Traces: Damien Jalet and Fouad Boussouf – Grand Théâtre de Genève

For the last program of the season from Ballet of the Grand Theater of Genevathe director of the troop Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui offers the diptych tracks. A program consisting of the directory entry of THR(O)UGH by Damien Jaletassociate artist, and there creation VIA by Fouad Boussoufdirector of the Choreographic Center of Le Havre. The two works remain dissimilar but both plunge their foundations in an assumed spirituality, declined in a contemporary gesture. Damien Jalet convenes his traumas linked to the Parisian attacks of 2015 and anchor THR(O)UGH in a unique Japanese ritual. Fouad Boussouf, for his part, stages a dark and sunny tribal story, wrapped in a choreography that merges styles. Two pieces of great strength for a troupe that shows great versatility, capable of expressing itself in two singular aesthetic visions.

THR(O)UGH by Damien Jalet – Ballet of the Grand Théâtre de Genève

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui tastes like an ellipse. Don’t count on the director of the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève to explain why he gathered Damien Jalet and Fouad Boussouf in the same program, nor to explain the title he chose: tracks. It is up to each and everyone to seize this invitation which announces both a path and an imprint. But there is undeniably a coherence in this last evening of the first Geneva season of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Damien Jalet and Fouad Boussouf have in common a natural virtuosity to stage sets and design complex but fluid architectures., a sense of framing and neat image, an ability to agglomerate styles without ever locking oneself into a single vocabulary. This in fact two precious choreographers.

THR(O)UGH of Damien Jalet was imagined in 2016 for the Hessisches Staatsballett. VSThis piece has an origin drawn from a Japanese ritual that flirts with danger and death. Every six years, men descend the mountains on tree trunks to symbolically renew the Suwa shrine near Nagano. It is from this rite called Onbashira that was born the idea to put on stage a giant cylinder imagined with the visual artist Jim Hodges. Huge hollow tube made up like camouflage, placed in the center of the plate and rotating on itself. But another event simultaneously influenced the creative work. On November 13, 2015, Damien Jalet narrowly escaped the disastrous Parisian attacks. It’s there that myth and reality collide and produce a painful questioning on the fragility of life, inducing a metaphysical work.

THR(O)UGH by Damien Jalet – Ballet of the Grand Théâtre de Genève

VSe Japanese rite of the extreme becomes a metaphor and the cylinder a mobile and frightening totem. It is from there that the dancers arise in a frantic race. They circumvent it, cross it to find themselves on the ground in a whirlwind of tendrils and cascading falls. This is where the cylinder begins to roll on itself this time towards the room, stopping at the edge of the stage as if to measure the force it represents. Returning to the center, the dancers cling to it, roll with it to the breaking point to avoid being crushed. Damien Jalet and his associate choreographer Aimilios Arapoglou confront the troupe with an extreme choreography where the artists constantly put themselves in dangercreating constant suspense.

The dark lights of Jan Martens plunge the space into semi-darkness. The light comes from inside the cylinder. The electronic sounds designed by Christian Fennesz syncopate the movement. Do not say too much so as not to reveal the story and its outcome, but THR(O)UGH flies away towards a hope of redemption, a climax where the group finds itself inside, in unison and moves in an organic movement where the bodies draw a wave. It’s stunningly beautiful, irresistible. Damien Jalet is an image magician, designing his pieces as animated plastic works. How not to salute the formidable commitment of the company which, after SKIDcaptures with talent the singular universe of the Franco-Belgian choreographer?

VIA by Fouad Boussouf – Ballet of the Grand Théâtre de Genève

Whether we radically change style and aesthetics after intermission, Fouad Boussouf is not stingy either with beautiful images. VIA imposes itself above all by the scenography of Ugo Rondinone and the masterful lights of Lukas Marian. DOut of black rises an intense blue backdrop, in front of which are lined up fifteen male and female dancers in long bright red chasubles. Guaranteed stupor and irrepressible tremors of the feet which jump to move. begins a collective, almost tribal dance, which is organized in lines, diagonals and circles in an implacable geometry of space. When surreptitiously, someone, someone, briefly escapes the group for a short solo before rejoining it. No breaks, no stops but a long hypnotizing choreographic phrase. Then, like a chrysalis, the troupe gets rid of this heavy outfit to line them up in front of the stage, leaving their large blue pants visible.

Fouad Boussouf deploy as usual a multiple vocabulary with total mastery. The echoes of folk dances that dominate the first stage give way to a broader gesture where urban and contemporary dances intersect. This stylistic shift accompanies a change of atmosphere. Ritual paintings from the beginning marked by a vertical rigidity of the bodies, VIA leads us to a more solar world embodied by the powerful yellow of the costumes and the backdrop from the last table. The gesture is emancipated, the dance is individualized and immersed in a festive picture. If the musical tone created by Gabriel Majou varies, the same rhythmic header from start to finish. Here again, the Ballet of the Grand Théâtre de Genève excels in blending into the magnificent eclecticism of Fouad Boussouf.

VIA by Fouad Boussouf – Ballet of the Grand Théâtre de Genève

tracks by the Ballet of the Grand Théâtre de Genève. THR(O)UGH by Damien Jalet and VIA by Fouad Boussouf with Oscar Comesaña Salgueiro, Geoffrey Van Dyck, Yumi Aizawa, Céline Allain, Adelson Carlos, Zoé Charpentier, Quintin Cianci, Diana Dias Duarte, Armando Gonzalez Besa, Ricardo Macedo, Emilie Meeus, Juan Perez Cardona, Mohana Rapin, Luca Scaduto , Sara Shigenari, Nahuel Vega and Madeline Wong. Thursday, April 20, 2023 at the Bâtiment des Forces Motrices. Must see on tour : at the Filature de Mulhouse on May 16 and 17, VIA of Fouad Boussouf at the Équinoxe in Châteauroux on May 4 in (with Fauna of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui), THR(O)UGH by Damien Jalet at the National Theater of Brittany from June 13 to 16 (with SKID by Damien Jalet).

Traces: Damien Jalet and Fouad Boussouf – Grand Théâtre de Genève