Nijinska I Voilà la femme

Saturday 29th January 2022 - 8 pm - Metz Arsenal

Dominique Brun pays homage to Bronislava Nijinska, the first and only female choreographer of the Ballets Russes, who was nevertheless left in the shadows. In complicity with her dancers, drawing on an enlightened reading of the archives, she takes up Stravinsky’s Les Noces and reinvents the Ravel’s Boléro to highlight her heritage.

Stravinsky’s Les Noces went through many metamorphoses. The composer worked on the orchestration of this piece for some ten years. Discover here the more intimate 1919 version which we perform with the Dominique Brun dance company.  This version, which was set aside because of the technical difficulties posed by the need to synchronise live musicians and mechanical instruments, was nonetheless considered the composer’s favourite, because the best adapted to the prosody and popular spirit of the work. This work is performed with an arrangement of Ravel’s Boléro for five instrumentalists and a 16 singers, and a choreography and performance by François Chaignaud.

Ensemble Aedes
Soprano, Amélie Raison
Alto, Pauline Leroy
Tenors, Martial Pauliat
Bass, Renaud Delaigue
Les Siècles
Cymbalums, Thibault Lepri and Françoise Rivalland
Harmonium, Christophe Durant
Percussions, Eriko Minami et Nicolas Gerbier
Pianola, René Bosc

Mathieu Romano, conductor

Les Porteurs d’Ombre
Dominique Brun, choreography

(Un Boléro) Performance and choreography by François Chaignaud and Dominique Brun