BALLET DU GRAND THÉÂTRE DE GENÈVE

The world-renowned Grand Théâtre de Genève established a permanent ballet company of 21 professionals in 1962, and is currently offering two original choreographed pieces per season. The company’s current dance director is the great choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, and his seal of quality permeates the double bill they bring to the Arriaga Theatre, which includes a state première for one of the pieces.

Faun, remains in the collective memory in the «Ballets Russes section» of our cultural awareness, which recalls the original creation of the mythical choreography of Vaslav Nijinsky based on the music of the Prelude to the apres-midi d’un faune by Claude Debussy. A century later, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui performed his Faun at the request of Sadler’s Wells in London. While Nijinsky’s dancers remain relatively two-dimensional, like figurines on a Greek urn, the mythological and animal aspects are expressed much more forcefully in Cherkaoui’s version, in a language of movement that becomes truly three-dimensional. This vibrant work is now performed by the Geneva Ballet.

As for Ukiyo-e, a new work by Cherkaoui, which will have its state première at the Arriaga, and pose the question of how to coexist in a world in continual turmoil. The choreographer was inspired by the Japanese term “images of a floating universe”. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui suggests thinking of bodies that do not end in fractures and boundaries, but rather exalt them as extensions of our person, similar to the Japanese technique of Kintsugi, which fixes broken china with pure gold joints. Alexander Dodge’s set will feature a series of impossible stairs on which the dancers get lost. These moving labyrinthine structures are meant to imply both ascent and abyss in a progression of levels in which bodies are invited to unite, communicate, and infect one another. The performance will be accompanied on stage by the new compositions for string and piano trio by Szymon Brzóska and the rhythmic, percussive and electronic creations of Alexandre Dai Castaing. These realms brought together in Ukiyo-e, resonate with ballet’s quest for reparation and transcendence.