Ballet for Life by Maurice Béjart in Japan

On October 2, 2024, the Béjart Ballet Lausanne will be in Japan in Nishinomiya at the Hyogo Performing Arts Center to mark the long-awaited return of the company to the Land of the Rising Sun, three years after its last visit. The company will perform Ballet for Life by Maurice Béjart, set to the music of Queen and Mozart, with costumes designed by Gianni Versace. This ballet about youth and hope is a tribute to Jorge Donn and Freddie Mercury.

“A little over thirty years ago, in between Berlioz surprising music interspersed with bombing and the sound of ma­chine guns, an unconventional Friar Lawrence cried out to Jorge Donn and Hitomi Asakawa: “Make love, not war!”

Today, Gil Roman, who is about the same age as the creation of my Romeo and Juliet, surrounded by dancers who have never seen this ballet, answers: “You told us to make love, not war. We made love. Why is love waging war on us?”

A cry from the youth, for whom the problem of death by Love is added to the multiple wars that have never ceased in the world since the so-called END of the last World War!

Above all, my ballets are encounters: with music, with life, with death, with love… with all those, whose life and works find a renewal within me. Moreover, the dancer who I am no longer is reincarnated each time by the dan­cers who surpass this former self.

A love affair with the music by Queen. Invention, violence, humour, love: it’s all there. I love the group. They inspire me and guide me, sometimes through this no man’s land where we will all go one day and where, I am sure, Fred­die Mercury is playing a duet on the piano with Mozart.

A ballet about youth and hope, as hopeless and optimistic as they are. Despite everything, I believe that The Show Must Go On, as Queen put it in one of their songs.“

– Maurice Béjart

*Beware of the grey ticketing market: Béjart Ballet Lausanne cannot be held responsible for any purchase of show tickets outside the ticket offices officially mentioned on the website.