SIGNATURES PIECES
IN THE NIGHT
by Jerome Robbins
A travelling companion of George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins is a leading figure of American neoclassicism. He considered the Paris Opera Ballet his second family after the New York City Ballet. Set to the lyrical backdrop of Chopin’s Nocturnes, In the Night uses classical technique to create a moving narrative. Three couples experience three moments of love: discovery, fulfilment and confusion, against the backdrop of a starry night.
GRAND PAS CLASSIQUE
by Victor Gsovsky
Victor Gsovsky wanted to offer the dancer Étoile Yvette Chauviré, then his pupil, a jewel of pure classicism. Created in 1949, Grand Pas classique displays a virtuoso and majestic technique to the sound of an extract from the opera Le Dieu et La Bayadère by Daniel-François-Esprit Auber. When the Opera dancers perform the Grand Pas Classique, they always pay homage to the woman who best embodied the French school.
LE JEUNE HOMME ET LA MORT
by Roland Petit
Trained at the Paris Opera Ballet School, Roland Petit soon left the company to follow his own path as a choreographer and performer. Created in 1946, Le jeune homme et la mort is a disturbing duet based on a libretto by Jean Cocteau and music by Johann Sebastian Bach. In Le jeune homme et la mort, destiny takes the form of a woman in a yellow dress and black gloves who mocks her lover until pushing him to suicide.
LE PARC
by Angelin Preljocaj
In this piece, created for the Paris Opera Ballet in 1994, Angelin Preljocaj manages to create a subtle balance between the classical style of Mozart’s music and the modernity of the choreographic language. The sets evoke the elegance and delicacy of French-style gardens and the costumes are inspired by those of the Age of Enlightenment. The dancers awaken to love, from the encounter to the games of seduction, from shyness to attraction, from resistance to the sweetness of abandonment in the flight of a sublime pas de deux.
RAYMONDA
by Rudolf Nureyev
Raymonda, created in 1898 at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg to the scintillating score of Aleksandr Glazunov, was the last great narrative ballet by Marius Petipa. A true work of medieval fantasy, considered an encyclopaedia of classical ballet, this work stages the love story of the young Raymonda and the knight Jean de Brienne, set against the desires of the Saracen leader, Abderam. Long unknown outside Russia, the ballet was restaged several times by Rudolf Nureyev after his time in the West. The choreographer gave it the final touch in 1983, when he became the director of dance at the Paris Opera.
BALLET DE L’OPÉRA DE PARIS
The Paris Opera Ballet is the cradle of classical dance. The principles and codes of choreographic technique, imported from Italy by Queen Catherine de’ Medici in the 16th century, were patiently moulded and perfected in court ballets, then under the reign of Louis XIV. The Sun King founded the Académie royale de Danse in 1661, the first French institution entrusted with establishing the rules of dance and how it should be taught. In 1669 he inaugurated the Académie royale de Musique (the original name of the Paris Opera), which included the first company of professional dancers in Europe. Finally, when he established a dance school in 1713, initially intended for the company’s artists, the essential conditions for the continuity of a quality company were met.
Since then, the Opera Ballet has never stopped developing. From the 18th century onwards, French dancers and choreographers spread their art throughout Europe. Jean-Georges Noverre (in Germany, London and Vienna), August Bournonville (in Denmark), Charles-Louis Didelot, Jules Perrot, Arthur Saint-Léon and Marius Petipa (in Russia), as well as the Viganò and Taglioni families (in Italy) were the illustrious bearers of these exchanges. This research effort culminated in the 19th century with the creation of La Sylphide by Philippe Taglioni (1832), the first ballet in a ‘white tutu’, and Giselle by Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot (1841), which marked the apogee of the Romantic period. Today the Ballet, whose direction will be entrusted to José Martinez in 2022, remains a centre of living art, alternating revivals and creations and programming the greatest choreographers: George Balanchine, Serge Lifar, Kenneth MacMillan, Roland Petit, Jerome Robbins, John Neumeier, John Cranko, Pina Bausch, Maurice Béjart, Carolyn Carlson, Mats Ek, William Forsythe, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Jiří Kylián, Ohad Naharin, Hofesh Shechter, Crystal Pite… In 2024 the Junior Ballet was created, with the aim of diversifying the profiles of the dancers, facilitating their professional integration, and strengthening the openness to the public through tours and mediation activities, while perpetuating the three-hundred-year-old know-how of the Paris Opera.
SPONSOR
CHANEL: Grand Mécène de l’Opéra national de Paris
ROLEX: Montre de l’Opéra national de Paris
CACIB: Mécène du Rayonnement de l’Opéra
