The dance of the leaves to death could have been called this ballet staged on September 9, at the IL Caragiale National Theater in Bucharest, by the company Malandain Ballet Biarritz, on music by Antonio Vivaldi and Giovanni Antonio Guido.
Photo: Petrică Tanase / George Enescu Festival
It could have been named so if it had not been, in fact, infused with life, optimism, freshness; If I had not made a little man in my chair from a row, with the joy stretched to the ears and with a vibrant thought when the curtain was pulled: but how beauty is in the world, how much dance, and how many leaves trapped in the game of seasons, and then, in the last one, The world, he lives.
Photo: Petrică Tanase / George Enescu Festival
Photo: Petrică Tanase / George Enescu Festival
Photo: Petrică Tanase / George Enescu Festival
The name of the scripts of the ballet is simple: Les Saisons / Seasonsfrom The four seasons of Vivaldi's, published in 1725, and from the little known, but no less melodes SeasonalRand of Giovanni Antonio Guido, written in Versailles, probably in the years 1716-1717, where they were their Genoese author.
Of this melanj Seasons The dance company Malandain Ballet Biarritz, from the music of Vivaldi and Guido and from the inspiration of the two founding parents: Laurent Brunner, director of Château de Versailles Spectacles, and Stefan Plewniak, a violinist and the first desire of the Royal Opera in Versailles.
The premiere took place in Cannes, at the end of 2023, and Seasons I travel since then into the world, as they are well, and they have reached Bucharest, on the stage of the National Hall of the National Theater, within the Enescu Festival.
And not anyway, but in complete formula: the company dancers, guarded by blackened leaves, but also the orchestra of the Royal Opera in Versailles, with the instruments of time, and with Andrés Gabetta violinist and conductor alike.
Photo: Petrică Tanase / George Enescu Festival
Photo: Petrică Tanase / George Enescu Festival
You see them in the fossa: there are not many, but what living and vibrant music echoed to ballerinas and to us.
And the heads of the instrumentalists rise above the dance floor and sometimes a violinist eye to the stage, to the layers of leaf, to the bouquets of leaves and buds that the dancers embodiment.
You see them: they are green like spring, red like summer, mounds like autumn and sideline like winter. But between these mini-dines sending to Belle DanIt is from the baroque era, all with casteli and castle costumes, there are signs of winter that comes: a dead leaf first, in the extension of a body that becomes leaf, then two, three, four … and when winter is only dead, oversized leaves.
These episodes, in the form of dreams, preimations, wind that whistles, storm, the body that becomes sound, becomes a leaf that falls, are among the most disturbing scenes of dance.
Photo: Petrică Tanase / George Enescu Festival
Photo: Petrică Tanase / George Enescu Festival
Photo: Petrică Tanase / George Enescu Festival
The founder of the company and the choreographer of her ballets, Thierry Malandain, describes everything even more plastic: the last part of the ballet imagined is almost “a poetic fantasy”.
“On a background of black petals spread to the horizon, winged creatures lament the loss of spirit and clarity … Seasons I am just a ballet – but there is nothing more serious in the world than things that seem unbelievable. “
Photo: Petrică Tanase / George Enescu Festival
Author of over 80 choreographers, deeply attached to ballet, with all that this art means, Thierry Malandain has created a company made up of classical training dancers, which are contemporary.
This is the philosophy of the group, and the choreographer explains his belief, the purpose: “I come from the classic ballet, of which I am deeply attached. And, although it admits that of his artistic and social conventions come from other times, I also believe that the four -hundred -year inheritance of the ballet represents the invaluable resource for the dancers. I play trying to find a dance that I like.
So simple.
Photo: Petrică Tanase / George Enescu Festival
Photo: Petrică Tanase / George Enescu Festival
… and I will be small and happy in the middle of a row of red chairs; and I will be held in mind, over Seasons classic, half-song-help poetry that is Les Feuilles Mortesin the unmistakable interpretation and voice of Yves Montand.
And I will be remembered and how he taught us to increase the “muscle” of creativity Professor and writer Sorin Preda by some years, more, behind: “… Now tell the same thing from the perspective of a leaf …”.
Of a wing. Of a branch.
So the ballet Seasonsdanced in Bucharest, at the Enescu Festival, by Galandain Ballet Biarritz, can be whatever we choose to be. Only to give ourselves the opportunity to do it.
