Tous les hommes presque toujours s’imaginent by Gil Roman, Brel et Barbara, Boléro by Maurice Béjart at Château de Versailles

The Béjart Ballet Lausanne is back at Château de Versailles for four performances. The programme includes Gil Roman‘s latest creation Tous les hommes presque toujours s’imaginent, and two ballets of Maurice Béjart, Brel et Barbara and Boléro.

Tous les hommes presque toujours s’imaginent, a title borrowed from the Swiss writer Ludwig Hohl, is entirely choreographed to the music of John Zorn, one of the leading composers of contemporary American music. The density and diversity of his extraordinary work, which began in the mid-1970s, as well as the audacity and artistic freedom he expressed through his craft, never ceased to challenge and fascinate the artistic director of the Béjart Ballet Lausanne. Facing a considerable body of work, Gil Roman immerses himself in the various compositions making up the universe that the brilliant multi-instrumentalist has explored from 1990 to 2017… Step by step, with a movement, a gesture, Gil Roman brings his dancers beyond the walls…

Brel et Barbara was created by Maurice Béjart in 2001. “For the last 35 years, my loyal friend and sister BARBARA has been telling me: ‘I am the black light!’ So I created a choreography about L’Aigle Noir. She then played in a movie called Je suis né à Venise, in which she was given the lead role, a character called the Bright Night, while Jorge Donn interpreted the Sun. I met BREL in Brussels, where I was living at the time with my dance company. He was starring in Man of La Mancha at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie. He told me that ‘Someday, we will do something with Barbara and I’.”

– Maurice Béjart

The show ends with Boléro, choreographed in 1961 by Maurice Béjart, on Maurice Ravel’s music. The central role – la Mélodie – is sometimes given to a female dancer and other times to a male dancer. The rhythm is interpreted by a group of male dancers.

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