A late link, but I was in Monaco in early July for the last part of Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo’s season-long homage to the Ballets Russes – and my review of Maillot’s Schéhérazade and Shen Wei’s 7 to 8 and, a world premiere, appeared in the Financial Times on July 14.
Schéhérazade / 7 to 8 and
Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo
Salle Garnier
8 July 2010
With the centenary of the Ballets Russes, Monte-Carlo has an excuse to celebrate its own illustrious dance heritage. Diaghilev’s ensemble found a home in the city in the 1910s and 1920s; after it disbanded, other impresarios took over and set up a new Russian troupe in Monte-Carlo, which performed under various guises until 1963. The company was reborn in 1985 as Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, and director and choreographer Jean-Christophe Maillot has since shaped it into a sleek, innovative neo-classical ensemble.
Its summer season is a clever mix of re-creations of Ballets Russes works and world premieres. The Schéhérazade Fokine created in 1910, for instance, was a landmark event for the young company, but Ida Rubinstein and Nijinsky’s startling eroticism, as the Sultan’s favourite Zobeide and the Golden Slave, has too often given way to Orientalist cliché in subsequent renditions. Maillot has gone back to the ballet’s roots, Rimsky-Korsakov’s sumptuous 1888 score, to choreograph a new version. The music’s sheer texture is hard to equal, but Maillot’s musicality sets his attempt apart. He adds nuances where they had disappeared over time, and his patterns and tableaux for the ensemble are endlessly inventive. (…)
