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Modern Figures

Racines”—meaning roots—stands as the counterbalance to “Giselle,” the two ballets opening the Paris Opera Ballet’s season this year. Conceived as a choreographic journey between tradition and modernity, “Racines” seeks to reconnect the company with its origins and, more broadly, to evoke the roots of Western ballet—as stated in the programme, tracing its lineage through Russia, Africa, and Greece. These three cultural sources, both symbolic and real, form the trait d’union linking three very different works in this triple bill: George Balanchine’s “Theme and Variations,” Mthuthuzeli November’s “Rhapsodies,” and Christopher Wheeldon’s “Corybantic Games.”

Performance

Paris Opera Ballet: George Balanchine’s “Theme and Variations,” Mthuthuzeli November’s “Rhapsodies,” and Christopher Wheeldon’s “Corybantic Games”

Place

Opera Bastille, Paris, France, October 23,2025

Words

Elsa Giovanna Simonetti

Pablo Legasa and Thomas Docquir in “Corybantic Games” by Christopher Wheeldon. Photograph by Maria-Helena Buckley | OnP

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In “Theme and Variations,” set to the marvellous final movement of Tchaikovsky’s Orchestral Suite No. 3, choreography and music are powerfully intertwined. It is a distilled expression of classical style, logically structured and in perfect harmony with the score—Balanchine’s 1947 masterpiece, a tribute to the grandeur of Russian imperial ballet seen through an American lens. A co-founder of New York City Ballet and one of the most influential figures of twentieth-century choreography, Balanchine shaped a neoclassicism that, as is well known, often comes more naturally to overseas dancers, whose training favours brilliance, attack, and a certain athletic musicality. For European dancers, embodying Balanchine’s sensitivity has not always been easy, but the work’s long presence in the repertoire of the Paris Opera Ballet (since 1993) and the guidance of exceptional répétiteurs such as Agnès Letestu have made the difference for this performance.

The leading couple, Inès McIntosh and Thomas Docquir, are both rapidly rising stars of the company. McIntosh is fluid, quick, and dazzling; her physique is so expressive that at times it seems almost to take charge of her, rather than the other way round—yet the result is strikingly effortless. Docquir is an exquisite dancer whose innate kindness seems to radiate through his movement. In the first male solo, set against the medieval Dies irae motif, he is particularly impressive, especially in the long series of triple pirouettes. This is an extremely demanding work, even more so for the corps de ballet, which displays solid technique, instinctive style, and unfailing musicality. Among the four couples in lighter blue, given slightly greater prominence than the rest, Camille Bon particularly stands out for her elegance and rhythmic precision.

Valentine Colasante and Paul Marque in “Theme and Variations” by George Balanchine. Photograph by Maria-Helena Buckley | OnP

The two following creations, “Rhapsodies” and “Corybantic Games,” have just entered the Paris Opera Ballet’s repertoire with this programme. “Rhapsodies” is a work by South African choreographer Mthuthuzeli November. Here too, we find a central couple—danced by Hohyun Kang and Pablo Legasa—in a plotless ballet. In his interview for the Toï Toï Toï: Racines series (24 September), available on the Opéra’s website, November spoke openly about his life and career. Born and raised in Cape Town, he began dancing barefoot in the street before discovering ballet at the age of fifteen. He studied in his hometown and later in London for eight years. Two years ago, he gave up performing to focus on choreography, creating works for companies such as the Royal Ballet, Ballet Zürich, and Charlotte Ballet, where he now serves as resident choreographer. José Martinez, Directeur de la Danse, emphasised his wish to introduce artists little known in France and said he had been particularly drawn to November’s poetic sensibility and his collective creative process, in which the dancers are actively engaged.

Indeed, although this ballet was originally commissioned by Ballet Zürich for the centenary (1924–2024) of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” under the title “A Portrait of Us,” November substantially reworked it for Paris. Refusing simply to copy and paste the earlier version, he adapted the choreography to the Opéra dancers, creating something new with and for them. The costumes—minimal, plain, and understated, even unflattering—evoke a kind of street aesthetic: each dancer dressed differently to express, in November’s words, both community and individuality. The set consists of a large, luminous wooden frame that opens like a book of dissected pages. The women dance on pointe, at times clustering together or opposing the group of male dancers. Despite this solid conceptual framework, the choreography ultimately lacks a distinctive language or cohesive vision. Nevertheless, the Paris Opera dancers’ remarkable skill, dedication, and complete immersion in the project—a point where November undoubtedly succeeded—made “Rhapsodies” an engaging and warmly received piece.

Seohoo Yun and dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet in Mthuthuzeli November’s “Rhapsodies.” Photograph by Maria-Helena Buckley | OnP

“Corybantic Games” by Christopher Wheeldon is the most unpredictable work of the evening. A British-born choreographer and former dancer with the Royal Ballet and New York City Ballet, Wheeldon has become one of the leading voices bridging classical vocabulary and contemporary sensibility. The piece is set to Leonard Bernstein’s “Serenade after Plato’s Symposium”—a five-movement composition for violin and orchestra inspired by Plato’s dialogue on love. Wheeldon’s ballet offers a potpourri of ideas drawn from classical Greece, blending philosophical overtones with stylised athleticism. The adjective ‘Corybantic’ evokes the ecstatic, frenzied dances of the Corybantes, priests of the Phrygian goddess Cybele, while ‘games’ recalls the Olympic contests. The result is an imagined Greece of myth, play, and reflection, expressed through a choreographic language at once innovative and steeped in tradition, recalling works such as George Balanchine’s “Apollo” and Yuri Grigorovich’s “Spartacus.” Once again, it is the Paris Opera Ballet’s dancers who transform the concept into something marvellous.

The ballet unfolds across the five musical movements of Bernstein’s score. In the first (Lento – Allegro), Bleuenn Battistoni, Thomas Docquir, Silvia Saint-Martin, and Pablo Legasa lead the ensemble in choreography that recalls Nijinsky’s “Faun”—with planar, stylised poses and broken arm lines suggesting a two-dimensional iconography. In the second (Allegretto), the exquisite Hohyun Kang leads six female dancers in a gynaeceum-like tableau, poised between a Canova sculpture group and the Muses from Disney’s Hercules. In the third movement (Presto), Inès McIntosh and Jack Gasztowtt deliver a playful, off-balance duet full of sudden shifts of weight, ending with McIntosh being tossed playfully into the wings—to the audience’s delight. The fourth movement (Adagio) brings together Bleuenn Battistoni and Florent Mélac, with Silvia Saint-Martin, Hohyun Kang, Thomas Docquir, and Pablo Legasa forming two same-sex duets, sculptural in style and charged with quiet sensuality. The final movement (Allegro molto) crowns the ballet with Roxane Stojanov’s fiery presence, joined by the full ensemble. She embodies what seems to echo Diotima’s speech in the Symposium—a woman illuminating the essence of love, elevating the discourse from physical desire to a spiritual and intellectual quest. The originality of the concept, the unpredictability of the choreographic choices, and the impeccable, radiant dancing made “Corybantic Games” the evening’s true highlight.

Alexander Maryianovski and Nais Duboscq in “Corybantic Games” by Christopher Wheeldon. Photograph by Maria-Helena Buckley | OnP

Roxane Stojanov and Nais Duboscq in “Corybantic Games” by Christopher Wheeldon. Photograph by Maria Helena Buckley | OnP

One leaves the immense Opéra Bastille unable to help thinking that what binds these creations together is the music—three glorious scores by composers who left an indelible mark on their era, performed with mastery by the orchestra under the direction of Vello Pähn, with the wonderful Michel Dietlin at the piano in “Rhapsodies” and Frédéric Laroque in “Corybantic Games.” But then, at a deeper level, if one asks what truly unites these ballets—from a conceptual more than an aesthetic perspective—the answer is love. Love is the true protagonist of this triptych: despite ballet’s tireless evolution towards a more contemporary language and sensitivity, love remains at its heart. The outstanding pair in “Theme and Variations,” with its pas de deux music that can move one to tears; the couple in the everyday setting of “Rhapsodies,” where they lose and find each other again; and the many dual and collective forms of affection that inhabit the athletic meditation on love that is “Corybantic Games”—all remind us that love is what holds us together, in life as in dance, that most social, interactive, and profoundly binding of arts.

Elsa Giovanna Simonetti

Elsa Giovanna Simonetti is a Paris-based philosopher researching ancient thought, divination, and practices of salvation at the École Pratique des Hautes Études. With over a decade of ballet training, she studied History of Dance as part of her Philosophy and Aesthetics degree at the University of Bologna. Alongside her academic work, she writes about dance.

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