Dancing to dance by Oleg Petrov

Oleg Petrov, critic and writer, presently director of the Institute of Dance in Ekaterinbourg is the author of this text which was in the programme during Ballet Biarritz tour in Russia in 2003.Here are a few excerpts translated by Irina Chtcherbakova and Madame Loulia Bauduin. Oleg Petrov is working on a book about Thierry Malandain. It is to be published in Russia in 2005.

Silence is sometimes said to be better than eloquence. Well, Thierry Malandain is persuasive even when he is just looking at you. Later, when all the talking is over, you understand that without having uttered a single word, he was the main person in the discussion. His silence hides a deeply hidden character, a mystery stretching out, which is itself that attracting magnet. His ballets are like that too. Not meaning to be sensational, with no hint as to their peculiarity or their difference. But, as a critic remarked after Un Hommage aux Ballets Russes, they act like a drug. We never tire of them. Where does this mysterious charm of that French choreographer’s work come from?

In Malandain’s dance, something comprehensible takes place right away (ranging from accessories on stage to the characters and their relationship). You will find strange things, things which make you curious, experience some stupefaction and finally, you are left with things to guess. Malandain ponders over the world by transforming space with the human body.  /…/ The movement that his imagination creates originates from the human, sometimes too much human.  But this humanity does not detract anything from the integrity of his artistic quest. An integrity, translated into a personal geometric choreography where the mind moves freely. That is a sign meaning that he does not break away from classical codes with his present dance. This love of dance and movement may be the reason why he does not appear as a reformer. /…/ The question for him, is not whether dance must be or must not belong to a choreographic performance today. In keeping it he probably is more radical than those who put on a new theatre of dance without dance. His dance never seems to leave the stage, even at times, when the curtain is down. Each dancer is the interpreter of his own story, a story that is linked to the next dancer, however slightly. Like someone who likes rhythm and understands it, Malandain deals with this important factor in a very intelligent way, avoiding the rhythmical monotony, that disease of classical ballet../…/		  

Malandain excels at making two worlds meet: reality and eternity. By joining these two spheres in the same body, he shows this presence-absence through his reference to past culture. He enjoys quoting his predecessors or else be inspired by famous works, like L’après-midi d’un Faune or Le Spectre de la Rose. From these two well-known ballets, he retained what the eye if the spectator could no not remember right from the first performance. That has become a sign. Connoisseurs recognize easily there, the influence of Nijinsky or Fokine. /…/ If the fawn was for Nijinsky an imaginary animal or if the «spectre» was a spirit, that «spectre» interpreted by one of the best artists of the company: Giuseppe Chiavaro or the fawn interpreted by Christophe Roméro are real live persons sharing their complicated dreams. We know that in the XIXth century ballets, the dream scenes were apart from the other parts of the show. Dreams are at the heart of classical ballet, the place where mystery can exist, where explanations and transfiguration can take place. Dreams have several meanings and can be as playful as important. I would like to stress that  « bad » modern theatre is in fact afraid of that kind of focus. Whereas in Malandain’s works such as La chambre d’amour or Bal Solitude, it is very noticeable.

Creation, the choreographer’s latest work, shows well how Malandain derives the best moments of his artistic inventions from dreams, that “irrational reality”. In that ballet, the “polychrome » quality of some of his previous choreography has turned into « monochrome ». Beforehand, he used to captivate his audience with his ideas. So « polychrome » helped him a lot. Not that he wished to please everyone, but just like the XIXth century ballets mentioned above, his pieces were successful with a different type of audience. Ballet lovers, entertainment fans and simply intelligent people. Creation may disappoint those who are not used to concentrate on the performance during a ballet, those for whom ballet and thinking cannot be linked. The polyvalence of periods and costumes one could have expected from the argument was discreet. The styles are not recognised by everybody but only to experts; the costumes are black, strict and are not meant to appeal to the eye.

 
Création, photography Olivier Houeix.

/…/ A vibrant body starts the ballet. In the end, this vibration will be transmitted to all those who share the dream invented by the choreographer. To keep the audience entertained, the rhythm often changes, being different for each period. Just like the alternate solos, duos or the corps de ballet will make us forget the passage of time. The choreographer knows how to catch the moment when the immersion of the spectator is acquired and then he brings out historical ballet characters. (Fuller and Duncan). Then dance starts, not belonging to anyone and that is why it can be presented as a “lament for an ideal”.

A painter of post Jung time, Malandain has understood that what we cannot imagine is one of the most important sides of Art. But as far as he is concerned, the unimaginable is not whether Adam is the first dancer of humanity.   In his eyes there is nothing surprising in the fact that all the stages of dance through time, and those who symbolize them with the most dashing spirit (Sallé, Camargo, Taglioni or Fuller and Duncan) are put together. For him, bringing together in the same show, the famous diagonal of the Willis in Giselle or allusions to Mats Ek’s Swan Lake is a natural thing. He knows artistic time and space in art allow such existence. For the silent Thierry Malandain, the unimaginable is not the « dream » but the cruelty of a fratricide act, the death of Abel and what will come afterwards.