Review: Coco Chanel with National Ballet of Brno – an excellent biographical ballet

Mário Radačovský’s Coco Chanel is fast becoming a staple in the repertoire of the National Ballet of Brno. Premiered in May 2024, it has already been revived several times and has also grown, with an additional fifteen-minute section, interpreting Chanel’s dalliance with Igor Stravinsky being added to the front end of the second act. Performed in part to Francesco Piemontesi’s tremendous piano reduction of The Firebird’s apotheosis, it is an essential addition to the ballet.

Chanel’s life presents a delicious dichotomy. This most famous of all fashion icons, whose name, 55 years after her death, is still a global brand, nonetheless had a troubled life. From being unwanted by her father after her mother’s death when Gabrielle (her birth name) was a child, lousy luck with men continued throughout her life, and her reputation was tarnished from accusations of collaboration with the Nazis after their occupation of Paris.

Radačovský succeeds in giving flavour to all these aspects of the adult Chanel’s life in his two-hour, two-act ballet, performed in the beautiful Mahen Theatre, a gem of an opera house which hosted the world premiere of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet in December 1938

The work began enigmatically with the approaching sound of footsteps, a nod to the catwalk, bringing Se Hyun An’s entrance from the side of the orchestra stalls. Once on stage, Se opened dance proceedings as Chanel, performing a yearning solo of self-reflection, smoking a cigarette – a leit motif that she continued throughout the work – performed against a backdrop of many mirrors, a replica of the mirrored staircase at the Maison Chanel in rue Cambon. Whilst all but one of the mirrored panels reflected Se’s movement, the odd-one-out held another image of Chanel staring reproachfully back at her.

The mirrors were just one aspect of Marek Hollý’s complex yet unfussy set design. The otherwise unused orchestra pit was utilised to provide stepped entrances and exits, and revolving set changes maintained the work’s pulsating momentum. In a surprising coup de théâtre that also broke the fourth wall, dancers suddenly appeared, waving to each other from the upper-tier boxes (one leaned over my shoulder, which was a pleasant shock)!

It would have been an impossibly long ballet if Radačovský had tried to pack in references to Chanel’s many relationships and so, understandably, several are omitted (notably the Duke of Westminster, reputedly her lover for a decade, Winston Churchill, Pierre Wertheimer, who helped to establish the Parfums Chanel brand, and the poet, Pierre Reverdy). Instead, the production focuses on just three of her men: Arthur “Boy” Capel, likely the love of Chanel’s life who was killed in a motor accident, in December 1919; the strange ménage à trois that Chanel enjoyed with Étienne Balsan (Ilia Mironov) and his lover, Émillienne d’Alençon (Sarah Dadanova); and Chanel’s controversial affair with the German diplomat, Baron Hans Günther von Dincklage (Glen Lambrecht in a brief but sinister cameo). Chanel’s collaboration with the Germans forced her to follow von Dincklage by fleeing to Switzerland after the war. Interestingly, this brief German episode was introduced to the sound of marching with cheering human voices in the distant background, which was a recording of the Germans marching into Czechoslovakia in 1938.

The main focus was on Chanel’s relationship with Capel, danced handsomely by Arthur Abram, described through a journey of three duets, the first two being unusually back-to-back, interrupted only by the revolving set change. Initially focused on Capel’s puppyish infatuation for Chanel, then moving into a beautiful duet of domestic bliss, performed in, around and provocatively, behind a large sofa; and the final pas de deux being the poignant farewell before Capel’s fatal accident. Se and Abram developed this relationship with moving and poignant intensity.

The pivotal character of Chanel is, as you would expect, a major challenge for the dancer interpreting it and Se commanded the role with alacrity and poise. The additional duet with Stravinsky (a brooding performance by British dancer, Adam Ashcroft) was full of ardent passion, concluding with some intense lovemaking atop a white grand piano. While that coupling was discreetly covered in darkness, Petra Večeřová performed an anguished solo as Stravinsky’s wife, ending with the married couple’s abrupt departure from Chanel’s life.  

Radačovský’s well-structured choreography embraced diverse genres, including social dance, the jazz age, accents of Charleston and even surprising b-boy moves and his eclectic selection of music for the ballet was excellent for every mood, ranging from the beautiful andante from Shostakovich’s second Piano Concerto to evocative French songs, such as Jacques Brel’s Ne me Quitte pas and Barbara Pravi’s moving and insistent Voilà. This sentiment closed the show with a spectacular catwalk procession of thirty dancers (male and female) each wearing a different outfit from Ludmila Várossová’s superb interpretations of Chanel-inspired creations. It must have been an uplifting and unusual experience for the corps de ballet to be dressed in such idiosyncratic fashion, thus augmenting the unique relevance of this excellent biographical ballet.

Graham Watts

Graham Watts is a freelance writer and dance critic. He writes for The Spectator, Tanz, Shinshokan Dance Magazine (Japan), Ballet Magazine (Romania), BachTrack and the Hong Kong International Arts Festival and has previously written for the Sunday Express, Dancing Times, Dance Europe, DanceTabs, London Dance, the Edinburgh International Festival and Pointe magazine (USA).  He has also written the biography of Daria Klimentová (The Agony and the Ecstasy) and contributed chapters about the work of Akram Khan to the Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet and on Shobana Jeyasingh for the third edition of Routledge’s Fifty Contemporary Choreographers.

He is Chairman of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle and of the UK National Dance Awards and regularly lectures on dance writing and criticism at The Royal Academy of Dance, The Place and (until the war) for Balletristic in Kyiv.  He was a nominee for the Dance Writing Award in the 2018 One Dance UK Awards and was appointed OBE in 2008.