“Paquita and I are the fruit of the same heritage”

Paris Match. The first time you danced with the Paris Opera company, you were a little rat, and it was at Bastille. What memory do you keep of it?

Valentine Colasante. A precise and intact memory. I had just started dance school. I was 9 years old. As a student, we have the opportunity to dance in certain ballets. I was lucky enough to be able to participate in The Nutcracker for the Christmas holidays. I was impressed and fascinated to rub shoulders with the star dancers. The atmosphere is indescribable. You immediately immerse yourself in the demands and rigor that classical dance requires.

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How much freedom do you allow yourself in interpreting a character?

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For any big role, I first get an idea of ​​the color I want to give to the heroine. Being named a star, beyond the consecration, offers you a new start in the sense that we can offer our vision of the characters. Paquita and I are the fruit of the same heritage, a great classical tradition, to which I must be faithful, and at the same time, my way of conceiving the character is part of our time, in 2024.

Do you mean that there is a little bit of you in “your” Paquita?

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Inevitably. My role as a star consists of perpetuating what I have learned, by reappropriating it and enriching it with my own experiences. If I want to play a sincere character, I have to draw on my emotions, my joys, my sorrows, my friendly or family relationships… My secret is that I tell myself, in my head, a personal story that I experienced so that the public believes in what I embody.

“Paquita is a young woman with a strong temperament”

Concretely, what is your proposal regarding Paquita?

Paquita is a young woman with a strong temperament. I wanted to contrast this passion with great moments of gentleness and doubt, especially when she is alone on stage. I want to give it a certain fragility. She is also full of mischief. There is a lot of fire and joy in Paquita. My little touch also consists of giving a humorous touch to certain passages, notably the pantomime scenes, otherwise they could have a dated side.

The dancer’s paradox is the following: when he reaches a certain maturity, he feeds on things seen, experienced, on emotions to display emotions. And at the same time, with age, the body follows less well. You are young, you are 33 years old, but how do you cope with the passing years?

I think there is no contradiction because with age, I know my body by heart and I know exactly how to use it, and probably better than a few years ago. I know how to anticipate workloads, how to work on the endurance of great classical ballets. And then, I gained peace of mind. I take greater responsibility for the artist that I am. After a certain age, we worry less about how others look at us. There is a sort of letting go on stage. We focus more on the pleasure of being in the present moment once on stage.

Is the Opera, a great classical institution, through the dance company, a reflection of its time?

Absolutely, and this can be seen in the diversity of his repertoire. This is the strength of the Paris Opera, that of programming great classical ballets by Pierre Lacotte, Marius Petipa, Nureyev but also contemporaries like Mats Ek or Alexander Ekman. My base is classical but I am lucky enough to be able to dance modern and it enriches my practice.

“The classic nourishes the contemporary”

Do you have to have a chameleon body to go from one to the other?

We might think, a priori, that the muscles do not work in exactly the same way. My body is my work tool. I’ve been sculpting him for years so he can dance all styles. I learned not to force it but rather to find other paths to execute the movement. And in reality, it’s not that different. I’m currently rehearsing Mats Ek’s Apartment. The anchoring to the ground that it requires is useful to me in the first part of Paquita, for example. The classic nourishes the contemporary and vice versa.

The actors learn the text by heart when preparing a play. How, as a dancer, do you integrate a choreography?

This is the art of patience. The body must be given time to understand how to achieve movement and restore it. This can take a few weeks or months. Then, you have to assimilate the steps and build an interpretation with your partner. It’s a very important moment in the studio. Next, the body’s memory is phenomenal. I happened to instinctively rediscover the mechanics of the movement, as if I had rehearsed it the day before even though I hadn’t danced ballet for a long time.

Does the body have memory lapses?

Yes (smile). Of course it happens. In these moments, I remain calm. And it’s coming back! But that doesn’t happen often. Fortunately !