New Wave

What distinguishes a dancer from a choreographer? This is, in the end, an empirical question, one that can only be answered in the theatre. To discern the creator from the interpreter, the former must be given the conditions to try, to experiment and, yes, to fail: a team of dancers and, ideally, the full apparatus of theatre making, from costumes and lighting to, above all, an audience. Danseurs Chorégraphes, relaunched in 2024 after more than a decade by artistic director José Martinez, offers the Paris Opéra dancers exactly that. The initiative also reflects and capitalises on another frequently debated choice of the current leadership: sustained collaboration with contemporary choreographers. Rather than reverentially repeating codified classics, dancers are consistently drawn into stylistic negotiation, adaptation and the living, shared process of making work.

Performance

Paris Opera Ballet: Danseurs Chorégraphes

Place

Opéra Bastille, Amphithéâtre Messiaen, February 25, 2026

Words

Elsa Giovanna Simonetti

Max Darlington and Apolline Anquetil in Rubens Simon’s “À jamais sans leurs yeux.” Photograph by Benoîte Fanton | OnP

In the last week of February, eight original pieces unfolded across four consecutive nights. Adèle Belem opened the evening with “Cathexis,” a ballet she choreographed herself. Borrowed from psychoanalysis, the term refers to the emotional investment we place in an object or a person. Here it framed the intimacies and difficulties of a couple’s life. The music, “All I Had” by the band Structures, was performed live, voice and electric guitar, lending the piece depth, immediacy and a poetic edge. Belem and Milo Avêque threw themselves into an adventurous pas de deux built on constant, intense physical contact. The atmosphere felt cinematic, like a scene with two young romantic rebels in an abandoned industrial shell: dark and melancholic, yet oddly tender.

Rubens Simon’s “À jamais sans leurs yeux” was enigmatic. Simon appeared on stage first holding a book, and later returning with a few props. He was joined by four dancers, one man and three women, all dressed in everyday clothes. The women’s pointe work, their elongated movements and airy phrasing, created a striking tension with Daft Punk’s “Touch.” An atmosphere of quiet mourning emerged, as if shared for those who are no longer here. It was a heartfelt, articulate depiction of loss, nostalgia and the fragility of life.

We turned to neoclassical style with “Rhythm Work I” by Felicia Calazans. The mere presence of Bianca Scudamore and Keita Bellali, not to mention their immaculate technique and their genuine delight in dancing, could make almost any choreography look radiant. Here, though, it is a perfect match: Calazans gives them movement that flatters their lines, and in return their artistry gives weight, flesh and meaning to every step. Dressed in deep ecru, the pair begin separated, dancing at the barre, before coming together. The piece is linear in form, but far from easy to execute. It follows the classical pas de deux pattern, with individual variations and a brilliant, virtuosic coda. Calazans does not spare the duo, piling on demanding combinations and exacting turns. Excerpts by Massenet, Kreisler and Hubay, played live on piano and violin, complete this portrait of rare, unforgettable beauty. Calazans deserves real praise for reimagining the genre with such sensitivity and spirit, and for adding a distinctly personal touch.

Saki Kuwabara, Ye Eun Lee, Alycia Hiddinga, Laudeline Schor, and Alexa Torres-Alvarez in “Delirium” by Manuel Garrido. Photograph by Benoîte Fanton | OnP

Manuel Garrido, a truly rich and inventive choreographic mind, offered two pieces. The first, a memento mori entitled “Oxygen,” came with his own electronic score. It was a sombre reminder that every breath could be our last. Despite its almost messianic premise, however, the choreography was carried by the wonderfully clear, light and radiant Hortense Millet Maurin. After an offstage voice guided us through a collective breathing meditation, she entered and lit up the stage in a pale blue tutu, full of energy and brightness, like an oxygen atom in constant motion.

The second creation by Garrido, “Delirium,” was a total highlight of the night. Five of his female colleagues, wearing black bob wigs with blunt fringes and colourful bodysuits, rode the pulse of Karl Jenkins’s Palladio Reimagined: I Allegretto, a reworked version of the best known movement, in which the familiar string drive is expanded with extra colours and more elaborate orchestration. Sharp shifts in lighting, aligned with hypnotic, energetic and slightly robotic movements, created an alienated effect. The recurring motif of hands pressed to the sides of the head suggested the madness the piece sought to express. At the music’s climax, the dancers executed rapid échappés relevés under the flashing lights, generating an intense sense of unease. The piece ended with each dancer holding a single papier-mâché facial feature, one eye each, plus a mouth and a nose, so that together they formed a face: a blunt image of depersonalisation and psychic fragmentation.

Maud Pruvost in “Le Soldat de plomb” by Maxime Thomas. Photograph by Benoite Fanton | OnP

Yvon Demol’s “Ultra” is a finely shaped duet for Apolline Anquetil and Naïs Duboscq, a quiet inquiry into how identity takes form through the dialectic between self discovery and encounter with the other. It is a classy, intelligent piece. We watch two silhouettes merge and separate, approach and retreat, sometimes tentative, sometimes charged with sudden energy, as if pushing against an invisible resistance. Dancing in socks, they look both fragile and grounded, at once supportive and keenly attentive to one another. They are beautifully sculptural in the way they hold a pose, and there is real elegance in their synergy and their ease with this choreographic language.

Maud Pruvost, trained at the Conservatoire de Bagnolet, appears in Maxime Thomas’s “Le soldat de plomb.” Deaf and dancing with a crutch, she is at the heart of a piece that Thomas has crafted around her with great care. In his distinctive style, he again places theatrical language and stage convention under a sharp lens, following last year’s duet with Gladys Foggia. The music, Josef Suk’s Meditation, Op. 35a, and the reference to Andersen’s The Steadfast Tin Soldier create a world of restraint and endurance. At one point, the crutch becomes a gun; a physical confrontation follows, blurring the lines between vulnerability and power, before the tension dissolves into a pas de deux that turns sweet and playful. It takes real artistry and imagination to deliver such a powerful and utterly convincing piece.

Adèle Belem and Juliette Hilaire Seohoo Yun in “Cachez ce sein” by Charlotte Ranson. Photograph by Benoîte Fanton | OnP

The final ballet was pure provocation, a deliberate reversal of Catholic imagery. In “Cachez ce sein” by Charlotte Ranson, a Mary figure, Adèle Belem, was carried like a statue on a moving platform by six dancers in long, conical blue hoods, forming a sinister procession. Gangloff’s music then flipped into Kompromat’s techno as the “priests” shed their dark blue layers to reveal blazing orange sportswear, and the stage turned into a ritualised rave. Later, the atmosphere shifted again, becoming unexpectedly meditative, as the statue came alive and Belem brought the soirée full circle in a sheer black dress. The piece took its cue from Spinoza’s Ethics, with its cruelly lucid idea that human freedom is an illusion: we feel conscious of what we do, yet we do not know the causes that move us. Christian morality, party culture, and fantasies of bodily liberation collided in a vivid, charged fresco.

Compared with last year’s edition, the initiative has clearly gained in confidence and offered several happy surprises. Above all, it finally brought forward striking female voices, whose absence last season was painfully noticeable. The breadth of approaches, too, was refreshing, and at times unexpected. The one persistent drawback is the setting: once again the Amphithéâtre Messiaen, hardly ideal for large jumps, spatial design, or the sheer pleasure of dance, and inevitably lending the evening a slightly scholastic flavour.

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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Elsa Giovanna Simonetti

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