3:00 pm | $12/$10 members/$6 children | 2 hrs 23 min
Rare and amazing and on the big screen, too!—see the Paris Opéra Ballet perform George Balanchine’s “Symphony in C,” music by Georges Bizet, and Benjamin Millepied’s “Daphnis et Chloe,” music by Maurice Ravel. Captured live in June, 2014, in the magnificent Palais Garnier (with its gorgeous Marc Chagall ceiling), the running time is approximately 120 minutes—including a filmed backstage tour during the intermission.
An artistic encounter between two choreographers from the New York City Ballet, its founder George Balanchine and former dancer Benjamin Millepied, and two great French composers, this program highlights the similarities and dissonances between them. Accompanying the dancers of the Paris Opéra Ballet for the first time, Philippe Jordan conducts the masterpieces of French music. For New York City Ballet aficionados, and everybody else, this should be a delightful trip to Paris.
In 1947 Russian-American choreographer George Balanchine paid tribute to the Paris Opéra Ballet and to the French tradition in an original new work which he called “Le Palais de Cristal,” using Georges Bizet’s barely known “Symphony in C” as its musical foundation. Characterized by its architectural design and sense of dialogue with the music, the ballet, known in the United States as “Symphony in C,” is a model of academic virtuosity. For this Parisian presentation it has been updated with new costumes by couturier Christian Lacroix.
A choreographic work that came early in Benjamin Millepied’s innovative term as the director of Paris Opéra Ballet (which he ended this year), “Daphnis et Chloé” is a collaboration with the conceptual artist Daniel Buren that revisits the eponymous Greek love story of the goatherd and shepherdess. In the tradition of Balanchine, Millepied drew his inspiration from the rhythms and colors of Ravel’s “choreographic symphony” for chorus and orchestra. Igor Stravinsky called the score “one of the most beautiful works of French music.”
Dance Film Sundays, a series which started in June 2010 under the auspices of the Rosendale Theatre Collective, are held on the 2nd Sunday of every month at Rosendale Theatre.