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…)
