Denis LEVAILLANT (b.1952)
La Petite Danseuse de Degas - A ballet in two parts from an original idea
by Patrice Bart and Martine Kahane
Choreography by Patrice Bart
Director of Dance – Brigitte Lefèvre
Set Design by Ezio Toffolutti
Costume Design by Sylvie Skinazie
Lighting by Marion Hewlett
The Little Dancer - Clairemarie Osta
The Etiole Dancer - Dorothée Gilbert
The Ballet Master - Mathieu Ganio
The Subscription Holder - José Martinez
The Man in Black - Benjamin Pech
The Mother - Elisabeth Maurin
The Caf’conc’ Singer - Stéphanie Romberg
The Violinist - Emmanuel Thibault
Ballet de l’Opéra national de Paris
Orchestre de l’Opéra national de Paris/Koen Kessels
Plus bonus: interviews with Denis Levaillant, Patrice Bart, Martine Kahane,
and Brigitte Lefèvre
EUROARTS DVD 108 026 [112:00; Interviews: 20:00]
Composer and pianist, Denis Levaillant was born in Paris in 1952. His music
comprises works in a wide variety of forms including opera, ballet, orchestral,
choral, chamber and electro-acoustic music and material for radio and film.
He began studying the piano at the age of six, and recorded Ravel’s
Valses nobles et sentimentales when he was 12. He is reported to be fascinated
by dance, jazz, improvisation and the circus. He holds a Master’s degree
in Philosophy.
When the choreographer of La Petit Danseuse de Degas heard Denis Levaillant’s
Piano Concerto, he was so impressed that he not only contracted Levaillant
to write the music for his ballet but also used the music of the Concerto’s
Andante in the ballet.
Edgar Degas’ La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans
Edgar Degas’s sculpted La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans" ("Little
Dancer of Fourteen Years of age") circa. 1881.
It is a sculpture of a dance student called Marie van Goethem. Unusually for
its time, the sculpture was made in wax and dressed in a cotton skirt with
a hair ribbon. It stands on a wooden base. Later, in 1922, 27 bronze casts
were made. When La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans was shown at Paris’s
Sixth Impressionist Exhibition in 1881, it caused immediate controversy. Many
critics were shocked. It was thought to be ugly; some felt it looked like
a medical specimen partly because it was exhibited in a glass case. Some considered
it grotesque and primitive. The sculpture can be seen today in the Quai d’Orsay
Museum, Paris.
The relationship between Marie van Goethem and Edgar Degas (pictured right)
is contentious but it was not unheard of, in the 1880s for young artists of
the Paris Opera to seek the protection of their stage-door admirers. Marie
van Goethem grew up with her two sisters in a deprived suburb of Paris. When
their father died, their mother made ends meet by enrolling her daughters
at the Opera’s ballet school and hiring them out as artists’ models
in their studios. But this business collapsed when the girls, encouraged by
their mother, drifted into the world of petty crime and prostitution.
This sculpture, the story of Marie van Goethem and the art of Edgar Degas
have all inspired this ballet. [In the story of the Ballet, the little dancer
represents all three daughters.]
La Petite Danseuse de Degas – The Ballet review.
The story is set around the dreams and aspirations of the little dancer whose
ambition is to become an étoile (principal ballerina). But her more
realistic, more down-to-earth mother knows they could never afford such long
and intensive training and is set upon exploiting her daughter. Inevitably
the little dancer is compromised and, at length, is caught stealing a rich
ballet fan’s money, and subsequently dismissed from the Opèra,
imprisoned, then put to work in the sweat shop that is the Laundry, her dreams
shattered.
Put simply, this imginative ballet is stunning. The costumes throughought
all the varied scenes and locations (streets, dance class, artist’s
studio, Opera ball, cabaret, prison and laundry) are all exquisite. Just one
example: in the ballet class the dancers’ white dresses have beautifully
harmonised pastel-coloured sashes and underskirts; and the dancers’
groupings and attitudes in repose are so aptly and beautifully lit that their
resemblance to Degas’s paintings is quite uncanny. Ezio Toffolutti’s
sets are simple but effective and again they not only enhance the feeling
of clever emulations of Degas’s artwork but also reflect the reality
that is, for instance, the Opèra’s ballet schoolroom.
The sense of the reality of the dancers’ life behind the little dancer’s
dream world is evident in so many ways and is a tribute to Patrice Bart and
his team’s research and imagination. At the beginning of the dancing
class scene, for instance, we see a male junior dancer with his water jug
preparing the dancing area for the little girls’ practice – this
sequence is daintily choreographed, the girls’ dancing being full of
charm and innocence. We also note that the musician attending the student
dancers is a violinist not a pianist; this is historically accurate.
Bart’s choreography and the dancing of all the leads and the corps de
ballet is consistently top drawer. La Petite Danseuse de Degas is very much
an ensemble ballet. Clairmarie Osta as the petite danceuse is central and
she so touchingly conveys, in Bart’s adroitly conceived dances, the
14-year old’s vulnerability, her starry-eyed ambitions grounded by her
naiveté, her unwittingly comic posturing and ultimately her desolation.
She is supported by a wonderful cast. All shine: Dorothée Gilbert is
sublimely graceful as the fairy godmother-like étoile. She is strongly
partnered by Mathieu Ganio as the dancing master – one of the highlights
of the production is the pas de trois dance between these two and la petite
danseuse during the latter’s dream sequence. José Martinez as
the subscription holder to whose seduction la petite is forced by her mother
- tellingly portrayed by Elisabeth Maurin cast in a wicked step-mother-like
portrayal to extend the fairy tale imagery - is lofty and aloof. The Man in
Black who can be interpreted as Degas and the little girl’s Destiny
is a shadowy puppetmaster figure.
Denis Levaillant’s interesting mix of tonal and atonal music - sometimes
gleaming, diamond-hard and often favouring batteries of percussion, particularly
xylophone and tubular bells - spans many styles from the baroque to modernism
and jazy figures via Late Romanticism and Impressionism.
An inspired and visually ravishing creation. This ballet deserves to go from
success to success.
Ian Lace
An inspired and visually ravishing creation. This ballet deserves to go from
success to success.