What if Aurora, Sleeping Beauty, woke up today? She would open her eyes, for example, to a red-walled stage flanked by two passageways, protected by heavy velvet curtains, and a staircase in the background. Almost an aquarium where the lights can go from red to green to blue.
Other than Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. Today the viewer would find himself among a crowd of 15 restless nannies. Girls and boys all dressed in white in the same way: bonnet, lace bodice and skirt held wide by the panier.
Destabilizes the show that the Spanish choreographer and director Marcos Morau created for the Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon on tour in Paris at the Theater de Villette.
He, born in Valencia, 40 years old, is the new star of the European show business. Choreographer, director, true artist: he enlivens the stage with images with a strong visual impact. He loves to take the audience off guard and tackle the stories he tells from a different, unexpected point of view. As he did for his company La Veronal in “Sonoma” seen at the East West festival in ’20. Here he knew how to invent a contemporary body language mixed with tradition. He was awarded choreographer of the year in ’22 by Danza & Danza magazine
His “Bella” is no different. It is not a “rereading” of the fairy tale in a modern key as certain updatings by Mats Ek or Angelin Preljocaj have accustomed us to for “Giselle” or for “Swan Lake”.
His is a waste, a personal vision. In an hour and twenty she captures the viewer’s attention with her nurses, with bell-shaped skirts, who glide on stage like the Russian dancers of the “Beriozka” company (for those who remember them). They are the real stars of the show. It’s like they all woke up together. They move their torso and head like birds of prey on a perch. They are in the throes of stress, an anxiety that forces them to fidget all the time. They go down, they roll off the ladder. They run across the stage from the viewer’s left to right (from coté jardin to coté cour). They flee from a fire that can be sensed behind the scenes from the river that invades the stage. And gradually they abandon parts of the sumptuous and bulky clothes until they reach complete nudity. Or, always in the same direction, they appear one after the other with large bundles of white flowers precisely for the waltz of flowers. Because Tchaikovsky is mixed with original music by Juan Cristòbal Saavedra. And the female variation of the pas de deux of the “Bella” here becomes a sweet and persuasive song intoned by all the dancers. A berceuse full of poetry for little Aurora cared for by the wet nurses.
But then the agitated run resumes. There is also anxiety: the concern is for this baby in swaddling clothes who passes arms from one wet nurse to another. Until, one of them comes down the stairs holding an old woman with long white hair in her arms. Time passes even in fairy tales.
The Lyon Ballet traditionally has the desire to approach the great texts in new ways. From the times when the director, in 1985, was Françoise Adret and Maguy Marin set up his timeless “Centrillon”. The command then passed to Yorgos Loukos. Today, director Julie Guibert continues to pay attention to originality and quality.