HOMMAGE A JEROME ROBBINS

Casting

Co Producers and Broadcasters (TV, cinema, Video)

MEZZO, OPERA NATIONAL DE PARIS, EURO MEDIA FRANCE (EX SFP), CNC, TELMONDIS, BEL AIR MEDIA

Line producer

Anne TARDIEU

The program is a tribute to the world famous choreographer, on the tenth anniversary of his death, whose genius stretched across decades and art forms.
Jerome Robbins is perhaps best known for his choreography and co-direction of the massively influential film West Side Story and Broadway hit Fiddler on the Roof. But Robbins was also an enormously successful choreographer for theatre and ballet during his lifetime, and his works continue to be performed around the world ten years after his death.
This program salutes Robbins by presenting very different sides to his imagination, ranging from the intriguingly dark to the laugh-out-loud funny.

In G Major

Composer: Maurice Ravel
Music: Piano Concerto in G Major
Choreography: Jerome Robbins
Creation: May 15, 1975, New York City Ballet, The Ravel Festival, New York State Theater

Running Time: 23 minutes

Ravel composed the Concerto in G Major after a trip to the United States. It has been seen as a reflection on Gershwin and American musical comedy. Ravel described the work as “… written in very much the same spirit as those of Mozart and Saint-Saëns,” and that “it uses certain effects borrowed from jazz, but only in moderation.” (Arbie Orenstein, Ravel: Man and Musician.) When the Paris Opera Ballet staged In G Major, under the name “En Sol,” it commissioned scenery and costumes by Erté, which were borrowed by New York City Ballet.

In the night

Composer: Frederic Chopin
Music: Nocturne (op. 27, no. 1)
Nocturne (op. 55, nos. 1 & 2)
Nocturne (op. 9, no. 2)

Choreography: Jerome Robbins
Costumes: Anthony Dowell
Lighting: Jennifer Tipton
Creation: January 1970, New York State Theater, New York City Ballet

Running Time: 21 minutes

”In the Night’’: the wonderfully romantic three-part ballet which traces feelings of love through the stages of tenderness, complicity and passion to the music of Chopin nocturnes. This was performed by three couples.

The concert

Composer: Frederic Chopin
Music:
- Polonaise in A Major (op. 40, no. 1)
- Berceuse (op. 57)
- Prelude (op. 28, no. 18)
- Prelude (op. 28, no. 16)
- Waltz in E-Minor (posthumous, op. 15)
- Prelude (op. 28, no. 7)
- Mazurka in G Major (posthumous)
- Prelude (op. 28, no. 4)
- Ballade (op. 47, no. 3)

Choreography: Jerome Robbins
Costumes Irene Sharaff
Lighting Jennifer Tipton
Creation: March 1956 – City Center of Music and Drama – New York City Ballet
Running Time: 26 minutes

The Concert is rightly regarded as one of the funniest works in ballet and highlights Robbins’ reputation as a master of comic dance. Subtitled The Perils of Everybody, this comedy of errors, in a series of vignettes set to several of Chopin’s piano miniatures, illustrates what happens when people let their thoughts wander at a concert.
Chains of corps de ballet dances fall out of time and become hilariously unstuck, a lady with an enormous hat blocks everyone’s view, and a mix-up with tickets sees the whole theatre playins musical chairs.

The Sunday Telegraph
“This is humour – and dance-as its best. Hugely entertaining and hugely clever.”

New York Times
”The Concert” appears to make jokes about Chopin’s music but its true subjects are human dreams and yearnings. The comedy of errors that can be anyone’s life finds its apt metaphor in the side-splitting segment known as the ”Mistake Waltz.” It is also a ballet joke, in which one or more dancers in an ensemble are always behind or ahead of the others, usually facing the wrong direction.

Triade – world premiere creation

Choreography : Benjamin Millepied
Music : Nico Muhly

Costumes : Benjamin Millepied
Light : Rémi Nicolas

Running Time : 20 minutes

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