evening before it was danced by Julien Favreau, since February 2024 the new artistic director of the BBL), but this was an entirely different performance and an entirely different dancer. Back then, in a large theatre where the BBL had two visiting performances a day, this seemed like a suspenseful epic fight, and another victory of the pale, exhausted dancer. In the Beaulieu Theatre we witnessed a youthfully fresh, fit Elisabet Ros, proud and mighty, easily bringing Ravel’s crescendo and Béjart’s inspired ritual to its peak.
© Maja Đurinović i Anja Đurinović, BALETI.hr, July 8, 2024.
