La danse en festin by Jean-Christophe Maillot (Book) – Perfect match – Review

For once, the Director of the Ballets de Monte-Carlo does not compose a show, he writes, with the solid support of the writer Jean-Marie Laclavetine, his accomplice. But his book looks like it. It is a choral work, a round of gestures, of emotions gathered at their most vivid, over time, encounters and the imperative needs to express oneself through what Maillot knows how to do best, to give to dance: in short a album which explodes with an irrepressible desire to indulge in a different way, by attempting to explain the essence of the movements which carried it.

Other Song © Marie-Laure Briane

In fact, it is above all a book of love, to which his best friends, his precious collaborators, some of his major performers, his prestigious peers have each contributed their stone to say bravo to this formidable giver of life that is Jean-Christophe Maillot . Love song, polyphonic like his ballets, which explodes in all directions and shows the multiplicity of his bubbling personality, both anguished and enjoyable, trying out a thousand themes, where death rubs shoulders with the circus, or eroticism vibrate the dancing bodies as much as the aspirations for a refined horizon. Splendid photos, which do justice to his magnificent performers and the variety of his works, punctuated with reflections on the heart of his work, and recognition for his lifelong partners, in the image or the costumes, the music or the decorations.

At the heart of the work, a vibrant tribute to the woman who dazzled him, carrying her creations, like an ideal double, Bernice Coppieters, muse, companion and today irreplaceable ballet master. Her image runs from page to page, from Juliette struck down by her first and only love, to her incredible incarnation of Death kissing Marguerite in Faust, or even a splendid naked silhouette on page 132, in front of the so aptly named EMERGENCY EXIT. At the heart of the volcano and at the same time so soothing for the creator, both Apollonian and Dionysian, a dancer who also amazed Béjart, of whom she was a surprising interpreter of Bolero.

Chore © Angela Serling

From the outset, before diving into decades of fiery or playful creation, we discover touching flashbacks to childhood, to the time when Maillot wore a blonde mane, whereas today we know him with a skull as smooth as her cheeks, and a vibrant tribute to her masters, Alain Davesne in Tours, “Madame” Rosella Hightower in Cannes, John Neumeier in Hamburg. Young dancer, before a permanent injury, we see him jumping in the Passion according to Saint Matthew of the latter, with a flight which is also reminiscent of certain Mass for the Present Time by Béjart. A period affair… We find in him a little air of Patrick Dupond page.16, or even of Nureyev pages 18 and 20, question of cheekbones! Not that we want to link him to illustrious silhouettes, but simply because he blends in with the best dance of his time.

Radiating at its beginning the mischievous joy of youth, then exploring the torments and joys of a creative career with the forms that one must tear from oneself, in a way that is both expressive and intimate, the book displays, and more than anything in the texts that Maillot himself signs, the duty of memory towards those who trained and supported him, from his father, the great visual artist Jean Maillot, to his brother, the musician Bertrand Maillot, from his fairy Monegasque, Princess Caroline, to her team of the Ballets de Monte-Carlo, united, vibrant. Itinerary of a child who knew how to overcome obstacles, of an honest artist who knows himself and who knows how to say thank you: a beautiful album to savor, to penetrate, to meditate.

Jacqueline Thuilleux