MANY GOOD BALLETTALENTS IN PARIS.

By Henning Høholt on 4/10/10 • Categorized as Ballet

With its annual presentation of the Paris Opera Balletschool at Palais Garnier, the audience is getting a great possibility to enjoy the very many great talents there are at the ballet school, and it is a pleasure to follow the young talents in their hard job to succeed.

 

 

The program presented three different works
. SUITE DE DANCES, choreography by Ivan Clustine from 1913. The great specialist on the French style and a former performer of Suite de dances, Pierre Lacotte, has come to pass on his knowledge to the pupils. A brilliant demonstration of the Paris Opera Ballet´s French style. Presented to music by this year’s jubilee composer Frédéric Chopin. We enjoyed a large company of young well working dancers, and a line of young soloists, where some of them already are on their way to being outstanding, such as the young ballerina

Amélie Joannidès, with many beautiful variations and Rémy Catalan among the boys with excellent solos

. But we too enjoyed Juntaro Coste, tall and elegant as the partner of miss Joannides and the others in the Pas de trios Caroline Osmont, Clotilde Tran Phat, Laïa Ramon, and their cavaliers Natan Bouzy, Rémy Catalan and Alexandre Dahms. The whole corps des ballet of young students did well prepared and beautiful presentations in the corps and with their different smaller and bigger soloparts. In the following music, very good played by the Orchestre des Lauréats du Conservatoire, inspiring conducted by Marius Stieghorst, we enjoyed the beautiful clarinet solo in the Nocturne opus 48 no 1, and later one the beautiful and demanding obo solo in the Nocturne op 15 no 1 (?).   

The second part was a new creation for the ballet school , PIÈGE DE LUMIÈRE, Choreography by John Taras from 1952, originally made for Rosella Hightower, where the leader of the ballet school has learned it Élisabeth Platel has learned it and herself danced it in 1988 with the Ballet du Nord, a passionate adventure that she , by this get a possibility to reconstruct as she want to share it with the pupils. Which the Opera´s Sets and Costume Departements have made possible
. It became a fairytale, with beautiful settings and costumes of birds, and other habitants in the forest. Emma D´Humières did a great job in the leading role as La Reine des

Morphides, and Francois Alu was wonderful as Un Jeune bagnard
. This young male dancer has a great talent, and I will specially be looking forward to follow him in his carrier. The young Mathieu Contat, as Un Iphias, showed good talent, and he has a talent which can be growing to being very good. Alexandra Dahms great as The Chef of the bagnards. Many beautiful dancing talents in the other roles. The music to this part a new score, composed by Jean-Michel Damase in 1952, was inspiring, mysteriouse, and demanding for the orchestra, many different moods, romantic and virtuose, during the way I cem to think about inspiration George Gershwin, but that feeling disappeared after a while.

The last piece in the performance was Maurice Béjarts SEPT DANSES GRECQUES to Mikis Theodorakis music for bouzouiki solo and popular grecques orchestra from 1982. This piece bears withess to the ecumenical energy of

Maurice Béjart
. Blending folklore, neo-classical precision and modern language, it invites the pupils to discover new sensations and to explore their involvement in this performance. Michel Gascard, who first performed the ballet and currently directs the Rudra Béjart School in Lausanne, returns to the ballet school for this occasion – all the more involved in his mission since the death of Maurice Béjart. As such, this season´s performance adds its own building block to the history of the ballet schools art within the Paris Opera, a history which is forged from one generation to the next in a filial and fertile relationship.  Again  the young dancer Rémy Catalan was back in a leading role, and in a big contrast to this evenings first French style ballet, showing other impressing sides of his talent. I hope to follow this talent in the future. David Auboin-Tehio and Neven Ritmanic did an outstanding job as the two boys, so did Caroline Osmont and Germain Louvet in their pas de deux, and finally the tall elegant

Florent Melac in the last difficult solopart.  

The Paris Opera Ballet School Performance is, each season, an opportunity for their pupils to become more familiar with the reality of their future profession: Learning to work to the rhytm of rehearsals, getting in to costume, putting on makeup, using their space of the stage, dancing in an ensemble or with a partner, overcoming fears, giving one´sbest to thepublic – all fundamental and stimulating steps through which the teaching staff of the school painstakingly are guiding them. This year the audience enjoyed ninety students participating in the performance, out of 156 students, 87 girls and 69 boys, in the age between 8 and 18 years.  – A significant number bringing together the youngest and the oldest. A diversity of styles and eras is on the the bill: A journey that the pupils can accomplish thanks to their classical training which provides them with the means to communicate through many languages of dance. [1]

Performances until April 13^th. 2010 at Palais Garnier, Paris.

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