RePERTOIRE 22-23
The repertoire of the Cannes Junior Ballet blends ballets from the great ballet repertoire, creations by emerging choreographers, and reprises or creations by recognised choreographers. It is revisited every year to introduce novelty and enrich the knowledge of our young dancers.
IT'S ALRIGHT
Choreography: Carolyn Carlson
Music: René Aubry
Created in September 2021 for the Cannes Jeune Ballet Rosella Hightower
Duration: 04 mn
3 dancers
"It was an honour to work with the talented dancers of Cannes Jeune Ballet Rosella Hightower. The creation of 'It's Alright', accompanied by the lively music and text of René Aubry, inspired the spontaneous, enthusiastic and energetic choreography of three men, discovering creative ideas to infuse this dance with inventive movement that they found through my ideas. Our collaboration was a joyous experience for these talented young artists. It was a great pleasure for me to see the result of this creation."
Carolyn Carlson
Photo: Sakher Almonem
WIND WOMEN
Choreography: Carolyn Carlson
Music: Nicolas de Zorzi
Solo created in 2011, variation created in 2018, revival for Cannes Jeune Ballet in 2021
Duration: 20 mn
6 dancers
With Wind women, Carolyn Carlson has chosen to explore the feeling of transience. With Céline Maufroid, who has been performing her work for several years, she listened to the breaths that envelop us and those that emanate from within us.
Every living being, through its breathing, represents a machine for creating wind. Wind Women is an invitation to everyone to listen and feel the breath of the world and of their own soul.
Photo: Sakher Almonem
RENCONTRES
Choreography: Filipe Portugal
Music: Ólafur Arnalds & Alice Sara Ott, Zoë Keating
Created in 2019 for the Cannes Jeune Ballet Rosella Hightower
Duration: 20 mn
13 dancers
"Creating for young dancers has always been a great challenge for me. Their desire to know more and explore all their abilities is always very visible, and that makes the creative process really interesting and rewarding. The Jeune Ballet Rosella Hightower will give me the inspiration I need. I will be able to find their individual voices that they may not yet be aware of. It is this journey into the unknown that will make this creation exciting and intense.
I am a ballet-trained dancer and this forms the basis of my work as a choreographer. I love exploring the limits of classical dance and finding new emotions. This allows me to go further and further with my own choreographic language, inspired by what other dancers can offer me by responding to what I ask of them. It's in this dialogue between the dancers and myself that I get the results I want and expect. I can't wait to get to know the dancers of the Jeune Ballet Rosella Hightower and to begin this creation together. I feel very optimistic about this experience and I can only hope for the best of results".
Filipe Portugal
Photo: Sakher Almonem
UN MOMENTO DI FELICITA
Choreography: Renato Zanella
Music: Nino Rota
Created in April 2023 for the Cannes Jeune Ballet Rosella Hightower
Duration: 25 mn
13 dancers
"When I create at the piano, I tend to feel happy, but - the eternal dilemma - how can we be happy in the midst of unhappiness? I would do everything I could to offer everyone a moment of happiness. That's what's at the heart of my music" (Nino Rota)
Approaching the work of Nino Rota is certainly a moment of great emotion and memory, given that generations have admired the most beautiful and successful films of Italian realism embraced by his music. How can dance approach this? Two voiceless arts come together to create new emotions, notably by tackling beautiful compositions that are in part less well known to the general public, and therefore a subject for reflection and research to create new artistic dimensions. Young dancers are approaching Nino Rota, interpreting him, experiencing him, but above all looking for what his music can bring to new generations.
Yes, there is a story, because his music speaks and tells and will take these young people by the hand with the commitment to help them grow as it has always helped us through the interpretations of great directors such as Luchino Visconti, Eduardo De Filippo, Mario Monicelli, Franco Zeffirelli and above all Federico Fellini.
Taking flight among these notes is what we're going to do, tiptoeing along without adding a sound to create a new interpretation, I'd say having the impression of being taken by the hand by the great composer. I'd like to conclude with a phrase from F. Fellini that will accompany me in this new creation:
"Have you ever heard the sound of a violin? No, because if you had listened to the voices of the violins as we are hearing them now you would have been silent, and you would not have had the impudence to believe that you were dancing. Dancing is... it's embroidery. It's stealing. It's like glimpsing the harmony of the stars. It's a declaration of love. Dance is a hymn to life" (La voce della Luna, FEDERICO FELLINI, 1990).
Renato Zanella
Photo: Nathalie Sternalski
MOZART A 2 (EXTRACTS)
Choreography: Thierry Malandain
Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Revival of repertoire created in 1997
Duration: 11 mn
4 dancers
In 1997, a few pages from Mozart's piano concertos were used to create the duets for a show entitled Bal Solitude. The idea was to portray episodes of love in the context of a ball. It's a festive place, but one that reveals the loneliness that comes when love doesn't always go hand in hand. It is this changing face of a feeling that is sometimes measured by the extent of the lack that the play addresses.
"My culture is that of classical ballet, and I have no qualms about remaining attached to it. Although I readily admit that its artistic and social codes are from another era, I also believe that this material, inherited from four centuries of history, provides the dancer with invaluable resources. So I play around with it, becoming classical for some, contemporary for others, simply in search of a dance that I love. A dance that doesn't just leave a trace of pleasure, but that reconnects with the essence of the sacred as a response to the difficulty of being."
Thierry Malandain
Photo: Sakher Almonem
A PLACE BETWEEN
Choreography: Lukas Timulak
Music: Gustavo Santaolalla - Hauschka , Callino Quartet (Arvo Pärt)
Created in 2018 for the Cannes Jeune Ballet Rosella Hightower
Duration: 20 mn
10 dancers
It's human nature to seek out new experiences, new situations and new places. Sometimes we find destinations, but rarely a place that satisfies us for good. In 'A place Between', Lukas Timulak explores these fleeting moments. A moment between two moments in life, or a place between birth and death. We are always in the middle of something.
Photo: Nathalie Sternalski
WEST SIDE STORY
Choreography: Francesco Curci
Music: Leonard Bernstein
First performed on Broadway in 1957, revived for the Rosella Hightower PNSD in 2021
Duration: 60 mn
Keeping at the heart of Arthur Laurents original story (inspired by William Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet) Francesco Curci finds the challenge in a new interpretation by mixing musical styles, reinterpreting the roles of the characters and giving a contemporary choreographic reading. The creative process is guided by the desire to encourage the audience to think more deeply about sensitive and topical themes such as discrimination, conflicts between cultures and beliefs, the need to belong, fear of rejection, oppression, the stereotype of women, the search for freedom and acceptance of others...
Stylistically, the choreographer adopts his own contemporary language throughout the work. Physical research is a priority in this creation. It is guided by the different themes addressed in the story. The "states of the body" and the dance develop from the emotions and trials experienced by the protagonists: moments of lightness and gaiety alternate with other, much darker and tortured feelings. The choreographer plays with the chiaroscuro between perfect cohesion or contrast between dance and music. The aim is to illustrate both the joy, euphoria and elation or the sadness, nostalgia, fear, despair and grief that death brings with it. Does the sacrifice of one person's life open the door to tolerance for others?
Photo: Patrick Massabo
