For the last 35 years, my loyal friend and sister BARBARA has been telling me: “I am the black light!” So I created a choreography about L’Aigle Noir. She then played in a movie called Je suis né à Venise, in which she was given the lead role, a character called the Bright Night, while Jorge Donn interpreted the Sun.
I met BREL in Brussels, where I was living at the time with my dance company. He was starring in Man of La Mancha at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie. He told me that “Someday, we will do something with Barbara and I”…
Maurice Béjart
In the first part, the BBL performs, in its world premiere, the new creation of Gil Roman,
entirely choreographed to the music of New York composer John Zorn.
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”.
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.
John Zorn is one of the leading composers of contemporary American music. The density and diversity of his extraordinary work, which began in the mid-1970s, as well as the audacity and artistic freedom he expressed through his craft, never ceased to challenge and fascinate the artistic director of the Béjart Ballet Lausanne. It was written that a meeting between the avant-garde musician and the choreographer would happen…
January 2016, the Village, New York. The two artists exchange for the first time about their respective artistic experiences, cultural heritage, and desire to transcend it and free themselves from it in order to push back the boundaries of art. The conversation is meaningful, rich, and passionate. Naturally, Gil Roman shares with him his desire to use his music for one of his ballets. The appointment is set….
2018, the Béjart Ballet Lausanne studio, Lausanne. Facing a considerable body of work, Gil Roman immerses himself in the various compositions making up the universe that the brilliant multi-instrumentalist has explored under Masada since 1992: touching on several hundred themes, this “corpus” forms, in a way, a “songbook” whose specific range and inflections remind us of Jewish, Klezmer or Sephardic popular music. But not only…. step by step, with a movement, a gesture, Gil Roman brings his dancers beyond the walls…
John Zorn is one of the leading composers of contemporary American music. The density and diversity of his extraordinary work, which began in the mid-1970s, as well as the audacity and artistic freedom he expressed through his craft, never ceased to challenge and fascinate the artistic director of the Béjart Ballet Lausanne. It was written that a meeting between the avant-garde musician and the choreographer would happen…
January 2016, the Village, New York. The two artists exchange for the first time about their respective artistic experiences, cultural heritage, and desire to transcend it and free themselves from it in order to push back the boundaries of art. The conversation is meaningful, rich, and passionate. Naturally, Gil Roman shares with him his desire to use his music for one of his ballets. The appointment is set….
2018, the Béjart Ballet Lausanne studio, Lausanne. Facing a considerable body of work, Gil Roman immerses himself in the various compositions making up the universe that the brilliant multi-instrumentalist has explored under Masada since 1992: touching on several hundred themes, this “corpus” forms, in a way, a “songbook” whose specific range and inflections remind us of Jewish, Klezmer or Sephardic popular music. But not only…. step by step, with a movement, a gesture, Gil Roman brings his dancers beyond the walls…