26 VII

125 min. with two intermissions

Audience Award of the Music Gardens Festival Golden Watering Can 2023 (repeat).
Recording of a performance prepared by the Opéra national de Paris ballet.

In addition to the infamous Bolér, in which the solo part in this performance is danced by a woman (Amandine Albisson), the same theater evening was filled with two other ballets choreographed by Béjart: choreographed to Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird and to Gustav Mahler’s Songs of the Wandering Apprentice cycle.

Undeniably, the palm of precedence belongs to the stunning choreography to Ravel’s Bolér, which has gone down in world ballet history. It was premiered in 1961 in Brussels. Béjart also designed the set and costumes himself. An important piece of furniture on stage is a large, round, red table on which a soloist dances. In Béjart’s lifetime, it was mostly men, but this part is also sometimes entrusted to a woman, as in the Golden Horsetail Award-winning performance. This character is an innkeeper or, if you prefer, a temptress, so a female dancer in this part is not a misappropriation of Bolér’s plot. The Innkeeper, who dances a solo at the beginning, is gradually joined by other dancers – these dancers dance around the table.
The finale is beautiful!