Biography. “I am interested in a spectator who understands little about dance. The main thing is the dancers.
Name: Jean-Christophe Maillot - Dream in midsummer night(Dream, Dream)original name: Jean-Christophe Maillot - Le Songe (Jean Christophe Maillot)
Year of issue: 2009
Genre: Ballet, modern, comedy, choreography
Released: Monaco, France, Japan, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, Europe Images/M, NHK
Director:Jean-Christophe Maillot
Executor: Bernice Coppieters, Jeroen Verbruggen, Jerome Marchand, Gaetan Marlotti, Chris Roeland
About movie: The premiere of the ballet "A Midsummer Night's Dream (Dream, Dream)" took place in Monte Carlo (Grimaldi Forum) on December 27, 2005, based on the plot of W. Shakespeare's comedy "A Midsummer Night's Dream". The performance, staged for 26 dancers, marked the 20th anniversary of the creation of ballets in the Principality of Monte Carlo. The production was staged by Jean-Christophe Maillot, who since 1986 has been head of the Monte Carlo Ballet Company. This performance is most characteristic of the work of Jean-Christophe Maillot. The ballet carries the current fantasy, combined with the details of comics and poetry. Stage design and costumes play an important role in the performance, emphasizing the fantastic, balancing on the border of a dream under a ghostly light. full moon. The troupe works clearly, harmoniously, inspiredly, technically. Bernice Koppter is beyond praise. Craftsmen are swaggering in the best traditions of the farce theatre. Lively, sparkling, inventive, cheerful and playful ballet. The comic action of the two-act ballet unfolds on a dark, free stage, where the main element of the scenery is a giant abstract composition made of white veil: like a fantastic cloud, it mysteriously hovers over the stage, whimsically changing its shape and light color. The action develops in parallel on two levels - on the stage and above it, in its dark depths, where only the figures of the characters are highlighted, as a result of which they seem to soar in space, sometimes even inside the "veil cloud". A multi-genre performance skillfully woven from dance miniatures, theatrical sketches, expressive pantomime and circus clownery, tells a magical story with the participation of fairy-tale and mythological characters in an engaging and convincing manner. It could be expected that the choreographer would quote abundantly from the ballet of the same name by John Neumeier, in whose troupe Jean-Christophe worked for many years. However, he went his own way. As J.-C. Maillot said, “ballet needs new blood”, therefore, in the “Dream” not only the music of F. Mendelssohn sounds, but also the electro-acoustic composition of the Argentinean Daniel Terugia and the music of Bernard Maillot, the brother of the choreographer. Pointe dancing here is a rare privilege bestowed only on a select few ballerinas. The bulk of the characters are involved in a noisy, acrobatic burlesque, made up of funny jokes, outright self-indulgence, passionate sensuality, frivolous erotica. The choreographer subtly felt and reflected in his ballet the playful gaiety, naive innocence and unconscious aspirations of the characters. The ballet is at the same time accurate, serious, juicy. He is alive, sparkling and so inventive that it is impossible for the viewer to be bored for a single second.
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Date of release: 2012.08.09
Joint release - OLARRI & qsdyg
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Quality: HDTVRip (HDTV (1080i))
Video: XviD, 1696 Kbps, 704x400
Audio: French (MP3, 2 ch, 256 kbps)
Size: 1.37 GB
Duration: 01:40:29
Translation: Not required
This troupe has historical, ancient connections with Russia. Once upon a time in the Principality of Monaco, Sergei Diaghilev placed the base of his star enterprise. After the death of the impresario, the troupe sometimes fell apart, then united again, but as a result, the Russian Ballet of Monte Carlo appeared, where Leonid Myasin worked, who kept Diaghilev's rarities and created his famous performances. After gambling houses and auto racing won, and the ballet went into the shadows, although the troupe formally existed until the early 60s. In 1985, the "children of Terpsichore" were taken under the patronage of the ruling house of Monaco. The word "Russian" was excluded from the name, the staff was recruited, and the result was the official troupe of the Principality of Monaco "Ballet de Monte Carlo". In the early 90s, Princess Caroline of Hanover invited Jean-Christophe Maillot to join the team as art director, who already had experience as a soloist with the Hamburg Ballet and director of the theater in Tours. Today, one of the wealthiest European troupes is here. For two decades, Mayo, the creator of his own theater and a friend of Princess Caroline, has been staging performances only with like-minded artists, and they understand him perfectly. The international debut of the choreographer will take place at the Bolshoi Theatre, and we asked Jean-Christophe Maillot himself about his preparation.
culture: How did the Bolshoi Theater manage to persuade you - a homebody - to stage?
Mayo: I'm not that much of a homebody, we tour a lot. But I compose ballets only in my native theatre, here you are right. And with the Bolshoi - Sergei Filin persuaded patiently. He spoke to me the way I speak to choreographers when I want them to stage in Monaco. He offered to come to Moscow to get acquainted with the troupe. Artists Bolshoi Theater showed in Monte Carlo fragments of " swan lake»: I saw them, they looked at how I work. At some point, I thought that maybe it really was time to take a chance and try to stage something outside of Monaco. Offer something Bolshoi Theater - fantastic! In addition, in Russia I feel good, and they don’t impose anything on me - bet whatever you want.
culture: Why did they wish for "The Taming of the Shrew"?
Mayo: For me, ballet is erotic art, and The Taming is Shakespeare's sexiest play, written with irony, humor and a healthy dose of cynicism. The conversation about the relationship between a man and a woman is close to me.
culture: You repeated several times that women stronger than men. Do you really think so?
Mayo: Yes, although the ladies still need us.
culture: In this Shakespearean story, directors often highlight the theme of women's emancipation.
Mayo: The position of the woman, fortunately, has changed a lot. But still, machismo and the predominance of masculine in society exist. I wanted to show that all the same, men cannot live without women. They run after the ladies, not the other way around. What is the relationship between Petruchio and Katarina? This is the relationship of two people who are not able to control the passion and desire that has gripped them. They have come to know the love that blows the head and defies reason. In The Shrew, the question is not how a woman becomes obedient, but how a man, in the end, is ready to accept everything from a woman if he is in love. Then she can really do everything - a man becomes weak under the influence of female charms.
culture: At the rehearsal, you quoted a friend of yours who lamented: "We always dream of marrying a mistress, but it turns out that we married our wife." Wouldn't it be the same for Petruchio and Katarina?
Mayo: I don't think they'll be included in household chewing gum. There are several couples in the play. Bianca and Lucentio also love each other, they dance beautifully, we see their mutual tenderness. In the finale, there is a small scene of tea drinking: Lucentio gives Bianca a cup, and she throws it in his face, because it seems to her that the tea is bad. This is where we understand that Lucentio is already with his wife, and not with his lover. And Petruchio and Katarina, leaving the stage, simultaneously raise their hands to give each other a playful pendel. And it seems to me that in such a wonderful relationship they will spend their whole lives.
culture: Your ballets often contain autobiographical motifs. Are they in "Taming ..."?
Mayo: This is a bit of my story - I'm in love with the obstinate and have been living with her for ten years now. She tamed me. We never quarrel or even argue, but we constantly provoke each other. Such a game of cat and mouse, and it does not let you get bored. Boredom is the worst thing in the life of a man and a woman. You can annoy each other, misbehave, be in euphoria, be conceited, argue, but just don't get bored.
culture: Bernice Coppieters, your favorite ballerina, wife and muse, is working with you today at the Bolshoi…
Mayo: I need an assistant who knows my way of working. My artists immediately understand what needs to be done. There was such a case. One soloist, with whom I rehearsed for the first time, danced terribly. I asked: "Can't you lift your leg higher?" He replied: "Of course I can, but I repeat what you showed." My legs no longer rise as high as they did a couple of decades ago. Can you imagine what a performance at the Bolshoi Theater would have turned out if the artists had copied me? At rehearsals, I improvise with performers, and when Moscow dancers see how I compose movements with Bernice and how she conveys nuances (this is the most difficult thing), everything becomes clear to them. That is, I empowered Bernice to show what I want and what I could not do for her before. When I started working with Bernice, she was 23 and I wanted to direct The Taming of the Shrew, but it didn't work out.
culture: Why did you choose the music of Dmitri Shostakovich?
Mayo: Oh, now I will say something original: Shostakovich - great composer. His music is the universe: rich and colorful. It contains not only drama and passion, but grotesque, satire and an ironic look at the surroundings. I am a musician by education, and for me only music pulls all feelings and emotions. Music is power, it dictates the state. I often give such an example - simple, but intelligible and intelligible. If your beloved leaves you, and you listen to Adagietto from Mahler's "Fifth" in an empty house, then there is a risk of committing suicide. But if you put on an Elvis Presley disc, then most likely you will want to conquer some other woman as soon as possible. In any case, there will be a desire to discover something new for yourself.
At the Bolshoi Theater, they are accustomed to holding initial rehearsals to the piano. I demanded that they immediately put on discs - an orchestral phonogram. Artists must hear the whole orchestra, the full sound of the music. Then emotions are born.
Shostakovich was also chosen because I came to Russia and must take a step towards your country. Russians feel music world Shostakovich, which is close to me too. I took fragments from various works, but I want the viewer to forget about it and perceive the music as a single score. No need to guess: it's from Hamlet, King Lear, the Ninth Symphony. I built the dramaturgy, made sure that the music sounded as a whole, as if the composer himself had written it for our performance.
culture: Your son is the costume designer. What outfits were you looking for?
Mayo: I want people to think not about dance, but about their lives after the performance. Therefore, the costumes should be similar to those that you can wear today and go out. But at the same time, they should feel theatricality and lightness, giving the body freedom. After all, dance cannot say everything, only what the body can convey. As Balanchine said - I can show that this woman loves this man, but I cannot explain that she is his mother-in-law.
culture: The Friends of the Bolshoi Ballet Society organized a meeting with you at the Bakhrushin Museum. The phrase of your assistant: “Before doing“ Taming ... ”in the Bolshoi, you need to tame the Bolshoi itself,” the audience met with applause. In agreement cast members, in my opinion, it was not possible to tame?
Mayo: I was immediately asked to determine the second and even the third composition. I resisted for a long time. I never do two compositions. For me, choreography is an artist, not a set of movements. Katarina is Katya Krysanova, not a role that another artist can repeat. I will understand that I have achieved a result if I make such a ballet that I cannot reproduce even in my troupe for my audience.
culture: Who is your viewer?
Mayo: I like to create performances for a man who got into the theater because he has to accompany his wife, and she came only because her daughter is engaged in ballet. And if the spouses become interested in ballet, then I have achieved a result. The thing I do is fun and play for me.
culture: The second line-up has arrived...
Mayo: It was against wool. It is necessary to take into account the peculiarities of the place where you ended up - the Bolshoi needs several pairs of performers. When my friends invite me to dinner where they serve fish, and I don’t want it, I still try it. I hope the second cast will also be interesting, but for me and for the rest of my life, The Taming of the Shrew at the Bolshoi is Katya Krysanova, Vladislav Lantratov, Olya Smirnova, Semyon Chudin. We built this ballet with them. Together we went on a journey of 11 weeks, and it is coming to an end. The finished performance is leaving, it no longer belongs to me.
culture: Why, after all, the lined up roles cannot be danced by others?
Mayo: The wonderful Katya Krysanova (it’s even strange that at first I didn’t see Katarina in her, she conquered me) in one of the scenes she kisses Lantratov-Petruchio and it comes out so that I want to cry - she is so fragile and defenseless. And after two seconds, she starts to fight. And in this transition, she is real and natural, because we started from her, Katya Krysanova, reactions and assessments. Another ballerina has a different character, disposition, organics. And she needs to build things differently. Dance is not a set of pas, for me the look and touch of the little fingers - an important part choreography.
culture: Have the artists of the Bolshoi surprised you in any way?
Mayo: I am amazed by the quality of their dance, enthusiasm, curiosity, desire to work. They dance so many - and different - ballets! In Monaco I refuse to have more than 80 performances a year, but they perform three times as many. I can't imagine how they do it.
Everything that happens at the Monte-Carlo Ballet Theater seems important and close to us - after all, it is directed by Jean-Christophe Maillot, the choreographer whom we fell in love with at first sight when we saw his ballet Daphnis and Chloe back in 2012. Then he staged The Taming of the Shrew at the Bolshoi Theatre, and this season he showed us Cinderella (in St. Petersburg) and Beauty (in Moscow). Jean-Christophe - interesting personality and charming person. In an interview with Olga Rusanova, he talked about his interest in plotless ballets, Marius Petipa and what it's like to be a choreographer in little Monaco.
Abstraction is life?
The public knows my subject ballets well, and this is indeed an important part of my work. But I also get great pleasure from creating pure movements that are related to music. Yes, this art seems to be abstract, but I do not believe that there is anything completely abstract, since everything that a person does carries some kind of emotion, feeling. Also, I love to explore this very specific relationship between movement and music. And when I don't have to stick to the story, I can be more daring, even take risks in researching the choreography. This is a kind of laboratory that captivates me. And this is also an important part of my work, maybe less known, but it contains, if you like, the essence of ballet, movement as such.
My last ballet, Abstraction/Life, was created to completely new music - a cello concerto French composer Bruno Mantovani titled "Abstraction". It's a very large score - almost 50 minutes - and I'm inspired by the idea of working with a composer.
Of course, I also liked working with Shostakovich's music - I mean the ballet "The Taming of the Shrew", when from his works I kind of created a new score for a ballet that did not exist in reality. But still, when a composer composes especially for me, it's a completely different matter. Moreover, this ballet evening consists of two parts - in the first part there is George Balanchine's ballet to the music of Stravinsky's Violin Concerto. Let me remind you of Balanchine's phrase: "I try to listen to the dance and see the music." So I, following Balanchine, want to make the music seem to be visible. Often contemporary music difficult to understand on its own. And dance, movement make it possible, as it were, to “revive” it, to make it more natural for perception. tiya. At this point, something is really happening. a miracle... In general, as a choreographer, I always compose a dance along with music, I can’t imagine a single step, a single movement without it, because, in my opinion, music is an art of the highest order, always addressed to emotions, even if it is complex, incomprehensible . And it is the dance, the movement of the body that can convey this emotion, how to tell it, and this, you see, touches.
And further. The artist must be a witness to the time in which he lives, to give information about real world. I talked about this with the author of the Concerto, Bruno Mantovani. His music is sometimes too complicated, tough, as you heard. He said: “In the 20th century, and even more so today, cruelty is everywhere. The world is growing, there are more and more people. A lot of fears, questions, confusion… I can’t write soft, tender music, I have to reflect reality.”
Petipa, Diaghilev and Instagram
Petipa is something exceptional, special, unique. Then there were no other choreographers like him. I think he is one of the first who had the concept of dance as a self-sufficient language, to which nothing needs to be thought out, added. Actually ballet in his case is quite enough to build a performance.
Why are we still talking about Petipa? “Because it is at the heart of everything that is ballet. No one would be where he is today if not for what Petipa did. It is the starting point, the start of the knowledge about ballet that we have today. And since he stepped over years, centuries, generations, it means that he was something very important, and this is obvious.
And today, when creating a large plot ballet, we still think about Swan Lake, because this is the foundation of classical ballet, on which every choreographer relies. It was the first such base on which to build further a new concept, a new style thinking, new ideas. At that time there was no video, cinema, we only had this very specific ability of dance to transfer this knowledge through time, through generations.
Well, Petipa's phenomenon is also interesting as an example of the interpenetration of cultures. His ballets have shown for many years that dance is an excellent basis for communication on an international scale, because it is our mutual language. When I came to the Bolshoi Theater and worked with the soloists of the troupe, I could not help but think about Petipa, about how this French guy came from Marseille to Russia and, having met with Russian culture, Russian dancers, tried to combine both cultures.
This is very important to remember, especially today, because cultural differences are slowly disappearing. We are more and more melting into each other, mixing. It would seem that quite recently, if we didn’t see our colleagues for 5–6 years, we didn’t know what they were doing, and now, thanks to social networks and Instagram, information is constantly flowing. Everything seems to be happening all over the place at the same time. This is both good and bad.
I’m thinking: what would happen to Grigorovich if Facebook and all that existed then, if he knew what Trisha Brown was doing in New York at the same time? Would everything in his ballets be the same? Not likely, and we could probably only regret it.
The manner of Russian dancers was originally quite different from that of French and American, but time is running, and you understand that what was different 20 years ago is now increasingly erased, dissolved, drawn closer. And I see this in my company, where representatives of different nationalities dance.
The universality of thinking, style, aesthetics - yes, in some ways it's great, but gradually we will lose our identity. We, unwittingly, copy each other more and more. And perhaps it was Petipa who was one of the first who provoked this process. It was he who, having left France, brought its culture to another country, to Russia. And maybe that's why she became so extraordinary...
In general, I think the task of every artist is to refer to what was done before you, to know the heritage, to treat it with respect and curiosity. Knowing history is very important, but at the same time, at some point you have to “forget” about this knowledge in order to move on. I am often asked about the Russian Seasons troupe by Sergei Diaghilev, which worked in Monte Carlo, where our theater operates. Of course, it was a most interesting phenomenon when the company brought together composers, artists, choreographers, gave two or three ballets per evening. Today, many do this, but then they were the first. For me, Diaghilev's Russian Seasons is no less important than Petipa's.
Bezharovsky dancer
I grew up in a theatrical family. My dad was a set designer at the Opera and Ballet Theatre. At home, in the Tour, singers, dancers, directors gathered, you can say that I was born and raised in the theater. I hung out there for hours. That's why I don't like opera early years seen her too much. At the same time, I would not say that I grew up in the world of dance, rather, in an artistic environment. For a long time I could not really consider myself a specialist in the field of dance - until the age of 32.
I was a dancer - I studied at the conservatory in Tours, then in Cannes. I did not know much about dance, I always wondered more about life than about the history of choreography. I remember how as a child I was impressed by Maurice Béjart, especially by his play Nijinsky, God's Clown. And when in the yard (and I did not grow up in the most respectable area of my hometown Tura) the boys asked: “What kind of dancer are you? Classical or Bezharovsky?”, I answered: “Bezharovsky”. Otherwise, they probably would not have understood me, and maybe they would have beaten me. We grew up in a culture of popular rather than classical dance.
Then I began to learn something important about ballet, mainly through the dancers: I'm talking about Baryshnikov in Giselle, Makarova in Swan Lake. I discovered Balanchine and we staged nineteen of his ballets in our company.
The main thing is the dancers
I really discovered Yuri Grigorovich in 2012 when I saw his ballet Ivan the Terrible. I was smitten, captivated. What impressed me the most was not even the choreography - very interesting in itself, but the dancers, their involvement, faith in what they are doing. It touched me. And I realized again that the dancers are the main thing in ballet. Yes, of course, they need a choreographer, but a choreographer without dancers is nobody. We must not forget about it. If you like, this is my obsession. My job is to be in the studio with people - special people: fragile, vulnerable and very honest, even when they lie. I am always interested in the artists with whom I share music, the language of dance through which they can express what we feel together. And we always hope that this flurry of emotions will be transferred from the stage to the hall and unite us all together.
Happy in isolation
I don't feel too connected to the ballet world: here in Monaco I'm kind of "isolated". But I like this place because it looks like me. This country is special - very small, two square kilometers in total, but everyone knows about it. Monaco is a very seductive place: there are no strikes, social and economic problems, no conflicts, no poor, unemployed. Princess Caroline of Monaco has given me the wonderful opportunity to work here for 25 years. I am not part of powerful institutions like Royal Ballet, Big theater, Paris Opera, part of international companies. I'm lonely, but I can bring the whole world here.
And being here "in isolation", I'm happy. And if tomorrow the ballet world announces a boycott of me, it's okay, I will work here. Neither the prince nor the princess ever tells me: "You must do this and that." I have a wonderful opportunity to be honest, independent, free. I can do what I want: put on performances, hold festivals.
There is no other theater in Monaco. And I strive to give the local public as much as possible, not to limit it to the repertoire of the Monte-Carlo Ballet Theatre. If all these years they saw only our ballets, it would mean that I am deceiving the public about what is happening in ballet world. My task is to bring classical, modern companies and other choreographers here. I want the people who live here to have the same opportunities as Parisians and Muscovites. So I have to do everything at once: to be engaged in staging ballets, as well as tours, festivals, and also the Ballet Academy. But my task was to find a professional director, not to do the work for him, but to support him.
In general, the more talented people around you - the more interesting and easier it is for you to do your job. I like smart people nearby - they make you smarter.
I hate the idea that the director has to be a monster, to show strength, to make people afraid of themselves. It is not difficult to exercise power over people who are practically naked in front of you every day. But these are very vulnerable, insecure people. And you can't abuse your power. And I love dancers, I sympathize even with the weak, because they have special work. You ask an artist to mature at twenty, but ordinary people it comes only at forty, and it turns out that when real maturity comes to the dancer, the body “leaves”.
Our company - I will not say "family", because the artists are not my children - this is a company of like-minded people. I have never had a relationship with a troupe in which fear, anger, conflict would live. That's not mine.
Being a choreographer means connecting people with different schools, different mentalities, so that they create a performance, and at the same time, in the process of creating, you never know exactly who exactly will turn out to be the most important link in the result. It is always a team effort.
Neither classical nor avant-garde or even something in between, Jean-Christophe Maillot refuses to stick to one style and creates dance as a dialogue where traditional pointe shoes and avant-garde are no longer mutually exclusive.
Like so many other choreographers, he started his career as a dancer. Like many other outstanding dancers, recognition for him began with receiving a prize at an international youth competition in Lausanne. Much less lucky people received, like him, an invitation to perform solo parts in the troupe of the legendary John Neumeier. And very few, broken on takeoff by an accident, managed to rise and create their own unique creative style.
Returning from Hamburg to his native Tours, he becomes a choreographer and director of the Bolshoi Ballet Theater of Tours, which later received a prestigious status in France. National Center choreography. He founded the Le Chorégraphique festival and staged a lot, including for the Monte-Carlo Ballet. His work is a resounding success, and now the Princess of Hanover invites him to direct the Monte-Carlo Ballet and supplies him with an impressive budget.
From this moment, Mayo does everything to turn Monaco into a choreographic Mecca. Even if he started with twenty people in auditorium, scaring the regulars with avant-garde for those years William Forsyth and Nacho Duato. But the troupe quickly went up and for two decades now has a well-deserved reputation as a highly professional, creatively mature team. Mayo carefully collects and nurtures bright personalities, strives to give them the opportunity to open up to the maximum and show their talent. He built an amazing repertoire of 70 titles, staging himself and inviting choreographers of the most different styles and directions. He founded dance school, where it collects gifted students literally from all over the world. He created the "Monaco Dance Forum" - an authoritative dance festival international level, producing new choreographic productions.
Choreographer Jean-Christophe Maillot combines dance with drama theater, makes him balance on a tightrope under the dome of the circus, melt into visual art, feed on music and explore different forms of literature... His work is art in the broadest sense of the word. Over 30 years, Mayo has created more than 60 works, from large narrative ballets to small productions - all of them, intricately intertwined and referring to each other with associations and allusions, together make up a large piece of the history of the ballet of our time.
Jean-Christophe Maillot is a welcome guest in any ballet company in the world, but usually he only transfers his original productions, tested by the Monte-Carlo Ballet, to other stages. These theaters include Big Ballet Canada (Montreal), Royal Swedish Ballet (Stockholm), Essen Ballet and Stuttgart Ballet (Germany), Pacific Northwest Ballet (USA, Seattle), National Ballet Korea (Seoul), Royal Danish Ballet (Copenhagen), Ballet of the Grand Theater of Geneva (Switzerland), American Ballet Theater (USA, New York), Bejart Ballet in Lausanne (France).
A unique case in Mayo's career is the production of The Taming of the Shrew, created specifically for the troupe of the Bolshoi Theater of Russia.
© ITAR-TASS/ Mikhail Japaridze
“Jean-Christophe Maillot weaves his life out of opposites,” these words of Rollella Hightower perfectly reflect the essence of the art of the French choreographer. It is impossible to unequivocally call him either a classic or an avant-garde artist - moreover, in his work these trends are by no means opposed and, moreover, do not exclude each other.
Jean-Cristo Maillot was born in Tours in 1960. At the National Conservatory of the Tours region, he studied not only choreographic art, but also piano playing, and then in Cannes he studied at International school dance, where Rosella Hightower was his mentor.
Jean-Christophe began his stage career as a dancer. In 1977, in this capacity, he participated in the youth competition held in Lausanne, and was awarded the first prize. A talented young dancer was invited by J. Neumeier to join his troupe, and he performed solo parts in the Hamburg Ballet for five years… alas, such a brilliantly started career is suddenly interrupted: Jean-Christophe was injured, and he had to forget about performances… But he discovers a different path for himself - activity of the choreographer.
Jean-Christophe Maillot returns to his homeland, where he heads the Bolshoi Ballet Theater of Tours, in this capacity he staged more than two dozen performances, established in 1985 choreographic festival Le Chor? graphique in Monaco is also his merit. In 1987, the choreographer puts the ballet "The Miraculous Mandarin" to music for the Monte-Carlo Ballet - the success was enormous, and the collaboration continued several years later: in 1992, J.-C. Mayo becomes creative consultant to this troupe, and a year later the Princess of Hanover appoints him artistic director.
Having headed the Monte-Carlo Ballet, Jean-Christophe Maillot begins to acquaint the public with the productions of avant-garde choreographers of that time: William Forsyth, Nacho Duato, he also creates his own productions. At first, his innovation did not meet with understanding - it happened that the number of spectators in the hall did not exceed twenty people - but gradually the new art was appreciated. This was also facilitated by the increase in the artistic level of the troupe, which the choreographer brought to new round development. He found bright personalities among the artists and gave everyone the opportunity to maximize their talent.
During the years of work at the Monte-Carlo Ballet, Jean-Christophe Maillot created more than 60 productions, among which were both small numbers and large ballets: Black Monsters, Birthplace, To the Promised Land, Dance of Men, To the other side”, “An eye for an eye” and others. Staged by the choreographer and classical works– but their interpretation always became unexpected. This happened, for example, with P. I. Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker, which J.-C. Mayo staged under the title "The Nutcracker at the Circus". There is no Christmas motif here: the heroine falls asleep while reading a book, and her dream is circus show, in which Mr. Drossel and Mrs. Meyer act as stewards (the image of Drosselmeyer is so bizarrely solved). Ballet is combined with the elements circus art, and Marie herself, dreaming of becoming a ballerina, "trying on" the images of classical ballet: Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella - and the Nutcracker teaches her to dance, in whose costume the masculine principle is clearly emphasized. The interpretation of the ballet "Romeo and Juliet" turns out to be just as unconventional: it is not the enmity of families that leads to death young heroes but a blinding love that leads to self-destruction.
In another ballet to the music of S. S. Prokofiev - Cinderella - some new features were also introduced into the plot: Fairy, in which the heroine recognizes her dead mother, accompanies the heroine all her way. Rethought the choreographer and another classical ballet P. I. Tchaikovsky - "", presenting it under the name "Lake": the focus is not on Prince Siegfried and not Odette, but on the Evil Genius, whose role is given to a woman.
In 2000, the choreographer organized the Dance Form in Monaco. Within this international festival designed to represent the diversity choreographic art, there were not only performances, but also seminars, conferences, exhibitions. Later, in 2001, the Dance Forum was merged with the Princess Grace Academy of Classical Dance, and J.-C. Mayo. Two years earlier, the choreographer acted as coordinator of the program dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Russian Seasons. The audience of this event, held in Monaco, exceeded 60,000 people, and more than 50 ballet companies from different countries.
One of the main features of Jean-Christophe Maillot is openness, willingness to exchange experiences. He closely follows the work of various artists, willingly collaborates with choreographers who work in other genres, proved himself not only as a choreographer, but also as a producer. opera performances: "Faust" in the Staatstheater in Winsbaden and "Norma" in opera house in Monte Carlo in 2007.
Collaborated J.-K. Mayo and s Russian artists. In 2014, he staged the ballet The Taming of the Shrew at the Bolshoi Theater to the music of 25 works by D. D. Shostakovich: polkas, romances, fragments from the music for the films The Gadfly, The Counter, Hamlet, fragments from Moscow- Cheryomushki, from symphonic works. According to the choreographer, he chose the music of this composer, seeing in his personality a resemblance to main character Shakespearean comedy: both D. D. Shostakovich and Katarina were not what others wanted to see them. Ballet may seem like a “combination of the incongruous” - for example, at the beginning of the performance, ballerinas in black tutus roll gentlemen on the floor, and this unbridled scene contrasts classical dance"the right girl" Bianchi - but it is precisely such techniques that outline the characters of Shakespeare's heroes.
Jean-Christophe Maillot has received numerous awards: the Order of the Arts and belles-lettres, the Order of the Legion of Honor, the Order of St. Charles, the Order of the Principality of Monaco for cultural merit, the Benois de la Danse and Dansa Valencia awards. The ballets he created were included in the repertoire of various troupes in Germany, Sweden, Canada, Russia, Korea, and the USA.
Music Seasons
