The Bejart Ballet Lausanne began their four-day visit to the National Theater last night with a mixed bill that highlights the 79-year-old French choreographer Maurice Bejart's extraordinary career.
The three pieces -- a condensed version of L'Amour, la Danse (or The Best of Bejart), L'Oiseau de feu and Elton-Berg -- are classic examples of Bejart the spectacle-loving showman, Bejart the classicist with a twist and Bejart the prankster, but above all, Bejart as "ballet for boys," since his emphasis on the male dancer has long set him apart from other choreographers who are his contemporaries.
L'Amour, la Danse premiered at the Palais des Sports in Paris last year as a two-hour celebration of Bejart's more than half a century of work. It included excerpts from 12 pieces, including Le Sacre du Printemps, Romeo and Juliet Rumi, Entre Deux Guerres (Between Two Wars), Heliogable, Seven Greek Dances, Brel and Barbara (both of which were seen in Taipei during the company's visit last year) and Le Presbytere (performed during the company's first visit in 2001).
The music runs the gamut from Igor Stravinsky, Hector Berlioz and traditional African music from Chad to Mikis Theodorakis, Jacques Brel and Queen.
Taipei will see a slightly smaller version for 20 dancers.
"It's Bejart, his life ... for love and for the dance," said Emmanuel de Bourgknecht, the general manager of Bejart Ballet Lausanne, in a telephone interview from Japan last week.
"It's written like a story, a story about love," he said. "Maurice Bejart has made it like Romeo and Juliet visiting [the company] to see his ballet."
Stravinsky's music will be heard again in Bejart's l'Oiseau de Feu (The Firebird), created in 1970.
The Russian composer wrote the score for the Ballet Russe's production of The Firebird in 1910. Nearly 100 years later it remains one of the classics of ballet music. Bejart, however, completely changed the plot of the ballet by portraying the firebird as the leader of a group of revolutionaries -- a tribute to Stravinsky's Russian heritage and his revolutionary approach to music -- who sacrifices himself for his comrades and is reborn, like the phoenix.
"Bejart knew Stravinsky very well," De Bourgknecht said, adding that the two were old friends.
With Elton-Berg, a ballet for four dancers, Bejart gives audiences a chance to really examine his choreography. The same dance is performed, once to Elton John's Nikita and once to Alban Berg's Altenberg Lieder op.4.
De Bourgknecht explained how this combination came about.
"The first time it was done was not in rehearsal but in public," he said.
"Five or six years ago he [Bejart] imagined it. He was in the theater in Lausanne, at an open rehearsal for the public," De Bourgknecht said. "Mr. Bejart was coming to work on the Berg piece with the dancers. He told them `You have the rehearsal, you have the dance, now you have different music -- so dance.'"
Not only were the dancers surprised, he said, "The audience was completely unprepared. Only the soundman knew."
"It was a challenge for the dancers," he said, adding that they had found it interesting.
"The dancers told him [Bejart] afterwards that they wanted to do it again, but for real," De Bourgknecht said.
Elton-Berg has proven very popular with audiences.
"We dance this a lot in France, Japan, Italy, South America, everywhere in the world. Each year we dance it about 20 times," he said.
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