Shéhérazade

With his version of Scheherazade Jean-Christophe Maillot offers us more than a homage to the Ballets Russes. His version of the Persian tale resonates more like a reunion between the choreographer and all the others, real or imaginary, who have come to life over the past thirty years in his artistic universe. As a choreographer, Maillot has long been fascinated by the the infinite variations of  the beautiful Scheherazade that haunt his creative imagination.

The sets by Leon Bakst and the choreography by Michel Fokine may well be in the back of Maillot’s mind, but the true anchor of this ballet is the intoxicating symphonic music of Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. The composer never wished for this music to serve for dance. Jean-Christophe Maillot was fascinated by the hypnotic undulations of this music that rolls and roils according to its own unpredictable wind; he has taken the whole of the Russian composer’s composition and plunged us into a sensual and festive dance – kaleidoscopic images languorously melting into a captivating fresco‚- an odd and hybrid piece in which the strange and the original are fitted into the most modern idiom to born into a voluptuous and magical spectacle.

Premiere held on December 26th 2009, Grimaldi Forum Monaco