Ballet de l’Opéra national du Capitole     

Kader Berlabi, director of the Ballet du Capitole, had been dreaming of this Toulouse-Lautrec for years. “I have always been fascinated by painting and so it was natural for me to make the comparison between the actions of a painter and a dancer. Of course, Toulouse-Lautrec painted Parisian festivities, cabarets, circuses, shows and dances. But his main passion was body language, poses, and the faces of the people whose personalities and depths he portrayed so skilfully. Dance was a central theme of his work. With a flick of his paintbrush or pencil, he captured the movement of a body, its rhythm, energy and humanity in its non finito state, in the void. I chose initially to devise a choreography without a libretto. The first phase was to gather everything together: to sample, dissect and select elements. The second phase involved putting them in order: assembling them without any pre-established arrangement or connecting them like pieces of a jigsaw. Ultimately, everything in this ballet is taken from the painter’s world and reinserted into a collage in a different way.” By embracing the ambiance of the Belle Epoque, the choreographer offers us a wild fresco full of colourful high spirits.

Coréalisation Productions Internationales Albert Sarfati / Théâtre des Champs-Elysées
Coproduction Théâtre du Capitole / Scène Nationale d’Albi