The Béjart Ballet Lausanne is the instrument of a major choreographer of the 20th century. Maurice Béjart an extraordinary artist, a genius of dance, a master of ballet. This shows that Stadsschouwburg Antwerp is delighted to be able to present to you the work accomplished by this great master of the art.
This event, which is already shaping up to be one of the highlights of the season, will consist of a first classical ballet Cantate 51. This ballet will highlight the work of Maurice Béjart and Jean Sébastien Bach, it offers us the theme of the annunciation. Cantata 51 constitutes a universal hymn to harmony and spiritual elevation. This work was created in March 1966 in Brussels.
You will then discover Syncope, the contemporary ballet that Gil Roman, current artistic director of the Béjart Ballet Lausanne company, offers us. This ballet is the accomplishment of work always carried out with Maurice Béjart. Syncope was created in Lausanne in 2010.
And to end this evening in style, The Rite of Spring, the famous choreography by Béjart created in Brussels in December 1959. This ballet, stripped of all artifice, is a Hymn to the union of Man and Woman in the deepest of their flesh. Hymn to the union of sky and earth, dance of life or death, between humans and plants.
The Rite of Spring
If the Béjartian style does not always look as boldly modern as it did decades ago, it’s only because Béjart’s influence on ballet was so great that his revolutionary ideas were taken up as part the standard ballet vocabulary. Premiered in 1959, Béjart’s staging of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring still feels, in many ways, a breath of fresh air as invigorating as the season it celebrates. “It must be simple and strong,” he often insisted, and indeed, the stark simplicity still dazzles: quick leaps, extended arabesques, bodies that slouch and release as if spring-loaded, dancers clashing in frenzied, up-close confrontation. The mass of moving bodies, arranged in shifting geometric patterns, captivates the eye like a kaleidoscope. Béjart’s Ballet of the 20th Century restaged the legendary 1959 production ten years later at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, giving modern viewers the chance to experience the choreographer’s singular vision.
Cantate 51
The dance simply follows the musical and religious intention of the score, aiming only to be a visual counterpoint – sometimes abstract, sometimes emotional – of the song. It is a dance of joy with the addition of the Biblical theme, a constant source of inspirational: that of the Annunciation, when the Angel brings the message of eternal life to Mary and all of creation.
Syncope
Where were we when we were not there?
In music, it is a rhythm out of time. We are talking about syncopated music.
In medical terms, it is a stoppage or slowing of the heart. Five to ten seconds of loss of consciousness during which the brain can just imagine, invent or review without limit.
Memories or imagination?
Memory or creation?
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