After “Rain” in 2001, three more works by the Flemish minimalist dancer-choreographer, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker - “Bartók/Beethoven/Schönberg” - have just entered the repertoire of the Paris Opera Ballet. The triptych was first presented as a repertory evening in 2006 at Grand Théâtre in Luxembourg, comprising three works created between 1986 and 1995.Premiering last evening at Palais Garnier, accompanied by the Paris Opera Orchestra conducted by Vello Pähn, all three works focus on the relationship between music and dance, illustrative of De Keersmaeker’s significant melomaniac approach to choreography. The poise and discipline indicative of her work reinforces each dancer’s individuality through movement. In her words, “Each dancer is like a musical instrument, which has her own sound and colour.”The evening starts with “Quatuor n°4” (1986) set to Béla Bartók’s Fourth String Quartet (1928), with the musicians placed on-stage. An all-female quartet pivots and swings and, like Dorothy, clicks their heels together whilst jumping in the air. Drawing beautiful, spiralling patterns as they move, they lift their skirts and flash their underwear. Is this an exploration of the symbolic act you find in mythology, that averts evil and enhances fertility? Or is De Keersmaeker a female version of Humbert Humbert? These sexually precocious girls, like Nabokov’s Lolita (1955), delight in their own abandon, as much desirable as they are desirous. Quadrille Laura Bachman, who was exceptional in her role as one of the four nymphets, told me that she felt empowered.The second part, “Grand Fugue” (1992) is set to Beethoven’s score of the same name, which despite its indecisive criticism in 1826, Stravinsky had foreseen its timeless contemporaneity, and so did De Keersmaeker. Dressed in suits, this time the all-male ensemble of seven, aided by étoile Alice Renavand’s strong, elegant intervention as a cross-dressing androgyn, was the strongest part of the evening and the one that required a great deal of stamina from dancers, viewers and listeners alike; I wish it had never reached the ending trill.The climbing, chromatic subject of Beethoven’s fugue seemed to be embodied by the dancers, each one translating the phrase in their own way and expressing it through a series of rapid leaps and hysterical flights, with étoile Karl Paquette accomplishing them with apparent ease and masculine vigour. The dancers looked as though they were being pulled and magnetised by invisible forces closing in from all directions. They fight with gravity, reaching out their arms, hands clenched into fists, jumping high, falling down and rolling on stage repeatedly as if caught in a storm, thunder rolling. De Keersmaeker could see the parallel I made with the strictly masculine, Greek folk dance Zeibekiko.The third part, “Transfigured Night” (1995) is set to Arnold Schönberg’s string sextet in one movement (1899), which he wrote as a setting for Richard Dehmel’s love poem of the same name (1896). A forest on a moonlit night is unveiled on stage, giant oak trees erect from floor to ceiling, six males standing besides them and étoile Marie-Agnès Gillot in the role of Cynthia confessing to her lover that she is carrying another man’s child. I know that each time I see her dance I am lightened with an almost religious enthusiasm. Her noble interpretation exhibits an unconscious possession of the emotional state of her role, exorcising any distinction between herself and the fiction she performs.She stood and grew taller tiptoeing barefoot with her arms in the fifth position, then bent her torso backwards to one side and collapsed to the ground, morphing in to Rodin’s “Crouching Woman” (1882). When more dancers take to the stage, love is in the air. With passionate lifts and erotic flamboyance, a series of male-female duets, with trios serving their transition, transfigures the scene, while the last words from Dehmel’s poem are beautifully danced by them all. Their breaths kiss in the air as they walk through the high, bright night.Until November 8 2015 at Palais Garnier, Paris Opera, Paris.
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