Sasha Waltz in Paris

“BEAU spectacle!” reports France’s Le Monde of a new production at Paris’s Bastille Opera. The choreographer inspiring this plaudit is called Waltz. Yes, that’s her real family name.

Sasha Waltz has been the toast-of-town in Berlin's dance world for a decade. Many of her shows, including perhaps her most famous, “Körper” (Bodies), have toured the world. Breaching the formidable walls of the Bastille is the 44-year-old German’s version of Berlioz’s “Romeo and Juliet”. It opened on October 5th to extravagant applause, with another Paris daily, Libération, citing its “superb, fluid, aerial pas de deux”, performed by the Paris ballet’s stars, Aurélie Dupont and Hervé Dupont, as the star-crossed lovers.

At the post-premiere soirée, Ms Waltz herself could be seen in a twirl or two to the upbeat strains of a Russian folk combo. But how does a foreigner end up with the directorial reins at so revered a house? Its director, Gérard Mortier, has an internationally roving eye--and he loves quirkiness. Waltz caught his attention with her last big operatic foray: a staging of Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas”. That opened with dancers plunging half naked into a huge water-tank.

Waltz revels in the elements. Her last show, “Medea”, featured a gale-force wind blown across stage by vast propellers. In an earlier Waltz piece, “Tides”, a wall goes up in flames. And here? In her grave, asleep, not dead, Julie is covered, spectacularly, with piles and piles of pebbles. Call it: choreography going back to basics.

Moreover  Berlin  Dance  Paris  

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