Pietragalla creates his “Barbara” in Saint-Loubès

LThe resemblance has always been quite uncanny. The trajectories are certainly different, but marked with the seal of independence and character. “Maurice Béjart, with whom I worked and who was one of his friends, told me: ”You remind me of Barbara,”” says Marie-Claude Pietragalla, a living monument of contemporary dance. aimed at the general public. The former star of the Paris Opera Ballet (1990-1998) decided, after many years of hesitation, to dance, sing and perform Barbara on stage. And the first will be at the Loubésienne Coupole.

It was thirty-one years ago. Barbara is at the Châtelet, in her last session of Parisian concerts interrupted by failing health. “I was able to visit him in his dressing room at the end of the evening,” says Pietragalla. “Unforgettable kindness, simplicity. And this way of valuing the person in front of her. I listened to it since I was little at home, alongside Brel and Piaf. » The joint show project will not see the light of day, the dancer and choreographer leaves to direct the National Ballet of Marseille then creates with Julien Derouault (co-choreographer of “Barbara”) the Théâtre du corps, a structure which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. And Barbara died in 1997.

“I didn’t dare”

“I always wanted to create this show but I didn’t dare,” confides the artist. “Is it sixty that gave me wings? In any case, I didn’t want to have any regrets. » The warm endorsement of Bernard Serf, nephew of the singer and representative of the rights holders, and here she is, a year ago tackling this solo like no other. Where she dances, sings, says Barbara. “It’s a journey into his memory, his relationship with the public, with the men, with the stage,” adds the choreographer. “In a mixture that characterizes her: fragility and strength, mystery and simplicity, gravity and humor. »

“I married a man, it didn’t work,” Barbara said. “I remarried the public and I never cheated on them. » Pietragalla recalls that, often, the author of “Göttingen” moved on the demi-pointes, a unique silhouette and aura whose concerts of the last twenty years resembled masses, such was the strong communion with the spectators. In “Barbara” will also be the resilience of an artist with a long and difficult beginning, especially a woman bruised from a very young age (victim of incest by her father). “’L’Aigle noir’ and ‘Nantes’ are my favorite songs,” she says. “They go hand in hand. »And a father, precisely.

Barbara, is

Measured projections, Barbara’s voice, resulting in particular from a delicious press conference in March 1988 in Canada, but also, of course, from her songs. And Pietragalla who refuses the word “incarnation”. “She was a woman who sang, I am a woman who danced,” she sums up. “I tried to interpret his state of mind, his state of being. That of inner beauty and self-sacrifice. »

Saturday November 16 (8:30 p.m.) in Saint-Loubès, Salle de la Coupole. From 24 to 38 euros.