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Opera Garnier, Paris. 15-III-22. Paris Opera Ballet: Hofesh Shechter. Directory entries. With the Paris Opera Ballet
Uprising. Music and choreography: Hofesh Shechter. Additional music: Vex’d. Lights: Lee Curran. Recorded music
In your rooms. Music and choreography: Hofesh Shechter. Musical collaboration: Nell Catchpole. Lights: Lee Curran. Costumes: Elizabeth Barker. Live music.
After The Art of Not Looking Backentered the repertoire of the Ballet de l’Opéra in 2018return to Garnier for the Israeli choreographer Hofesh Shechterwhich allows two of his youthful pieces, Uprising and In your rooms to enter the repertoire of the Paris Opera Ballet.
What is masculinity? Hofesh Shechter try to answer the question with Uprisingthis ultra-energetic masculine septet created in 2006, in response to the French urban riots of 2005. Seven dancers, from which stand out Simon Le Borgne, Takeru Coste and Jacques Gasztowtt compete in a choreography that combines power and elevation. Anchored to the ground, dressed in fatigues and earth-colored T-shirts, they play with gravity, in spirals and reversals that always bring them back to the ground. The sequences follow one another at a rapid pace. A finale that seeks a fight and launches into violence, before ending in a very pictorial composition, Raft of the jellyfish or top of a barricade.
More complex, In your rooms, created a year later, practices fragmented writing using cinematographic techniques, such as fading to black, to highlight micro-scenes or frozen bodies. The overall scenes are hyper-energetic, even martial, and give off a form of electricity. Leaning towards the ground, the bodies are in perpetual motion, hammering the air or throwing themselves on the ground. In a universe close to that of the painter Guillaume Bresson, Hofesh Shechter uses contact dance and urban dance techniques for his choreography.
As if suspended in the air, an orchestra composed of percussion and strings accompanies the dancers below. The rhythm is intense, increasing, without respite. There is an echo of the first piece in In your roomswith flashes or reminiscences of scenes captured under a shower of light, a spotlight aimed at the dancers.
The dancers of the Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris, among whom we find women, including Marion Barbeaurecently filmed by Cedric Klapisch in a choreography by Hofesh Shechter, give themselves fully to these generous proposals and throw themselves headlong into the raw gestures of the Israeli choreographer, as if it were made for them.
Photo credits: © Julien Benhamou / ONP
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More details
Opera Garnier, Paris. 15-III-22. Paris Opera Ballet: Hofesh Shechter. Directory entries. With the Paris Opera Ballet
Uprising. Music and choreography: Hofesh Shechter. Additional music: Vex’d. Lights: Lee Curran. Recorded music
In your rooms. Music and choreography: Hofesh Shechter. Musical collaboration: Nell Catchpole. Lights: Lee Curran. Costumes: Elizabeth Barker. Live music.
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