Provence-Alps-Cote d’Azur, France – July - August, 2007

Summer Dance Festivals

Corazon Loco,
Inside Out,
Ballets de Biarritz,
Sheherazade,
The Firebird,
Le Dieu Bleu

Christina Gallea Roy

During the summer of 2007, the Provence-Alps-Cote d’Azur region of South East France boasted no less than 304 Festivals in 329 different towns and villages. In Montpellier, dance companies included the Ballet of Geneva, the Ballet of Lorraine, the Trisha Brown Company and the Ballet Preljocaj. At Marseille, the dance part of the Festival continues to expand, as in Montpellier, with discussions, films, exhibitions and workshops and companies included Nederlands Dans Theater, the Michael Clark Company and the Daniel Larrieu Company performing Waterproof in a swimming pool.
The most eclectic of the Dance Festivals is Vaison Danses with performances given in the Roman amphitheatre of the small town of Vaison-la-Romaine. The season opened with the National Ballet of Cuba’s acclaimed Giselle, followed by two French companies, Bianca Li and Angelin Preljocaj. From Israel came the Aluminium Show, a mixture of dance, acrobatics and multiple special effects; the Antonio Gades Company performed Blood Wedding and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company appeared in his special MinEvent.
Spanish-born Bianca Li seems to be everywhere in France. She settled in Paris, forming her own company in 1993, has mounted works for the Paris Opéra, has picked up a number of national awards in France and in Spain, and has now been appointed director of the Andalucian Dance Centre. Her Corazon Loco opens with a half-circle of formally dressed choral singers chanting a kind of plainsong. But something is obviously different about this choir as several members startle with an unexpected whirl of a port de bras or the spiral of a flexible torso and then out of the group appears the unmistakable silhouette of English dancer, Matthew Hawkins, recognisable by his shaven head and loose-limbed technique. This opening is promising, as is the amusing chase of the eight singers of the group by the six dancers. These then continue with sexy Latin-dance sequences with Bianca Li emerging as the most polished dancer of the group. Solos follow pas de deux, but repetition seeps in as the work loses impetus and appears overlong.
The Berlin-based company Sasha Waltz and Guests was the main dance event at the Avignon Festival, where they performed Inside Out in a huge exhibition hall on the outskirts of the city. Entering in almost total obscurity, one gradually discerns dimly lit rooms and spaces, boxes and containers, some at ground level and some mounted high above. Peering through doors and windows a dancer is visible crouching in a corner, another curled up to fit inside a packing case or another solemnly pouring sand down her bodystocking. Musicians commence the performance; the pianist whacking the keys and strings of his grand piano and a trumpeter wailing through the heights of the hall. It is all intriguing and imaginative but after about 15 minutes of promenading throughout the vast spaces, a sort of urgency builds among the spectators anxious to find something actually “happening”. Finally two men commence a slow duet of lifts and rolls and an Asian couple, in formal dress, execute a tango-like pas de deux in different settings around the hall. Some of the company embark on long monologues, discussing their childhood and their families, some almost inaudibly and others shouting and raging. Sasha Waltz is quoted as saying the audience should create their own understanding of the piece which leaves one with the dilemma that the onus is left on the audience to make sense of a string of unrelated scenes.
At Les Baux en Provence, the Ballets de Biarrtiz appeared in the immense vaulted entrance of an old stone quarry, surely the most unusual of this year’s venues. They performed three ballets by director, Thierry de Malandain: two abstract, contemporary pieces to music by Mozart and a version of Saint-Saen’s The Swan, played and performed here four times. Repetition appears to be a hall-mark of Malandain’s choreography where each sequence is repeated as relentlessly as a Petipa variation. I look forward to seeing the company, which is an attractive one, in the different surroundings of the Cannes Dance Festival in November.
In Cannes the Maris Liepa Foundation, directed by his children, Andris and Ilse Liepa, presented reconstructions of early Ballets Russes works. The Firebird and Sheherazade are similar to versions familiar in the UK, but the young company, The Ballet of Kremlin, needs much more coaching and guidance to bring the works to life. The principal roles were taken by Ilse Liepa and the Bolshoi’s Nicolai Tsiskaridze. To stage Le Dieu Bleu, Diaghilev’s failed attempt to duplicate the success of Sheherazade with a similarly exotic and oriental theme was always going to be risky. Despite the presence of Nijinky and Karsavina, the original work was a flop and quickly disappeared from the repertoire. Interesting as it is to see Bakst’s extraordinary set and costumes revived, the ballet is weighed down by Jean Cocteau’s convoluted libretto and the stage is packed with jungle plants, temples, gods and goddesses, priests and a multitude of colourful characters. There is even a monster which rose to the full height of the stage flashing technicolour eyes making the whole dangerously resemble a Las Vegas revue. Fokine’s choreography having been lost, Wayne Eagling is credited with the new choreography.
Of the locally based companies, those of the Opera Houses of Nice and Toulon collaborated to present a new production of Zorba, the Greek, and the Ballets de Monte-Carlo, fresh from a successful season in Paris, gave a series of performances of Jean-Christophe Maillot’s The Dream. High in the hills above Toulon, with a distant view of the Mediterranean, Chateauvallon presented one of the most consistently enjoyable Festivals with a varied and high quality selection of national and international companies.