WHEN I BEGAN TO CREATE THE MALE DANCER, MANY QUESTIONS AROSE WITHIN ME. HOW SHOULD A MALE DANCER MOVE? WHAT SHOULD HE LOOK LIKE? HOW SHOULD HE BEHAVE ON A STAGE IN TODAY'S WORLD? AND HOW DO THESE QUESTIONS RESONATE WITHIN AN INSTITUTION LIKE THE PARIS OPERA? WITH THIS CREATION, I AM ATTEMPTING TO ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS, AS A DANCER, MAN, AND ARTIST.
Invited for the first time to the Paris Opera Ballet, Spanish choreographer Iván Pérez questions the representation of masculinity on stage by creating a piece for ten male dancers. How should a dancer move? What should he look like? And what answers do these questions find within an institution like the Paris Opera? By encouraging the dancers to make their interpretation an expression of their own sensibility and their dance a true act of self-affirmation, the choreographer invites them to break free from critical gazes and conventions, inspired by the book with the same name, written by art historian, Ramsay Burt. A transgression that echoes the costumes of Alejandro Gómez Palomo, whose vibrant colors become symbols of freedom and liberation. In the costume and rehearsal studios of the Palais Garnier, exuberance and elegance are omnipresent.
“But what strikes most in this creation, it is these broken embraces which men congratulate themselves. Taking themselves in arms in an almost aggressive impulse, they immediately go beyond the age-old cock fight, to launch themselves, project themselves, hang on to each other before laying down, abandoned, offered, lasciviously exposed. By breaking the eternal heterocentric duo of the dancer and the ballerina and that, bellicose at will, of the warrior against his rival, Iván Pérez delicately questions the power of brotherhood as well as desire. And it feels good.”
Agathe Charnet, La Gazette.
THE MALE DANCER
CHOREOGRAPHY: IVÁN PÉREZ
MUSIC: ARVO PÄRT
DRAMATURGY: JENNY MAHLA
COSTUMES: ALEJANDRO GÓMEZ PALOMO
SET AND LIGHTING DESIGN: TANJA RÜHL
CHOREOGRAPHY ASSISTANTS: CÉLIA AMADE, CHRISTOPHER TANDY