24 March 2023

The other song of dance on display

Driven by the graphic design studio Avalanche in Montreux, Yuka Oishi’s creation is now on display all over the French-speaking part of Switzerland. The choreography, initiated by Gil Roman, inspired by Maurice Béjart’s book of the same name and set to Mahler’s Symphony No.3, is to be discovered in its world premiere at the Beaulieu Theater from June 16 to 21.

“Dreams and the power of the imagination tell us about things that move beyond space and time, says Yuka Oishi. I feel like they are dreams floating between life and death, some kind of energy that we cannot see but feel.” Five years after imagining 空Ku for and with the Béjart Ballet Lausanne, the Japanese choreographer accepted a new invitation from Gil Roman, the BBL’s Artistic Director. She returns to the company to compose The other song of dance, a creation inspired by her reading of Maurice Béjart‘s book of the same name.

In his book published in 1974, which borrows its title from Nietzsche, the BBL’s creator reveals for the first time “the meaning and secret of his experience and quest, the years of hard work during which he painfully built the body he needed to dance, or rather, to be.” as Le Monde wrote at the time.

“Finding this book by Maurice Béjart allowed me to dance with his dreams and his imagination, confides Yuka Oishi. I read it while intuitively imagining some dances. He mentions that he dreamed more frequently when he started working on Mahler’s Symphony No. 3. The ballet doesn’t really follow the same form as the music and the book, but they were both inspirational. I wanted it to be both introspective and reflected in the dancers. I tried to gently adapt to the sensations and feelings that I could perceive from the dancers’ bodies in order to express this work as a living language.”

The surrealist composition by graphic designer Marc Bally captures the young choreographer’s words on the fly. “Dreams and the power of the imagination tell us things that evolve beyond space and time. It would be extremely unfortunate if the world we live in were limited to what we can see…”.