Ballet for Life
Ballet for Life takes over the holidays
Gil Roman and his company are presenting Ballet for Life at Plan_B to celebrate the holiday season. Four exceptional performances will be given in unique conditions starting on December 14 in Lausanne.
Ballet for Life (“Le Presbytère n’a rien perdu de son charme, ni le jardin de son éclat”) stands apart in Maurice Béjart‘s choreographic universe and holds a special place in the heart of Béjart Ballet Lausanne’s public. This ballet of love and hope was created in 1996 at the Metropole Theater in Lausanne and was set to Queen and Mozart’s music in memory of two performing icons, Jorge Donn and Freddie Mercury, who were both taken away by AIDS.
Ballet for Life is a celebration of youth that has never left the spotlight. For the holiday season, the company’s Artistic Director presents it in unique conditions. It will take place at Plan_B, in the heart of the BBL’s main studio in Lausanne, a space that can seat 100 spectators. “Show must go on!”
Sanitary measures
> Presentation of the Covid certificate and an identity card.
> Masks must be worn.
> Automatic dispensers of hydroalcoholic gel will be available in the building.
Ballet for Life
Choreography: Maurice Béjart
Music: Queen, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Costumes design: Gianni Versace
Lighting design: Clément Cayrol
Lighting: Dominique Roman
Video editing: Germaine Cohen
Premiere: Salle Métropole, Lausanne – December 15, 1996
Revival: Teatro Comunale, Vicenza – March 8, 2008
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
