Opus 40

The choreographer was forty years old in July 2000 when he created this ode to youth. With no narrative thread, the dance follows the theme of pleasure. We are invited to retrace our steps back to the imagination of our childhood, to rediscover lost sensations, the first stirrings of our flesh.

Meredith Monk’s guttural yet familiar voice accompanies this intimate odyssey, punctuating the dancers’ steps with evocations of the tastes of our youth. The cry of birds, the smell of coffee, first loves… For it is necessary to return to these simple attractions of life in order to get through pivotal periods. The choreography also ventures into the realm of secret joys, culminating in languid duets that symbolize a return to adulthood, accepted and made acceptable because it is sublimated by love, which soothes and provides the serene fulfillment of an intense existence.