An evening of modern ballets "Waves and Circles": Blake Works I.Megahertz. Boléro Tickets

Waves and circles play a role in a different way in the triple bill ballet programme, Waves and Circles – they are extolled, are visible or are tangible.

James Blake’s third album, The Colour in Anything, was released in May 2016. In July that very year William Forsythe had already produced his piece Blake Works I at the Ballet de l’Opéra national de Paris, choreographed around seven of the album’s songs.  Forsythe was therefore truly working with absolutely brand new music. And the fascination with Blake’s voice and the ethereal sounds of his songs continued. Forsythe has since created four more pieces set to music by James Blake, either for dancers and audiences in a venue or for the digital sphere.

A further album of importance for Waves and Circles appeared in 2003, entitled, I trawl the Megahertz. Behind this album is the British musician Paddy McAloon, who, with the album’s re-release in 2019 took on the name of his old band, Prefab Sprout. Due to an eye disease McAloon simply had to listen to the radio for a good while. The sounds on the airwaves and turning the tuner on the radio with snippets of music and snatches of sentences in many ways left their mark on the album and also explain the title. The opening track blows away conventions on several levels. It is 22 minutes long, and instead of singing delivers instrumental sounds with an “overvoicing” in English on a text by McAloon. This exceptional musical creation is the motor for Emma Portner for her new choreography with the Bayerisches Staatsballett.

Maurice Ravel wrote his world famous Boléro in 1928, and actually due to an emergency, as the dancer Ida Rubinstein had asked him for a piece of ballet music, so the original plan had to be abandoned due to no fault of his own. Bronislava Nijinska, Vaslav Nijinsky’s sister, created the choreography set to Ravel’s unique music, with which a two-piece melody is constantly repeated for an entire quarter of an hour over an evenly drummed rhythm.   A magnificent crescendo is produced by changing the instrumentation and increasing the volume. Driven by Ravel’s unstoppable rising music, in his own words, Maurice Béjart relates a “story of desire”. Originally, a single woman danced in the centre on a table, surrounded by a horde of men. The gender relations can also be turned around since 1979.

Blake Works I
Choreographer: William Forsythe
Costume Designer: William Forsythe, Dorothee Merg
Lighting: Tanja Rühl
Sound: Niels Lanz

Megahertz
Choreographer Emma Portner
Music Paddy McAloon Prefab Sprout​​​

Boléro
Choreographer: Maurice Béjart
Music: Maurice Ravel

“My Boléro,” commented Ravel, “has to stick in one’s head!”
More seriously, he explained:
“In 1928, upon request by Madame Rubinstein (Ida Rubinstein, the famous Russian actress and dancer), I composed a Bolero for an orchestra. This is a dance with a very moderate and continuously even movement, both due to its melody and to its harmony and rhythm. The rhythm is continuously marked by the drum. The element of diversity is added by the orchestral crescendo.”

Maurice Béjart describes the creation of Ravel’s work in these terms, “music that is too well-known and yet still fresh due to its simplicity. A melody (originally oriental and not Spanish) that winds slowly around itself, increasing in volume and intensity, devours the sound space and swallows it up at the end of the melody.”

Without further describing a ballet that needs no introduction, let us simply point out that Maurice Béjart returns to the spirit of the Rite of Spring in a very different style. In this sense, unlike most artists who have illustrated Boléro choreographically before him, he spurns the easy choices of a picturesque exterior to simply – but so forcefully – express the essential.

Maurice Béjart gives the central role (La Mélodie) sometimes to a female dancer and other times to a male dancer. The rhythm is interpreted by a group of male dancers.