Bella Figura » marie-agnès gillot

April 1, 2010

Interview : Maverick Marie-Agnès Gillot in Pointe Magazine (April/May 2010)

Laura @ 21:46 —
Filed under: English, Interviews — Tags: marie-agnès gillot, paris opera ballet, pointe magazine —

Marie-Agnès Gillot was the first dancer in the history of the Paris Opera Ballet to be made an Etoile not at the end of traditional full-length ballet, but after a contemporary performance. It was Carolyn Carlson’s Signes, in 2004, and since then Gillot has remained the most peculiar star of the company – with few classical heroines in her repertoire, but instead a wealth of tailor-made creations and avant-garde collaborations. I caught up with her a few months ago for a Reverence interview published in the latest issue of Pointe Magazine, with the lovely Maria Kochetkova on the cover:

Cover of the April/May 2010 issue © Pointe Magazine

You are a choreographer as well as a dancer. What drew you to hip hop for Les Rares Différences, the piece you made for the 2007 Festival of Dance in Suresnes?
My subject was Auguste Rodin. I needed bodies like sculptures—ballet dancers are too lean. Hip hop dancers have an absolutely statuesque upper body. I learned a lot from hip hop, too, especially from the movement dissociations.

What are you currently working on?
I’m putting together the first dance flash mob in France, for a charity. We will have professional dancers performing in a train station.

Who inspires you?
All of my colleagues. I pay a lot of attention to them, and I always find something that I would like to replicate. I love taking a little something from everyone.

Of which accomplishment are you the most proud?
I loved my first Don Quixotes and Swan Lakes. It was a consecration—I was already an étoile, even though I didn’t have the title. The audience and the orchestra were stamping. My dressing room was so filled with flowers I couldn’t sit. (…)

» Read the full interview in Pointe Magazine: ‘The Maverick Star,’ April/May 2010

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December 24, 2009

Review : Chasing the character of the Ballets Russes

Laura @ 10:01 —
Filed under: English, Reviews/critiques — Tags: ballets russes, benjamin pech, clairemarie osta, isabelle ciaravola, josé martinez, marie-agnès gillot, nicolas le riche, paris opera ballet —

Ballets Russes
Le Spectre de la Rose / L’après-midi d’un faune / Le Tricorne / Petrouchka
Paris Opera Ballet
Opéra Garnier, Paris
18 December 2009

The centenary of the Ballets Russes has provided ballet companies with the opportunity to revive great works, many of them routinely achieving what eludes most creations today: an alchemy born not only of choreography, but also of music and design. The credits for the Paris Opera Ballet’s latest triple bill form a Who’s Who of ballet in the 1910s: Nijinsky, Fokine, Massine, Picasso, Bakst, Benois, Stravinsky, not to mention the dancers that once shared the stage with them. Where the works stand, however, today’s performers don’t always relate to the character flavor of the choreography, despite the glittering array of Principals on display for the filmed performances of the run.

Le Spectre de la Rose is an important work, perhaps the first manifestation of a woman’s desire in classical dance, but it is also the one piece on the program that seemed in serious need of a new design. The girl’s bonnet is now faded, old-fashioned in an intrusive way, while the Rose’s pale unitard and its pink petals only serve to make the feminine lines of today’s performers more obvious. Or is it just that we have lost something essential – the rich metaphor once conveyed by Nijinsky and Tamara Karsavina? On the basis of this performance, it is quite likely. Matthias Heymann turns the Rose into a jumping exercise – his eyes tend to go dead, and while he has clearly worked on his ports de bras, a certain stiffness remains. His partnering is also remarkably pedestrian – when the girl reaches out for him, he is happy to catch his breath for a minute behind her. His Rose is devoid of any perfume, but then – why throw him into a filmed performance so young, when comparisons will be made? Isabelle Ciaravola, now 37, but made an Etoile the same night as Heymann, gives a sensitive performance. Delicate and shy when she enters, she looks stunningly young as the young girl dreaming about her rose. There’s a hint of French 19th-century romanticism about her, and although she works her unnaturally arched feet to the point of distortion, her sense of wonder brings some meaning to a pale Spectre. (…)

» Read the full review in Ballet.co Magazine

Benjamin Pech in Petrouchka © Sébastien Mathé / Opéra National de Paris

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November 20, 2009

Review : In Jewels’ Paris store (Ashley Bouder and Gonzalo Garcia at the Palais Garnier)

Laura @ 01:59 —
Filed under: English, Reviews/critiques — Tags: ashley bouder, aurelie dupont, balanchine, benjamin pech, clairemarie osta, isabelle ciaravola, jewels, marie-agnès gillot, matthieu ganio, new york city ballet, paris opera ballet —

Jewels
Paris Opera Ballet
Palais Garnier, Paris
5 & 12 November 2009

The Paris Opera Ballet clearly loves Jewels. Since its French premiere, in 2000, the company has danced it nearly 90 times – easier to tour than a narrative full-length, but still evocative of the supposed grandeur of the institution, Balanchine’s triptych has been shown in Australia and a good number of French cities. In the meantime, portions of the ballet, dressed by Christian Lacroix, have also started to look like a VIP party – smart, scintillating, and about as poetic as the jewellery section of the nearby Galeries Lafayette, despite Ashley Bouder and Gonzalo Garcia’s welcome visit.

As it is, Emeralds may be quintessentially French, but it is not sophisticated Lacroix French, despite the rather fitting creations of the designer. A good many dancers seem confused about the atmosphere they’re supposed to impersonate – some go for the big smile, some for expressionless, but an uneasiness persists over the potential lyricism of this intimate jewel. Strangely, those mixed feelings still work well in the Molto Adagio that closes the ballet. At this point, the seven soloists seemed to me a new image of a decadent nobility hanging on to its delicacy of manners, the men absent princes, the women already in another world – as if the chain they form and re-form was already dead, buried by too many changes. (Whether that bodes well for the company is another matter.)

Clairemarie Osta was head and shoulders above everyone else in this fleeting ballet, which fits her like a glove. In the Sicilienne solo, she is entirely lost in her world – an underwater kingdom where playing and mourning are two sides of the same thing. Her curtseys are little surprises, invitations to the invisible, but the Ondine she impersonates so well has clearly discovered the weight of the years gone by. Later on, in the pas de deux, nostalgia wins – a nostalgia triggered by the absent presence of her partner (Benjamin Pech, at his most pallid). Her expressiveness and longing find no echo in him, and she seems again to be waiting for something that no longer exists – gazing into an empty path while walking delicately on pointe, her solitude magnificent.

» Full review on Ballet.co (Ashley Bouder, Gonzalo Garcia, Aurélie Dupont in Rubies, Marie-Agnès Gillot in Diamonds…)

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