Choreography: Davide Bombana
Music: J-S Bach
Duration: 25 mn
19 dancers
"The art of the fugue has always fascinated me for its complexity, but also and above all for the great emotion that this sublime music conveys.
I generally find Bach's music ideal for dance, and in the case of 'The Art of the Fugue' we are faced with the maturity of a genius, even if death prevented Johann Sebastian Bach from completing the piece. We were never really sure either of the exact order of the fugues or of the type of instruments or ensemble that should have been used.
All this lends a sense of mystery and fragmentary quality that makes the music even more irresistible.
I use several of the various musical versions of the piece for my ballet, but the ballet begins and ends with the harpsichord. The ballet has no story, I simply let myself be led through this labyrinth of 'Themes and Variations' letting the dance, in its purest and most abstract form, speak through its beauty, its dynamics, its pulsations."
Photo: Nathalie Sternalski
Choreography: Jean-Charles Gil
Music: Georges Gershwin
Duration: 25 mn
Jean-Charles Gil has danced almost all of Balanchine's repertoire, and is imbued with the choreographer's musicality. It is with this memory that he approaches the music of Gershwin that Balanchine chose to create "Who Cares?
Sweet Gershwin is a piece written with fluidity and elegance, similar to a tangy "sweet" from which everyone can choose the flavour to take away with them. In this technically demanding piece, the dancers on pointe seem to have a presence that is both mischievous and sensual, and the dancers slip into the rhythm of the melody, recalling American musicals.
Photo: Nathalie Sternalski
Choreography: Claude Brumachon
Music: Beethoven
Duration: 8 mn
2 dancers
Duo from Écorchés Vifs, a choreographic ambulatory created by Claude Brumachon at the Musée Bourdelle in May 2003. Between dance and sculpture, there is the opposite extreme; between dancer and sculptor, there is the extreme close-up. From the small to the immense, from the speck of dust to the elevation, wanting to engulf the world in the gaze of a statue and represent the unreal in the reality of a posture.
Photo: Nathalie Sternalski
Choreography: Katarzyna Gdaniec and Marco Cantalupo
Music: J. S. Bach - harpsichord concerto BWV 1052
A co-production by compagnie linga and l'Octogone, Théâtre de Pully
Duration: 25 mn
4 dancers
Concerto, based on a work for harpsichord by J.S. Bach, is a conference meeting, a four-way game played on, under and around a table. As if in a timeless allegory of discussion, differences and opposites, the four characters fight to exhaustion, to the last note, until they reach a common vision and mutual agreement. Created for the Opéra de Lausanne in 1996, this piece has entered the repertory of the Florence Opera, the Mannheim Opera, the National Ballet of Portugal, and most recently the Ankara Opera.
Photo: Nathalie Sternalski
Choreography: Christophe Garcia
Music: Laurier Rajotte
Duration: 7 mn
2 dancers
This duo stops for a moment in the journey of two young men.
They are linked by a history, by a past, but above all by a shared desire to move forward.
They lean on each other, accompany each other, support each other and move forward... Liveliness, impulsiveness and exaltation intersect with doubt, downfalls and dead ends.
Photo: Nathalie Sternalski
Choreography: Christophe Garcia
Music: Music: Cesar Franck - Prelude, Fugue and Variation opus 18 nr.3 from the Six Pieces for Organ", Karin Küstner Accordion
Duration: 12 mn
5 dancers
There are 5 of them. In a corner. Since when? Out? What for? To go where?
Photo: Nathalie Sternalski
Choreography: Jean-Christophe Maillot
Music: Alfred Schnittke
Duration: 21 mn
18 dancers
Based on a set designed by Dominique Drillot, Recto Verso invites us on a journey to the other side of the mirror, the archaic medium of divination and the place where Sufis saw the "infinite essence" contemplated in multiple forms. Here Jean-Christophe Maillot reflects on the age-old experience of the dancer and choreographer, the narcissism of the artist, the question of doubling, of masculine/feminine duality. So what does this silent form that the mirror keeps locked up have to say to us, and what is its nature? Who is the other looking back at me in this face-to-face ordeal, and which one seduces the other? Recto Verso raises the questions that confront the choreographer in his creative work, particularly that of his relationship with the dancer.
Photo: Nathalie Sternalski