Carmen

Choreography: Julien LESTEL
Music: Georges BIZET / Rodion SHCHEDRIN / Iván JULLIARD
Lighting: Lo Ammy VAIMATAPAKO / Costumes: BJL
Assistant choreographer: Gilles PORTE
With the dancers of the Julien Lestel Ballet
Creation: 2024 / Duration: 1h10

While respecting the original plot, this new adaptation of Carmen, with its very urban and resolutely contemporary coloring, resonates with the current awareness of the place of woman in our society, of her emancipation, of her desire for equality and raises the question of femicide.

The four main characters whose personalities are very distinct are treated equally in constant interaction:
Carmen, actress of her own life, in search of freedom will stop at nothing to keep it;
Don José, with a wise temperament, in love with madness, abandons his well-organized life and, driven by his murderous jealousy, will go so far as to commit the irreparable;
Micaëla, his bride, a young woman to whom it would not occur to her to question the traditional life assigned to her;
Escamillo, a famous and adored bullfighter who succeeds in everything, feels on the side of the powerful.

The different themes are developed through choreography devoid of narration. We witness street scenes which exude great vitality. Furthermore, bodies intertwine in aerial love scenes whose energy is drawn from the ground. The gestures, both dynamic and fluid, reveal new forms of movement.

The musical choice, in accordance with the choreography, finds its originality in the alternation of the instrumental work of Bizet accompanied by two sung pieces with a contemporary creation by Iván Julliard.

The performers are in street clothes and the refined scenography is free of any theatricality. The lights of Lo-Ammy Vaimatapako are architectural and play with contrasts to highlight each movement of the dancers.

It’s a Carmen transposed into today’s world, beyond all borders.

« The choreographer Julien Lestel had warned. Her Carmen would distance herself from the “traditional side”. No Andalusian costumes or castanets, therefore, for this opera-ballet presented on July 18 at the opening of the Glanum Festival, in Saint-Rémy-Provence, but an assumed contemporary aesthetic, depicting a heroine anchored in her time. The dancers of the Marseille company offer sublime scenes, making palpable the passionate, conflicting relationships and betrayal that will lead the Seville cigar maker to her downfall. From exalted pas de deux to inhabited solos, through luminous collective movements, Julien Lestel’s aerial, sometimes beastly choreographies are convincing. In the sumptuous natural setting between ancient stones and pine forest, under the protective gaze of the Moon, Carmen and the other protagonists of the work carry us away in their fatal games of seduction.»
La Provence – Ludovic Tomas

The Julien Lestel Ballet receives the support of the City of Marseille and the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Region.

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