dancer at the paris opera ballet crossword

“I was only supposed to be a substitute, but I ended up dancing the piece after Jérémie Bélingard was forced to withdraw. Even without seeing them, you can really sense the audience, and it’s this exchange that gives meaning to our profession.” The adrenalin of live performance is something Moreau – now a premier danseur performing solo roles – unexpectedly experienced at his debut, in 2008, when he performed at the Opera in Benjamin Millepied’s Triade. “But of course it doesn’t have the same flavour as performing in front of an audience: from one evening to the next, the public’s reaction at the Palais Garnier is totally different. “It’s really great that the Opera has taken this initiative,” comments dancer Marc Moreau, pictured in these pages. In order to carry on as “normally” as possible, a digital platform was launched, and the perfor- mances, rehearsed and produced in the usual conditions, were filmed for online broadcast. The pandemic, which prevented them from performing in front of an audience for over a year, has left the dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet champing at the bit, all the while trying to adapt, like the rest of us, to the restrictions imposed by the virus. Attracted by its sublimely elegant gestural language, a cohort of disciplined dancers gives shape to its repertoire, which includes classical ballets such as Giselle, Swan Lake, La Bayadère, La Sylphide and The Nutcracker, as well as pieces commissioned from important contemporary choreographers, like William Forsythe, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Pina Bausch.

A venerable centre of high culture, the Paris Opera is one of those places where tradition and modernity tightly intertwine, and where the world of tomorrow is forged. Dare we touch the masterpieces that have made the Paris Ballet so famous, adapting discriminating make-up here or a shocking name there? To conservative politicians who champion the myth of a supposedly untouchable tradition, enlightened voices have rightly replied that the great classical ballets, for the most part written in the 19th century, have already been the subject of numerous re-readings and reinterpretations. Recently, there has been a debate about the place of diversity at the Paris Opera, raising profound artistic and ethical questions.

In an age of rapid success for influencers of all stripes, the dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet embody a radically opposite lifestyle choice: total discipline and rigour from the age of 13, when they enter the school of dance, to retirement at 42.

Dancer at the paris opera ballet crossword