Béjart, Ballet for Life (Le Presbytère)

    

About Ballet for Life:

A little over thirty years ago, against the backdrop of the surprising music by Berlioz interspersed with bombing and the sound of machine guns, an unconventional Friar Laurence cried out to Jorge Donn and Hitomi Asakawa:
"Make love, not war!"

Today, Gil Roman, who is about the same age as the creation of my "Romeo and Juliet", surrounded by dancers who have never seen this ballet, responds: "You told us: make love, not war. We made love, so why is love waging war on us?"

A cry of anguish from youth for whom the problem of death by love is added to that of the multiple wars that have never ceased in the world since the so-called end of the last World War! Above all, my ballets are encounters: with music, with life, with death, with love... with all those whose past and works find new life within me. Moreover, the dancer who I am no longer is reincarnated each time by dancers who surpass this former self.

A love affair with the music by Queen. Invention, violence, humour and love: it's all there. I love the group. They inspire me and guide me sometimes through this "No man's land" where we will all go one day and where, I am sure, Freddie Mercury is playing a duo on the piano with Mozart.
A ballet about youth and hope, as it is hopeless and optimistic. Despite everything, I believe that "the show must go on", as sung by Queen.

Coliseu de Lisboa
Rua das Portas de Santo Antão, 96, Lisboa
Tkt Eur 20 to 70.00
May 13 to 16'2010. On Thursday and Friday at 9.30pm; on Saturday at 4.00pm and 9.30pm and on Sunday at 4.00pm.