Maurice Béjart; Guardian obit
Hyfler/Rosner
Bill Harpe
Friday November 23, 2007
Guardian
Throughout the 20th century, most of the great European
opera houses presented classical ballet as a
quintessentially 19th-century art form. But if one European
artist should receive the principal credit for recognising
and then addressing its arrested development, it is the
French choreographer Maurice Béjart, who has died aged 80.
His vision was of ballet as a 20th-century art form that
would be as popular as cinema. It is a vision to which
Béjart remained committed throughout his life, both during
his 17-year residency at the Brussels opera house, the
Théātre de la Monnaie, until 1987, and then in Lausanne,
after changes in management at the Monnaie resulted in the
relocation of both Béjart and his company (renamed Béjart
Ballet Lausanne) to Switzerland. His approach to the
realisation of his vision was always evolutionary rather
than revolutionary. The traditions of classical ballet (both
the Italian style he studied as a youth in Marseille, and
the Russian style he studied later in Paris under his
principal teacher, Mme Roussane) were to be augmented rather
than thrown away.
Classical ballet technique was added to and enriched from
the sensual and spiritual dance traditions of India, Africa,
China and Japan. Opera house performances were supplemented
by spectacular productions in circus arenas and sports
centres. Performances involved not only the most ancient and
modern music for dancing, but also words and dialogue. The
stage became an Aladdin's cave of magical effects drawing
from the traditions of ballet, opera, musicals, vaudeville,
and oriental theatre, including kabuki.
What made Béjart's formula so successful with his audiences
(if not always with British critics) was his unique blend of
showmanship with sincerity, and virtuosity with artistry.
But the approach was something more than a formula. His
celebration of eastern cultures in his ballets reflected a
personal commitment - his spiritual observances owed much to
Sufi traditions and he made an annual retreat to a Buddhist
monastery in Greece.
The influence of African dance on his work - and his
commitment to the creation of the multi-disciplinary dance
school Mudra-Afrique in Dakar, with the support of Senegal's
President Léopold Sédar Senghor - marked Béjart's
recognition of and tribute to his African grandmother. Mudra
is the Hindi word for gesture. And the European artists and
composers who took to the stage in Béjart's ballets -
Nijinsky, Chaplin, Shakespeare, Moličre, Wagner, Baudelaire,
Nietzsche, Mozart, Berlioz - were also the artists and
composers who peopled his life off-stage.
But while his productions, whether large-scale or intimate,
were consummately crafted works of total theatre, it is
their choreography that drew from Béjart his deepest
creative contribution. Technically speaking, his dancers
were always in the premier league of international
companies, with soloists (most notably male dancers,
including Germinal Casado, Paolo Bortuluzzi and Jorge Donn)
who were stars in their own right. And, while Béjart was as
inspired by the dancers in his company as they were by him,
the luminaries of the ballet world - including Vladimir
Vasiliev, Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhaļl Baryshnikov, Maļa
Plissetskaļa, Suzanne Farrell, Maļna Gielgud, Marcia Haydée,
Judith Jamison and Sylvie Guillem - travelled to dance for
him or to work with him.
His choreography, while immediately recognisable, was also
infinitely variable. The Rite of Spring (to the celebrated
score by Stravinsky, 1959) spoke through orgasmic sexuality
and flowing imagery of flowers, birds, chariots and ships.
Ninth Symphony (to Beethoven, 1964) spoke through
exhilarating patterns, drawing upon Indian dance for the
slow movement and drawing in African dancers for the final
movement. Boléro (to Ravel, 1961) achieved sublimity through
repetition in an extended solo. Ring Around the Ring (to
Wagner, 1990) intermingled rehearsal and performance
sequences in scenes peopled by Wagnerian and contemporary
characters.
During the course of five creative decades, Béjart was the
principal author of almost 250 individual dance works
(including more than 40 full-length ballets) for his own
companies in Paris, Brussels and Lausanne and on tour, and
for festivals and companies in France, Israel, Turkey,
Egypt, Russia, Japan, Brazil, Austria, Greece and America.
It is an output which attracted - and inspired, invigorated
and informed - a much broader audience than is drawn to
mainstream ballet.
Born in Marseille, Béjart was brought up by his
French-Senegalese father, Gaston Berger, a self-taught and
much admired teacher, inspector of education, and
philosopher, after whom Senegal's second university is now
named. Although his mother died when he was aged seven, she
remained throughout his life an inner inspiration and
beacon. He studied at the Lycée de Marseille where he was
awarded his baccalaureate cum laude at 16, graduated from
the faculty of philosophy in Aix-en-Provence with a bachelor
of letters degree, and crucially took up dancing on the
advice of his family's doctor.
The enthusiasm he then developed for classical dance changed
both his life and his name (for stage appearances Berger
became Béjart, reflecting both his connection to art and his
admiration for Moličre, whose relationships included both
Madeleine Béjart, lover, and Armande Béjart, wife). Just 5ft
4in tall, he made his debut as a ballet dancer at the
Marseille Opéra in 1945, moving on in the same year to the
Paris Opéra.
There were no early indications that Béjart was to become a
moderniser. He first came to the attention of London
audiences in Mona Inglesby's International Ballet company in
1947 dancing the virtuoso Bluebird variation in Sleeping
Beauty and partnering the ballerina Claudia Algeranova as a
youthful classical prince in Swan Lake.
But when he returned to London in 1960, as both
choreographer and dancer, things had changed, through the
work he had done with his Paris-based company, Les Ballets
de l'Etoile, later Le Ballet-théātre de Paris, from 1954 to
1959. He had, principally through his exploration of
contemporary music and contact with Pierre Schaeffer, the
father of musique concrčte, and Pierre Boulez experienced
what he described as une rupture, and had already created
his seminal work Symphonie pour un Homme Seul (1955) to the
electronic music of Pierre Henry. Five years later, he
presented at Sadler's Wells a programme of astonishing
contemporary work, including a full-length ballet, Orphée,
to electronic music by Henry, and his dramatic,
African-influenced version of The Rite of Spring.
The commission to choreograph this last work had come from
Maurice Huisman, the perceptive director of the Théātre de
la Monnaie, who had recognised the remarkable talents
displayed by Béjart during in these early works. Thus, the
following year The Ballet of the 20th Century was born, and
Béjart himself said: "I started living at the age of 33 or
34."
However, after that time, as the Béjart phenomenon
developed, London, of all the major cities, benefited least.
Relatively few of his works were performed in Britain,
though enthusiasts for his work could keep in touch through
imported publications, and films and video recordings - from
the film of Symphonie Pour un Homme Seul to the video
recording of his joyous recreation of The Nutcracker (1998),
featuring the original choreographer, Marius Petipa, as a
principal character. His early creation Sonate ą Trois
(1957), based on the sexual triangle of Jean-Paul Sartre's
Huis Clos, had featured in the repertoire of Western Theatre
Ballet (later Scottish Ballet) in the 1960s. And his Four
Sons Of Aymon, a danced fable featuring giant puppets and
giant sculptures, took over Murrayfield ice rink during the
1961 Edinburgh festival.
However, thereafter, appearances by his company and
performances of his works by other companies were relatively
rare - though Nijinsky Clown of God (1971) and Our Faust
(1975) reached London in the 1970s, and both Boléro (on tour
with English National Ballet) and Ring Around the Ring (at
the Edinburgh Festival), as well as a brief season in London
by Béjart Ballet Lausanne, featured on the dance calendar in
the early 1990s.
It was, however, a season in September 2000 which brought
Béjart and the Lausanne company back to London and to
audience (if not critical) acclamation. His Ballet for Life
(1997), a dance tapestry celebrating the lives of dancer
Jorge Donn (Béjart's longterm companion and the inspiration
for his most impassioned choreography) and of Queen singer
Freddie Mercury, both of whom died of Aids (in 1992 and 1991
respectively) attracted the most diverse and enthusiastic of
audiences. Music by Queen and by Mozart provided the musical
magic carpet for a journey through death into life. Hospital
trolleys rubbed shoulders with angels, and beach antics with
desolation as the company, in costumes designed by Gianni
Versace, danced their way through 20 episodes to conclude
with I Want to Be Free and The Show Must Go On. The final
choreographed and ecstatic curtain call was an extended work
in its own right.
Then again Britain missed out, though the company could be
seen in Switzerland, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Holland,
Greece, Cyprus, Hungary, Russia, Estonia, Slovenia, Japan,
South Korea, Hong Kong and China. However, in February 2003
Bejart's La Compagnie M - a company of young graduates from
his school in Lausanne, Rudra (the name of a fierce Hindu
god also credited with healing powers) - appeared in London
to perform with guest artist Marcia Haydée. The phenomenal
abilities of these performers - drawn from nine countries
and acting, singing, and dancing in ancient and modern
cultural forms drawn from the east and the west - reaffirmed
the importance Béjart always gave to the young. He
personally financed La Compagnie M, while the substantial
royalties from his works performed by companies around the
world are used for a foundation to help young dancers in
training.
The period leading up to his 80th birthday this year saw
celebration, retrospection and renewal for Béjart and his
company. Earlier works and excerpts from them were revived,
rearranged, anthologised - and sometimes given new
meanings - in large- and small-scale performances.
Productions paid tribute to Léopold Sédar Senghor (who died
in 2001), to the partnership with Pierre Henry, and to
Béjart's leading dancer (at his side for 25 years), Gil
Roman.
Béjart's golden anniversary as a choreographer was
celebrated in a grand gala in Lille in 2005. Béjart himself
created new works, including L'Art d'Źtre Grand-pčre,
Zarathoustra, Le Chant de la Danse and his own celebration
of turning 80, his humorously serious and seriously humorous
La Vie du Danseur. His company are currently rehearsing for
a new production called Around the World in 80 Minutes, to
be premiered next month in Lausanne.
Bejart's work, however, is now more than an on-stage
phenomenon. For in addition to his published writings
(including a diary and a novel), and in addition to
extensive literature on his work (mainly in French) plus
numerous film records of his earlier body of work, we now
have recently issued DVDs of Ballet for Life, of Bejart's
L'Amour - La Danse programme, and full-length films for
television by Serge Korber (Béjart! Vous Avez Dit Béjart?,
2005) and Marcel Schüpbach (B Comme Béjart, 2002). It is
this library which will surely secure for Béjart the
recognition that not only did he direct ballet on to a path
into the 20th century, but also - with his respect for the
past equalled by his enthusiasm for the future - showed the
way forward into the 21st century.
Pamela Payne writes: All 2,000 seats in the Théātre Cirque
Royal, Brussels, were filled, and as the music built to a
final crescendo the sexual frisson was palpable. Then all
hell was let loose. The audience rose to its feet, screaming
and stamping. Flowers rained on to the stage.
Jorge Donn, doyen of the Ballet of the 20th Century since
1961, lay perspiring on the huge red table where he had
danced throughout the subtly varied repetitions of the Ravel
score that had inspired the the ballet Boléro. The 40-strong
all-male corps-de-ballet, seated on red chairs around the
back of the large apron stage, had moved forward in ones and
twos to dance sensually before prostrating themselves around
him.
Before the final curtain, Béjart slipped on to the stage and
the frenzy increased. This small, handsome, blue-eyed man,
dressed as always in T-shirt, baggy trousers and sneakers -
all as black as his hair and goatee - was the hero of
balletomanes of all ages.
A frighteningly clever man, Béjart benefited from his
father's interest in philosophy, and his ballets are
littered with references to classical works; his books and
programme notes reflected the breadth of his scholarship. He
was stubborn, but only occasionally lost his temper, and was
known to enjoy solitude. Kind and tolerant, he was adored by
his family, worshipped by his dancers and staff, and
idolised by his legion of fans throughout the world.
His formula for enthralling them was to surprise in the
first five minutes of a work, and then by turns shock,
delight and amuse, finally reducing them to tears with a
poignant ending. There will be many tears at this finale.
· Maurice Jean Béjart (Berger), choreographer and dance
company director, born January 1 1927; died November 22 2007
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