Christian Lacroix’s La Source costumes are as tacky as disco

Get­ting to know a critic’s taste is import­ant to get the most out of a review. I can be con­vinced to go and see some­thing by a neg­at­ive review because I know what the writer goes for. I was there­fore sur­prised when The Times’ Debra Craine detested the look of the Paris Ballet’s La Source. I loved it.

Sump­tu­ous cos­tumes by Chris­tian Lacroix, which recall Franca Squarciapino’s bold col­our choices for the company’s pro­duc­tion of La Bay­adère, set off against a simple set made up from theatre ele­ments such as ropes and and vel­vet cur­tains: a time­less the­at­rical space which shows off the cos­tumes won­der­fully. Craine writes,

… you have to close your eyes to the ballet’s hideous mod­ern sets, one for each act. Against a dead black back­drop, Eric Ruf con­cocts an elab­or­a­tion of hanging ropes and torn vel­vet cur­tains that sug­gests an abstrac­ted vis­ion of back­stage at the Garnier Opera House, only derel­ict and dusty, as if long for­got­ten (rather like La Source itself).

This may be clever con­cep­tual think­ing but it makes a mock­ery of Bart’s attempt to anchor and embel­lish his story. We have Elves and Nymphs, Odal­isques and Caucasian war­ri­ors, but no grotto or palace to place them. There are mouth­wa­ter­ing illus­tra­tions in the pro­gramme, a hint of what might have been had a recon­struc­tion been attempted.

And then there is Chris­tian Lacroix, whose (no doubt) fab­ulously expens­ive cos­tumes are as tacky as disco (des­pite the two mil­lion crys­tals donated by Swarovski) and a breath­tak­ing repu­di­ation of fabled French elegance.

Dans les ateliers de l’Opéra Garnier avec… by la-croix

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