Ballets by Maurice Béjart at the Paris Opera. Review

In the Opera Bastille, the screenings of Maurice Béjart’s one-act ballets program, timed to coincide with the 15th anniversary of the death of the choreographer, have ended. A trio of hits from Bejart’s “golden fund” of the 1970s – “The Firebird”, “Songs of a Wandering Apprentice” and “Bolero” – in this arrangement the audience has not seen for many years. The program provided the box office for the opera, and gave the troupe artists the opportunity to express themselves, which both the younger generation and seasoned stars took advantage of, as I was convinced Maria Sidelnikova.

Based on the history of the personal relationship between Maurice Bejart and the Paris Opera, one can shoot an action-packed drama in which there is one step from love to hate. The southern temperament of Berger (when he moved to the capital, he would change his peasant surname – “bergere” in French shepherd – to the aristocratic Bejart) did not want to get along with the ceremonial orders of the main French theater. However, despite personal grievances and behind-the-scenes troubles, his ballets make up a weighty layer in the Opera’s repertoire (23 titles for the troupe and three more for the School). Not all of them grow old in step with the times, but the triad compiled by Aurelie Dupont – “The Firebird”, “Songs of the Wandering Apprentice” and “Bolero” – is a win-win.

The final performance of Béjart’s program at the Opera Bastille brought together all the local ballet world. The occasion was the return of Alice Renavan, the iconic étoile for the last decade of the Parisian troupe. Last summer, in the year of the official end of her career, Renavan swung at Giselle, a part that she had long dreamed of performing, but did not have time to. The long-awaited debut at the age of 42 – and, as luck would have it, an injury right in the middle of the farewell performance, also the first in my life. General director Alexander Nef and at that time the artistic director of the ballet Aurelie Dupont promised the ballerina to repeat the farewell (see “Kommersant” dated July 20, 2022). Only this time there was no hype around the Adye. On the contrary, Alice Renavan herself reduced the solemnity of the event almost to nothing.

The level of performance rose gradually. The program was opened by The Firebird, Igor Stravinsky’s first ballet. Passionate Russophile Maurice Béjart staged his version of the masterpiece “Russian Seasons” in 1970 for the Paris Opera. From a folklore tale, he made a militant ode to freedom and liberation, where a proud “red” bird infects a gray, indecisive mass with its bright idea and it is impossible to stop it. The times were lively then, the fervor of student uprisings still blazed in French society. The current generation seems to be no stranger to riots either, but nevertheless the poetic part of the performance was a success for the Parisians better than the revolutionary one. The “first dancer” Francesco Mure – a stocky, dexterous soloist with a good dramatic talent, known for his explosive temperament – with all his virtues, did not succeed in carving a flame out of a spark.

In “Songs of a Traveling Apprentice” to the music of the cycle of the same name by Gustav Mahler, passions also blaze, but more and more inside. Mahler’s song about a young apprentice who wanders the world in search of a master, Bejart choreographically opened for a whole palette of interpretations and meanings. Formally, this three-part duet of suites is quite uncomplicated – flirtatious transfers of combinations, viscous adagios with sensual supports, conditional struggle. Filling this form with meaning depends on the performers, it is not for nothing that during his lifetime Bejart trusted his ballet only to the best. Rudolf Nureyev, despite all the conflicts with Bejart, made the Apprentice party one of his main ones. In it, he also said goodbye to the scene, when it was already obvious that not a metaphorical death, but quite a real one, was dragging him by the hand into other worlds.

Guillaume Diop and Marc Moreau, the first male étoiles of the new artistic director Jose Martinez, who had just received the highest rank, became debutants in the current session of the Song. For Moreau, this is a late appointment; at the age of 36, no honors are expected in Paris anymore. He is short, jumpy, does not shine with outstanding data, but is reliable as a partner, noble in dance, smart in interpretations and has an innate sense of the stage. Diop is the complete opposite. He is young – only 23 years old, handsome as a prince, spoiled by natural gifts and media attention. Upon appointment, he appeared on the front pages of almost all the world’s newspapers as “the first black dancer-etoile of the Opera”, although he was a mestizo and inherited the ideal ballet morphology of his French mother. The joint work of Moro and Diop really became a “song”. A playful kitten and a dangerous Mephistopheles, youth and maturity, vulnerability and dominance, vulnerable sensuality and sensuality that wants to hurt, worship, competition, humility – emotions and stories, both invested in this twenty-minute duet beyond measure. That’s really according to Béjart: not to tell anything, but to say a lot.

More eloquent than any words was the appearance of Alice Renavan in Bolero: one can only guess what it cost her to climb the red table after a rupture of the cruciate ligaments and long months of rehabilitation, not only physical, but also psychological. In order not to risk it, Renavan, with the consent of Bezhar’s tutors, reduced the number of jumps to a minimum, as Claude Bessy and Maya Plisetskaya had done before her, but otherwise she danced according to the script. True, she performed the first minutes of Ravel’s notes-incantations so mechanically and constrainedly that the thought flashed through – what if again? But at some point, as if an internal toggle switch worked, her Bolero began to gain momentum. It was a fight with myself, with trauma, with age, with circumstances, with emotions. However, Alice did not control them at all before the finale: she lashed herself with whips, vampirically pulled energy from the corps de ballet and reveled in the love of the audience, which exploded with the last chord. A fifteen-minute standing ovation, the traditional star shower, colleagues, relatives, friends and no tears: she cried them on Giselle – and now she was shining with the smile of the winner.