Les saisons de la danse

In 2012, Max Richter recomposed Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, in order to revive this mythical score that he considered worn out by too many listening and commercial covers. On the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the work, four choreographers seized this rewriting to reinterpret it in turn, with the complicity of director Tommy Pascal, former member of the Béjart Ballet Lausanne and the Ballet Preljocaj, now broken in the visuals of dance. Interpreted by a duo of dancers, each season corresponds to a state of love and a different natural setting, the bodies isolating themselves under an increasingly thick layer of clothing as the feelings warm…

The film of course begins with spring and its emotions. Under the gaze of Franck Chartier of the Peeping Tom company, the drunkenness of a meeting between a man and a woman turns into a fusional embrace, the half-naked bodies clinging in the heavenly setting full of water and sap of a waterfall in Mauritius. Both dancers and choreographers, Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber stage the summer, where a straight couple lives a burning passion under the relentless sun of the Californian desert. Sculpted by sand and wind, fragmented by editing, the dancers live the fullness of love and deliberately slow down the tempo to better explore, move away, find each other, with, already, the first signs of independence of each other.

Another atmosphere for autumn, nestled in a mossy German forest. This time, two men dressed in wide gray suits, who have known better days, show off by emrassing and pushing back the funny complicity of an old couple. This choreography by the Imre & Marne van Opstal siblings reserves for its tandem trials (madness, disease, violence) but also the comfort of mutual support.

Finally, the winter, designed and danced by Émilie Leriche, accompanied by Arika Yamada, unfolds the ruthless transportation of two women towards the break, a tear cushioned by the thickness of the snow covering the Vercors and the padded ski suits, but no less painful and dizzying… This rereading of the Four Seasons takes us thanks to the alchemy between music, movement and camera, as well as by its openness to the diversity of sexual orientations throughout the film.

Waiting Places by Bobbi Jene Smith, Or Schraiber Pit by Bobbi Jene Smith, Or Schraiber Bobbi Jene by Bobbi Jene Smith, Or Schraiber Valley by Emilie Leriche Triptych by Franck Chartier Same Difference by Imre & Marne van Opstal