'Opus V' reviews 'The Firebird' reviews 'Phrases de Quatuor' reviews 'The Miraculous Mandarin' reviews Legris in reviews Bart in reviews recent POB reviews more Ali Mahbouba reviews

To this last category belongs the earliest piece of the program, Webern, opus V from 1966. On the one level, with its neo-classical vocabulary, it is possible to watch this duet as pure dance, spare and broken in its construction, matching the austere character of Webern’s string quartet music. But more interesting is to delve deeper, to envision motivations for the protagonists. The same pose at the start reunites the couple at the end, the man supporting the woman balancing on point, a fragile equilibrium, an insecure truce in the battle of the sexes that seethes almost under the skin throughout the piece.

Marie-Agnes Gillot and Jean-Guillaume Bart captured the mood perfectly, expressively articulating every turn of phrase, every subtle nuance. Faces show no emotion as the movement is left to speak for itself. She circles her fore-arms with wrists limp in a gesture of sarcasm and disdain towards him, but having got his attention, she quickly loses it again as he looks away. I felt I saw solitude, despair, weariness and anger, as well as tenderness as they finally relent towards each other. It is interesting to note how, already for that time, Bejart emancipates the dancers from the traditional gender roles of classical ballet (though still paying homage to the classical pas de deux structure by beginning with an adage, followed by a variation for each dancer and ending with a coda finale). In their relationship, the man and woman face each other on absolutely equal terms, with the woman giving as good as she gets. Altogether this was a winning recipe, producing for me the best work of the evening.

The Firebird (1970), though set to the Stravinsky music, does not follow the original Fokine libretto. Bejart, perhaps inspired by the student uprisings of the late 60s, and thinking back to a twin Russian revolution earlier in the century: the political one and the musical one unleashed by Stravinsky, transformed the piece into an allegorical tale of coming of age, of rebellion and revolution, of catharsis, of rebirth.

Fittingly for the Firebird, Nicholas le Riche seems to be well on his way to creating his own myth as regards his amazing dancing. Having struck out from the anonymity of the group and revealing himself in the striking red costume, he launched into his explosive solo which saw him leap, draw himself in, reach out, soar, all with a control of timing that made you feel that in his hands time became elastic. Indeed at times you felt time stood still - you hold your breath, you experience an adrenalin rush, and you desperately wish you could hold on to the moment for eternity. Extraordinary.

It is difficult to be negative about a dance so brilliantly brought to life, but truthfully one cannot escape the fact these flashes of great dancing are marred by an all-obtrusive propensity for mime and facile symbolism (for example the final ‘flight for freedom’ tableau). Nevertheless, this is a seminal work of Bejart that has enjoyed success around the world - I last saw it when it had just entered the repertoire of the Tokyo Ballet.

For his world premiere Bejart chose Manuel Legris as his muse. This is another one of those life journey of a dancer depictions. Possibly digging into the experiences of either Bejart or Legris? I hope not for both their sakes, for this is a grim tale, more theatre than dance, that follows the psychological disintegration of the dancer. We first see Legris a secure man, balancing perfectly on top of a ballet barre as the curtains open. We follow him through disillusionment, loneliness, delusions of grandeur (he shouts “Lumieres” and a whole bank of stage lights is pointed at him accompanied by piped applause), and we finally see him treading the fine line (cue tightrope) between sanity and madness as he then ends up a broken man convulsing on the floor.

One applauds, as the audience warmly did, Legris’ commitment to the choreography. He performed like one possessed. But less metaphoric goings-on and more actual dancing might have saved the piece. The precious little dancing we did see usually accompanied the phrases from a Schubert string quartet (hence the title of the piece Phrases de Quatuor) that were sampled in an otherwise alienating soundscape by Pierre Henry, a composer with some 50 years of association with Bejart.

Unlike The Firebird, in his choreography for The Miraculous Mandarin from 1992, Bejart chose to closely follow Bartok’s libretto. He set it in the steamy underworld of a city ruled by gangsters, with decor, costumes and atmosphere lent from the expressionist world of a Fritz Lang (of Metropolis fame) movie from the 30s. As a typically idiosyncratic touch, Bejart has the main role of the prostitute danced by a man in drag. Alessio Carbone in a glittering black number and greased back black hair tackled this role with absolute relish. On his high heels he balanced in attitude with arms raised as a bird of prey waiting for its next victim, a recurring motif that was a portent of each ensuing crime. The first two victims were in and out like a shot, robbed and done away with by the accomplices. The third victim, the mandarin of the title, was more troublesome. First beaten up, then hung and finally stabbed, he just would not give up the ghost, until the prostitute recognises in him an indestructible lust that she must first satisfy. With the final moment of ecstasy comes death.

Laurent Hilaire wins us over with his majestic dancing. He has his mandarin character delineated by the blue Mao suit with hat and the intricate chinese-like hand and finger gestures. All this together with a certain nobility and the fact that he is often lifted above the rest, sets him out against the ever shifting and ominously present corps of bandits in the background.

Though Bartok wished to express in his music the corrupting power of modern bourgeois society, thankfully Bejart himself did not try to superimpose a philosophical, psychological or social message of his own on top of the story. We got the straightforward narrative, and Bartok’s great music was allowed to speak to us intact.

All in all, this was a more palatable program than I had come to expect from Bejart. For I have often found that his sincere though perhaps naive treatment of his subject matter can be awkward and embarrassing to watch, as he often misses the mark as regards taste. But in the end, this was for me an evening more about admiring the dancers than the choreography, and I felt quite lucky to have had the chance to see four etoiles performing - suitably for Bejart, all men: Le Riche, Bart, Legris and Hilaire. They gave it their all, and in the process captivated us all.