Ballet Starfall – Style

The Paris Opera has opened the 2023/24 season. The ballet part, consisting of the premieres of Nicolas Paul, Marion Motan and Xi Sin, the resumption of Season’s Canon by Crystal Pite and the historical fashion show, was the responsibility of the artists and students of the school. For a social performance in the golden decorations of the Garnier Palace – the main patron of the evening is Chanel. For dinner under the arches of the Grand Foyer for fifty guests – young stars of the French gastronomic scene Gregory Marchand, Takao Inazawa, Nadi Samyu, Bertrand Grebaud and Fanny Pyre.

The ballet gala at Opera Garnier for the opening of the season is a relatively recent tradition for the three-century history of the cultural institution, but it is quite established. It is organized by the patronage association AROP (Association for the Prestige of the Paris Opera) with the support of faithful partners of recent years, Rolex and Chanel, and all proceeds from the magnificent evening go to the treasury of the theater. AROP appeared in the late 1970s on the initiative of President Giscard d’Estaing, who was tired of supporting the Opera and proposed creating a private philanthropic organization following the example of American and English theaters. They found a banker and a great music lover, Claude Jansen, who talked with friends, among whom was Jerome Seydoux. The millionaire producer, who is now better known as the grandfather of Lea Seydoux, led the venture. There were many stages in the history of this undertaking: the most generous gifts from the wealthiest connoisseurs of beauty from all over the world, and high-profile scandals. Once, at the end of the 1980s, Baroness Marie-Hélène de Rothschild called her French and American friends to the Opera Garnier for a gala, they put on their best, arrived at the palace, and there the most unpleasant news awaited them: the ballet people decided to go on strike in the morning , and the performance was cancelled. A curtain.

There have been no such incidents in the recent history of AROP. Today’s ballet dancers are on friendly terms with philanthropic brands. The entrance onto the central staircase of a brilliant team of star-etoiles, dressed from head to toe in Chanel, to the applause of dinner guests, makes even the most fashion-averse men in tails turn away from food and business conversations. Here all that remains is to complain that Chanel still does not have a men’s line, because the influence of Étoiles-boys in the modern fashion world is difficult to overestimate.

Opera Garnier on this exceptional evening truly shines as in the times of the Second Empire, when people came to the theater both to show themselves and to look at people. Charles Garnier, who built the staircase and hall the size of a theater hall, would have been pleased. In addition to the artists, this year they looked at Charlotte Casiraghi, who had become even slimmer (her love for ballet was passed on from her mother, Princess Caroline of Monaco, patron of the Monte Carlo troupe), actresses Rebecca Marder, Ana Girardot, Emma Mackie, Clémence Poesy, Minister of Culture Rima Abdul- Malak, who shared a box with the head of Chanel’s fashion division, Bruno Pawlowski. He arrived at the ball almost from a ship – immediately after the visit of the British royal couple to Le 19M, the abode of Chanel’s artisans, and during the intermission the only talk was about Queen Camilla’s couture snow-white coat and Brigitte Macron’s red tweed jacket. They argued about who is more beautiful. Interested people found no reason to argue: it was more expensive to see couture items on the Queen of Great Britain and the First Lady of France, who until now preferred the house from Rue Cambon to its competitors.

For balletomanes, there is no more beautiful performance than the Paris Opera’s catwalk show of Berlioz’s March of the Trojans, which in recent years, alas, has been reserved only for patrons of the arts. This great ballet parade was staged in 1946, following the example of military parades on Red Square, and was patented by Serge Lifar, although the pioneer was Leo Staats, who invented the fashion show 20 years earlier. All capacities of the school and troupe take part in it: from 8-year-old “pups” taking their first steps in the profession, to 41-year-old artists who have a season left before retirement. This year, for the last time, étoile Miriam Ould-Braham walked 46 meters of the stage with a cat’s step (the knowledgeable part of the audience burst into applause). Carrying himself proudly, one of the most prominent handsome men of the troupe, the first dancer Audric Bezard, savored the moment and pre-retirement “plots” in the person of Sebastien Berto and Pauline Verdusin. There were etouiles for whom this fashion show was the first in a new status. And their artistic director, Jose Martinez, announced separately: Hannah O’Neill, Marc Moreau and Guillaume Diop. All three were his appointees, and all received their share of applause. The Audience Award was won by Diop, the most media and youngest mulatto etoile of the current troupe. For the finale of the defile, another beautiful tradition of the Opera was prepared – farewell to the stage. We saw off etoile Emily Cosette. She has never been a truly star ballerina, she has danced very little in recent years, but status is status, so there was a farewell fashion show under the rain of stars.

Cosette’s husband and choreographer Nicolas Paul dedicated to her the composition “Multiple Peculiarities,” commissioned especially for the gala, to music by Andre Caplet with Chanel costumes. The ballet was staged for three actors: Hannah O’Neill, Amaldine Albisson and Valentin Kolozant – and is intended to show how a costume can change shape, determine movement, change posture, attitude, appearance, but it cannot change personality. The simple ballet dancer will be forgotten and go into storage, but in it one could see artistic director José Martinez’s bid for the future of the Parisian troupe: modern pointe classics are his vector, and Paul’s composition is the first step in this direction. The main program featured a female trio: two new ballets by debutantes of the Paris Opera – “Last Call” by the Frenchwoman Marion Motan and “Horizon” by the Chinese Xi Xing, as well as the absolute hit of the Parisians – the revived “The Season’s Canon” by Crystal Pite. Reviews of them will be published in the “Culture” section of the Kommersant newspaper.

Maria Sidelnikova