Grace, new piece by Benjamin Millepied based on the eponymous album by singer and composer Jeff Buckley (1966-1997), has a subtitle : « Jeff Buckley Dances ». The content of the show is said to be: choreographing the songs of the American artist who died tragically drowned in Mississippi while waking up his ghost. He’s dancing, Jeff! Played by Loup Marcault-Derouard, he comes back to life on the set, plays the guitar. He retraces his life from his birth in California until his disappearance in an intense emotional outburst.
This ambitious production supported by videos produced live by Olivier Simola delighted the 3,500 spectators at La Seine musicale, Thursday November 7. Is it the combined impact of Buckley and Millepied, the unifying and general public appeal of a song-dance creation? The places were snatched up. Two dates were added at the last minute, mid-September, to the four initially planned. By Sunday November 10, 20,000 people will have seen Grace, which will be on display on June 17 and 18 at Nuits de Fourvière, in Lyon.
To survey Buckley’s trajectory, Benjamin Millepied, whose music is always the springboard, relies on the 11 tracks of the album recorded in 1994 by the artist. A fan of the musician he discovered in New York in the 1990s, he added a dozen other unreleased tracks to the soundtrack, released after his death, as well as texts and extracts from his diary. The tone is rock, raw, melancholy, serious. The existential themes of identity, love, fear are colored dark, approaching increasingly dark shores as the show progresses.
Agile writing
This mosaic of sounds, voices, gestures and images adorns Grace. Ten performers, actors, singers and dancers, articulate the different parameters. Among them, Ulysse Zangs, also a guitarist, designed musical environments which help maintain the atmosphere of the subject. In front of a huge screen placed in the center of the stage, a mobile set of panels quickly moved by the group reveals light architectures. A room appears, a bed tilts.
The narrative plot of Grace, over which Buckley’s definitively captivating voice hovers, is blown away by Millepied’s agile and versatile writing. Caught in the wind of its course, it slides and quickly, living elastic bouncing in space. Shirts and dresses fly. Numerous duets, as is often the case with Millepied, punctuate the always lively overall scenes. The scholarly naturalness of the choreographer’s multifaceted style, between twisted classical and jazz swing, maintains the epidermal flow of the movement. But letting virtuosity slip by sometimes takes on the air of ease overtaken by this desire that dance resembles life and vice versa.
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