Paris Opera Ballet at the Hollywood Bowl – complete programme

The Paris Opera Ballet returns to international touring and will perform, at the invitation of Gustavo Dudamel, two performances at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles in front of more than 34,000 people.

Dudamel asked the company to participate in the 100th anniversary season of the Hollywood Bowl, and this will be the first time that the Paris Opera Ballet has performed in the famous LA amphitheatre.

On the immense open-air stage, and accompanied by the LA Philharmonic under the baton of Dudamel, who is also Music Director of the Opéra National de Paris, the company will present an anthology of its repertoire with Jean-Yves Thibaudet as the solo pianist.

PARIS OPERA BALLET AT THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL – PROGRAMME

GRAND PAS CLASSIQUE

Choreography Victor Gsovsky

with Valentine Colasante and Hugo Marchand

Ballet created by Yvette Chauviré and Wladimir Skouratoff in 1949 at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées and entered the repertoire of the Paris National Opera Ballet in 1964.

“Gsovsky made for me Grand pas classique in 1949. He gave it this title because he wanted it to be really classical, academic. Everything must remain in the most absolute standard. It is that which gives the panache, the elegance of the diagonal and the variation, the humour, the spirit, the voluptuous tenderness retained of this woman who knows she is loved and who also likes, in the saying, but who always dominates…” – Yvette Chauviré

LE PARC – pas de deux

Choreography Angelin Preljocaj

with Laura Hecquet and Germain Louvet

Ballet created for the Paris National Opera Ballet in 1994.

Love begins like a game of musical chairs in which glances, gestures and smiles are exchanged according to desire and mood. The protagonists draw closer, gamble, take risks, and show their hand before the ultimate soaring surrender as they abandon themselves entirely to love's desires. Such is the passionate, sensual journey that Preljocaj brings to life in Le Parc.

THE DYING SWAN

Choreography Mikhail Fokine

with Dorothée Gilbert

Ballet created in 1905 and entered the repertoire of the Opera in 1937.

To the melancholy music of Camille Saint-Saëns for cello and piano, taken from Carnaval des animaux, the Russian choreographer Mikhail Fokine imagined in 1907 a solo that has become mythical: (in the words of the Paris Opera press office) “a swan, in the guise of a bird-woman, fights relentlessly against death. Exhausted, he falls to the ground, regains his strength, gets up again, but in vain: the bird offers a last flap of its wings before its agony.”

Created for Anna Pavlova, the first incarnation of this tragic figure, the ballet entered the repertoire of the Paris Opera in 1937 in a version directed by Serge Lifar.

FAUNES

Choreography Sharon Eyal

with Marion Barbeau, Caroline Osmont, Nine Seropian, Marion Gautier de Charnacé, Héloïse Jocqueviel, Simon Le Borgne, Yvon Demol, and Antonin Monié

Ballet created on 1 December 2021 by the Paris Opera Ballet

“Nijinsky's L'Après-midi d'un faune is a work that marked me as a child. It's something that's in me. When I see it, I remember it. I love this style; its visual side inspires me. And also this quiet dramatic feeling… you don't need to do so much. A few elements and intimate, minimalistic gestures. It's something that I love. I work like that, and we find that in this creation.” – Sharon Eyal

TROIS GNOSSIENNES

Choreography Hans van Manen

with Ludmila Pagliero and Hugo Marchand

Ballet created on 5 March 1982 at the Stadsschouwburg of Amsterdam by the Dutch National Ballet and entered the repertoire of the Opera in 2017.

Taking the title of a score by Erik Satie with a dreamy atmosphere dreamy atmosphere, where romanticism and modesty are mixed, but also smiles and winks, Hans van Manen stages in this ballet created in 1982, a duet between a man and a woman in a refined style. The choreography, like a serene and harmonious surface and harmonious surface disturbed by slight tensions, echoes to Satie's dissonances which melt lovingly into a monotonous in a monotonous languor.

SWAN LAKE – Act II pas de deux

Choreography Rudolf Nureyev after Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov

with Sae Eun Park and Paul Marque

Ballet created in 1984 by the Paris Opera Ballet

In the version he presented in 1984 at the Palais Garnier, Rudolf Nureyev proposed a “Freudian” rereading of Petipa and Lev Ivanov's ballet: Prince Siegfried escapes from the reality of power and marriage to take refuge in dreams, where a magical lake appears to him, carrying the idealised love of a swan-woman.

In this pas de deux of Act II, Siegfried, lost in his dreams, sees a swan-woman appear. She confides in him that she is a Princess, that her name is Odette and that she has been changed into a swan; she can only be delivered from this curse by the one who will give her his love forever. Siegfried offers Odette to be her saviour.

CLAIR DE LUNE

Choreography Alastair Marriott

with Germain Louvet

Ballet created in 2017 by Mathieu Ganio at the Coliseum Theatre in London and entered the repertoire of the Paris Opera Ballet in 2020

Commissioned to choreographer Alastair Marriott by the contemporary art magazine The Beauty Papers, Clair de lune was first created by Edward Watson at the Royal Opera House as a film directed by Laurence Ellis. The first public performance of the ballet, danced by Mathieu Ganio, took place at the Coliseum Theatre in London as part of Ivan Putrov's Men in Motion event to celebrate male dance.

THE VERTIGINOUS THRILL OF EXACTITUDE

Choreography William Forsythe

with Valentine Colasante, Hannah O'Neill Marine Ganio, Pablo Legassa, and Paul Marque

Ballet created in 1996 by the Frankfurt Ballet and entered the repertoire of the Paris Opera Ballet in 1999. The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude is the second part of Two Ballets in the Manner of the late 20th Century, last opus of Six Counter Points.

Forsythe who long dreamed of choreographing a ballet to Franz Schubert's Ninth Symphony devised a lively and precise pas de cinq for the last four movements of the score. In Stephen Galloway's original costumes – backless fluorescent green ‘pancake' tutus for the women and form-fitting tee-shirts and shorts for the men – the performers offer a brilliant demonstration of the purest classical vocabulary, with an avalanche of fouettés and pirouettes and dazzling changes of direction. Coming one after another in a tapestry of breath-taking variations, they offer each other centre stage with a formal courtesy worthy of the ballets of Marius Petipa in the 19th century.

Gramilano( Editor )

Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.

His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.