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POSTPONED
Following the latest directives from the Confederation, the Opéra de Lausanne is unfortunately forced to cancel the performances of the Béjart Ballet Lausanne on November 27, 28 and 29, 2020. They will be postponed to a date to be defined. More info here.
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The artistic collaboration, the sincere and deep friendship between Maurice Béjart and Pierre Henry, the inventor of concrete music with his accomplice Pierre Schaeffer, have marked history. One thinks of course of Symphonie pour un homme seul, the founding work of the Béjart style, proposed by the BBL as the closing of this new programme.
IMPROVISATIONS
For the opener of the night, the BBL seeks its resonance by relying on the dramatic structure of the ballet variations for “Une porte et un soupir” created in Brussels in 1965 to the music of Pierre Henry. The score is here entrusted to the group Citypercussion: the original is nothing more than the echo of a few sounds, integrated sound effects, mixed in sixteen new compositions played on stage.
THE DOOR
Still looking but on the same line with the second piece of the evening’s program. In 1970, for the launch of the Brooklyn Academy’s season in New York, Maurice Béjart caused a sensation by presenting La porte : a solo on point regulated for Maïna Gielgud to the music of four of the Variations for a door and a breathe. Here, Gil Roman questions identity by entrusting the role to a dancer for the first time.
SYMPHONY FOR A LONELY MAN
Back to the original closing programme with Symphony for a Lonely Man, sixteen years after its last performance at the Théâtre Métropole in Lausanne. It premiered in Paris before a sparse audience on July 26, 1955, this ballet reveals a choreographer whose singular personality and talent would revolutionise the art of ballet. Born from an impromptu meeting between the choreographer and the two Pierres, this first autobiography of a young choreographer giving free reign to his aspirations, this unusual piece reveals him to the world.
Jean Ellgass, Executive Director of the Béjart Ballet Lausanne
Improvisations
Based on the dramatic structure designed by Maurice Béjart
pour Variations pour une porte et un soupir
Stage Director Gil Roman
Music Thierry Hochstätter
jB Meier (Citypercussion)
Sound Extracts Pierre Henry
Costumes Henri Davila
Lighting Dominique Roman
Première
Opéra de Lausanne – November 27, 2020
La porte
Choreography Maurice Béjart
Music Pierre Henry
Costumes Henri Davila
Lighting Dominique Roman
Role in the Creation Maïna Gielgud
Première
Brooklyn Academy, New-York – 1970
Symphonie pour un homme seul
Choreography Maurice Béjart
Music Pierre Henry, Pierre Schaeffer
Costumes Henri Davila
Lighting Dominique Roman
Première
Théâtre de l’Étoile, Paris – July 26, 1955
From the Ballets de l’Étoile in Paris in 1955 to the creation of Béjart Ballet Lausanne in 1987, choreography has made a permanent mark on the world of dance.
Maurice Béjart was born 1 January 1927 in Marseille. He began his career as a dancer in Vichy in 1946, continuing with Janine Charrat, Roland Petit and in particular in London, with the International Ballet. It was while on tour in Sweden with Ballet Cullberg (1949) that he discovered methods of choreographic expression. A contract for a Swedish film brought him face to face for the first time with Stravinsky, but on returning to Paris, he started off with Chopin’s pieces under the auspices of the critic Jean Laurent. The dancer thus doubled as a choreographer. In 1955 with the Ballets de l’Étoile, he goes off the beaten track with Symphonie pour un homme seul. Noticed by Maurice Huisman, the new director of La Monnaie, four years later he accomplished a triumphant Sacre du Printemps. The following year in Brussels, he created the Ballet du XXe Siècle, an international company which he led and which travelled the world, while the list of his creations continued to grow: Boléro, Messe pour le temps présent and L’Oiseau de Feu. In 1987, le Ballet du XXe Siècle moved to the Olympic capital and became the Béjart Ballet Lausanne (BBL). In 1992, Maurice Béjart decided to reduce the size of his company to around thirty dancers to “regain the essence of interpretation” and in the same year founded the École-Atelier Rudra Béjart Lausanne. The BBL’s many creations include the ballets Le Mandarin merveilleux, King Lear – Prospero, À propos de Shéhérazade, Lumière, MutationX, La Route de la soie, Le Manteau, Enfant-Roi, La Lumière des eaux and Le Presbytère n’a rien perdu de son charme, ni le jardin de son éclat. Maurice Béjart was a theatre director (La Reine verte, Casta Diva, Cinq Nô modernes, A-6-Roc), an opera director (Salome, La Traviata and Don Giovanni), and a film director (Bhakti, Paradoxe sur le comédien…), as well as a published author (novel, memoir, diary and play). In 2007, just before he turned 80, he premiered La vie du danseur racontée par Zig et Puce. Maurice Béjart died 22 November 2007 in Lausanne while working on his final piece, Le Tour du monde en 80 minutes.
Pierre Henry was born on the 9th of December 1927 in Paris and studied music from the age of 7. In 1944, guided by Olivier Messiaen, he composed and considered the music of the future. His meeting with Pierre Schaeffer played a decisive role in developing his work. Schaeffer’s work has always been extraordinarily inspired and ambitious, and his wide and varied body of work continues to excite new audiences. Henry invented technical methods of composition that are now recognised as standard. He created a musical universe of cosmic magnitude, and a sound as recognisable and personal as those of the most famous jazz musicians. He created a world where the archaic and the mythical rub shoulders with the familiar, an alternative reality that mirrors the wonders, hopes, and fears of our time.
For nearly thirty years, the dancer performed Maurice Béjart’s most famous ballets before creating and succeeding him. Trained by Marika Besobrasova, Rosella Hightower and José Ferran, Gil Roman joined Maurice Béjart’s Ballet du XXe Siècle in 1979. For almost thirty years, he performed the choreographer’s most famous ballets. In 2007, Maurice Béjart appointed him as his successor at the head of the Béjart Ballet Lausanne.
Since 1995, his choreographic career has been rich in creations: L’habit ne fait pas le moine, Réflexion sur Béla, Échographie d’une baleine, Casino des Esprits, Aria, Syncope, Là où sont les oiseaux (world premiere at the China Shanghai International Arts Festival in 2011) and Anima blues. Since this last work in 2013, six new works have been added to the repertoire: 3 Dances for Tony, Kyôdaï, Tombées de la dernière pluie, Impromptu…, t ‘M et variations…, presented on 16 December 2016, to inaugurate the year 2017, marking the 30th anniversary of the BBL and the 10th anniversary of Maurice Béjart’s death. In April 2019 at the Opéra de Lausanne, he presents his latest creation Tous les hommes presque toujours s’imagine entirely choreographed to the music of John Zorn.
Gil Roman’s career represents more than forty years of uninterrupted dance. It was crowned in 2005 by the Danza & Danza Award for best dancer for his interpretation of Jacques Brel in the ballet Brel et Barbara, and in 2006 by the prestigious Nijinsky Award given by the Monaco Dance Forum.
In 2014, the Fondation vaudoise pour la culture awarded him its Prix du rayonnement. In November of the same year, during the Asian tour of The Ninth Symphony, he was awarded the Special Prize of the Shanghai Arts Festival. The following year, at the KKL in Lucerne, he was awarded the Maya Plisetskaya 2015 Prize at an evening tribute to the great dancer who died that year. His Excellency Mr. René Roudaut, Ambassador of France in Switzerland, awarded him, on Friday 29 May 2015 in Lausanne, the insignia of Knight in the National Order of Merit, one of the most prestigious French decorations. Four years later, the Council of State of the Canton of Vaud awarded him the Mérite cantonal for his “remarkable contribution to choreography and dance”.