Ballet for 21 dancers
Created on the 15th of April 2023 for the Paris Opera Ballet School

Choreography | Martin Chaix

Music | Maurice Ravel

Set design | Camille Dugas

Costumes | Alexandar Noshpal

Lighting | Tom Klefstad

Children's tales have nourished generations with their imagination, whimsical characters, and morals. Ravel, by setting to music some tales by Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy, Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, and Charles Perrault, knew, thanks to his so particular writing, to capture the innocence of childhood, the lightness of this period of life that forges a personality and everything that constitutes the essence of a human being.

The ballet I created for the School of Dance of the Opéra National de Paris reflects this innocence and lightness of the soul through different characters of the tales evoked in the musical work as well as some personal additions, and through them, talk about us, sensitive, living and loving beings, - in short, human - at the heart of these fables

In close collaboration with Camille Dugas for the sets, Alexandar Noshpal for the costumes, and Tom Klefstad for the lights, the ballet takes place in a magical and poetic environment and is a tribute to books, those of these storytellers and other more current ones, those read to the little ones to fall asleep and make them dream, and those for the older ones who want to escape from reality - or virtuality - often heavy.

The ensemble is a luminous setting in which dancers will evolve to evoke different characters, and through their stories, talk to us about joy, fear, love, and, quite simply, about them; about us.

Medias

Photos © Svetlana Loboff