Changing of the Seasons

Pattern and symmetry are the modus operandi of choreographer Thierry Malandain’s “Les Saisons” (2023), performed by his Malandain Ballet Biarritz contemporary ballet company to close out the Pittsburgh Dance Council’s 2024-2025 season.

Performance

Malandain Ballet Biarritz: “Les Saisons” by Thierry Malandain

Place

Byham Theater, Pittsburgh, PA, May 7, 2025

Words

Steve Sucato

Malandain Ballet Biarritz in “Les Saisons” by Thierry Malandain. Photograph by Olivier Houeix

Malandain’s “Les Saisons” is set to both Vivaldi’s famous composition and composer Giovanni Antonio Guido’s “The Four Seasons of the Year,” a relatively unknown work created around the same period. The ballet takes movements of each of the composer’s scores in seasonal order from Spring to Winter.

For the sections danced to Vivaldi, Malandain’s choreography uses contemporary movement with some sections looking like sophisticated versions of playground games, with the dancers following one after another, hopping up and down, and slapping their hands and arms at their sides. Others appeared to emulate folk dances with daisy chains of dancers holding hands and interweaving lines of bodies.

For the sections using Guido’s baroque music, Malandain took a more balletic approach. The dancing for Guido’s Spring began with a quartet of two women in bustled skirts and two men in waistcoats, each with an ornate floral pattern a la a Gustav Klimt flower painting. Their dancing was light, elegant, and courtly, and Guido’s music was marvelously engaging.

Malandain Ballet Biarritz in “Les Saisons” by Thierry Malandain. Photograph by Olivier Houeix

Next, in contrast to the quartet’s buoyant dancing, Hugo Layer performed a dramatic solo, costumed in a flesh-colored unitard with one black sleeve that ended with his hand inside a black leaf similar to those seen on the backdrop (designed by Jorge Gallardo). Layer bent and folded his body, moving to the floor and up again while waving the black leaf like a fan. His character would return with each of Guido’s seasons, accompanied by varying numbers of other dancers costumed as he was.

With each return to Vivaldi’s music, Malandain’s choreography exuded cleverness. From simple movement phrases with the dancers swinging their arms back and forth and shrugging their shoulders, to more complex symmetrical patterns delivered with pace, the dancing was quite transfixing.

Malandain Ballet Biarritz in “Les Saisons” by Thierry Malandain. Photograph by Olivier Houeix

The ballet also featured several engaging pas de deux, including petite dancer Patricia Velázquez, partnered by the much taller Noé Ballot; she being lifted and carried as if weightless. The pas ended with Velázquez perched on Ballot’s chest as if in mid-swandive. The most memorable of them, however, was Irma Hoffman, mimicking biting off the fingers one by one of dancer Raphaël Canet’s outstretched hand. It was both humorous and bone-chilling.

While not a ballet of virtuosity, “Les Saisons” had the audience quite happily feeding off its spellbinding patterns, symmetry, musicality, and striking visuals. The performance concluded with the whole cast in unitards with black hand leaves running in circles around the stage, leaving the audience with a lasting impression of otherworldly bird-people in flight.

Steve Sucato

Steve Sucato is a former dancer turned arts writer/critic living in Cleveland, Ohio. His writing credits include articles and reviews on dance and the arts for The Plain Dealer, Buffalo News, Erie Times-News, Dance Magazine, Pointe, Dance International, and web publications Critical Dance, DanceTabs (London), and Fjord Review. Steve is chairman emeritus of the Dance Critics Association and the creator of the arts website artsair.art.

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