MONTE CARLO BALLETS : CHORE

With Choré,Jean-­‐Christophe Maillot momentarily abandons the world of great narrative ballets to devote himself to these short, abstract pieces that characterise both his work and his thinking. Composed in five separate sections, the backdrop to Choré is the emergence of musical theatre in the United States. Shown by the choreographer as less sparkling than in our imagination, here,this periodi s used as the pretext to question the evolution of dance and try to escape one of his obsessions,namely the fight between the old and the new. What does dance feed on? How far can it be liberated? At what point does it demand its share of beauty, humour and the past to still feel alive? The world of musical theatre offersa valuable insight into the response and Jean-­‐Christophe Maillot is able to take many of itselements to develop his own.

 Evoking the lopsided walk of primitive man or even Saint Vitus ' dance of fools, the first moments of Choré remind us that dance primarily obeys an urge. Jean-­‐Christophe Maillot, pondering on the nature of this urge, asks himself whether through it we express our desire to rise into the air or to the contrary,to anchor ourselves more firmly to the ground?Faced with gravity,the dancer has ac hoice,to fight against this force or embrace it a dilemma that has long served, particularly with the use of pointes, as a demarcation between the old and the new. Jean-­‐Christophe Maillot transposes this debate in the world of musical theatre by comparing the light and elegant style of Fred Astaire to the furious and grounded pounding of Gene Kelly.

Extending this original difference, the five sections of  Choré  present  the  major, recurring  antagonisms  that  trouble  the  world  of  dance,  but  which  Jean-­‐Christophe Maillot enjoys playing with. The role of the music,the relationship with the story,the connections with theatre, cinema and literature are just some of the ancient arenas that he prefers to remodel in a  laboratory open to all experiments.Choré plays the diversity card,but is not however a blind attempt at reconciling or erasing the differences.  It is simply their onic observation that the constraints that we seek to shrug off are those that we will most surely find on our path. Pushing the boundaries of art only makes even those borders that we thought we had escaped more visible.