LES BALLETS DE MONTE-CARLO - EYAL – MAILLOT

On techno music that sounds like a countdown, dancers turn into faunes on half-points and perform a dance so extreme and visceral that it becomes intimidating. Sharon Eyal’s choreographies are renowned for their physicality and intensity. This is again the case with Autodance, which squeezes the least piece of energy from the body and wrings it to flush the movement out... A movement that says nothing, that tells nothing, that starts from the secrets of the belly, digs into the abdomen, opens the pelvis up, stiffens the legs and discharges itself before our eyes to tell its animal poetry. 

Based on the unbridled music of John Adams, the avowed physicality of the ballet leaves little rest for the dancers and throws a gauntlet down to them: to surpass themselves artistically to triumph over these twenty-eight intense minutes. While Jean-Christophe Maillot hunts out the downtime in his piece, it is to better celebrate life, like his father who burned so much impudent energy for it. His death posed the following question to the living: was it better to live prudently and frugally or greedily and excessively? Vers un pays sage is an ode to Jean Maillot’s greed.