Rapides

In the lineage of Francine Lancelot and Béatrice Massin, Bruno Benne is among that rare breed of choreographers who are deeply passionate about baroque style. To keep this heritage alive while drawing from it new forces to feed contemporary creation — such is the challenge embraced by this remarkable artist.

In Rapides, the choreography is conceived as a double reflection between the arts of the 18th century and the arts of the present. Like a mirror of living waters, with darting, dazzling jets, the piece reveals and unleashes the modernity and renewal of baroque creation. In perfect accord with Handel’s sumptuous Water Music — revisited by contemporary composer Youri Bessières — the ten performers unfurl from ornate volutes into vivifying bursts, echoing the fountains of the Grand Siècle as much as torrential, churning flows.

A feast for both the eyes and the ears.

Discovering baroque dance, more than fifteen years ago, was for me the trigger for a new impetus, a new path. Today, I wish to share and pass it on to a new generation of dancers — to write and continue the history of this codified dance form and the creative possibilities it offers us.

For this first group piece produced by my company, I wish to draw on two baroque notions that are deeply characteristic of the period: perfect symmetry and extreme profusion. Around the movements of water — whether constrained and organised like the play of fountains, or free and powerful like the rapids of a torrent — we will build, together with composer Youri Bessières, a mirror piece to deliver our own vision of baroque art.

One of the suites from G.F. Handel’s celebrated Water Music will be offered both as it stands, in a fluid and virtuosic 1993 recording by Jordi Savall, and reimagined through a new composition by Youri Bessières, to carry the dance forward with fresh momentum.

To keep this baroque art alive is to continue bringing a tradition into existence within our own time. Through our bodies and with our contemporary experience of movement, we will make it a work of art — today and for tomorrow. To keep inscribing this heritage within a perpetual motion, so as to anchor it in our contemporary world.

Bruno Benne