Béjart Ballet Lausanne: Gil Roman fired as Artistic Director

[Angela]

As reported by Swiss and French newspapers, Gil Roman was fired yesterday as director of the Béjart Ballet Lausanne. He had led the company since 2007, when Béjart died. Roman was a former dancer of the Béjart company and had also contributed his own choreographies to the repertoire.

 

When the Béjart Ballet was rocked by allegations of sexual harassment two years ago, there was an audit and reforms were announced. The company's production manager was fired due to these allegations. Gil Roman retained his post and was placed under the supervision of the new general director Giancarlo Sergi, a human resources director was hired. According to various Swiss news outlets, Gil Roman invited the former production manager to a performance by the company at the Paris Opéra Garnier in January and then to a private aperitif in the presence of all the dancers. After an examination, the board of trustees of the Fondation Béjart Ballet Lausanne considered this behavior towards the institution and towards the dancers to be inappropriate. Gil Roman will therefore resign from his position on April 30, 2024, the newspapers cite the press release. The foundation wants to find a successor. The planned further performances and tours will take place.

 

The rights to Béjart's work are in the hands of the Fondation Maurice Béjart which is also directed by Gil Roman; he had threatened to take the rights from the company if he has to leave his post. The company therefore risks no longer being able to perform the works of its founder choreographer. According to Radio Télévision Suisse, Grégoire Junod, mayor of Lausanne and vice-president of the Béjart Ballet Lausanne foundation, said that “It’s not impossible, but we think today that it’s unlikely. We have discussions with all the members of the Maurice Béjart foundation. All the feedback we have today suggests that we have a joint desire to continue the adventure and to continue to entrust the ballets of Maurice Béjart to the BBL. "

 

https://www.rts.ch/info/regions/vaud/2024/article/le-directeur-artistique-gil-roman-licencie-du-bejart-ballet-28388793.html

https://www.bluewin.ch/fr/infos/regional/le-directeur-artistique-gil-roman-licenci-du-b-jart-ballet-2065744.html

[Jan McNulty]

There's a news item in Links today.

 

Thanks for all the extra detail about the Foundation @Angela

[Sabine0308]

😱😱😱

[Emeralds]

Oh dear.   😞 

[Sophoife]

Goodness, I wonder what Miss Gielgud thinks!!

[Peanut68]

Showing my lack of international knowledge… can others please enlighten me as to Béjart choreographed pieces (should I know if these? Are they danced by UK companies?) thanks in advance 

[alison]

Song(s?) of a Wayfarer, as danced by ENB some years ago.  Bolero - even longer ago.  Most of his work is danced largely by his own company.

[Sophoife]

Paris Opéra Ballet performed a triple of Béjart last year: Firebird, Song of a Wayfarer, and Boléro .

 

We used to get quite a lot of Béjart in Australia when Maina Gielgud was AD of AusBallet as she had a personal relationship with Béjart. The company was filmed in Le Concours in the mid-90s.

 

Wayfarer is danced to the Mahler song cycle, but for some forsaken reason it is Song not Songs.

 

Alessandra Ferri performed L'heure exquise in the Linbury Theatre in 2021. 

[Angela]

At least his Bolero is in the international repertoire, Sylvie Guillem used to dance it very often on tour, in Japan for example. Or Roberto Bolle. Béjart made lots of full-length pieces and some of them were also danced by other companies than his own, the very funny crime-ballet "Le Concours" for example, or "Ring around the Ring", a four-hour ballet of Wagner's "Ring des Nibelungen". The Ballet of the State Opera in Berlin danced his works when Michael Denard was director there, Stuttgart Ballet danced Béjart back in den 1990s because Marcia Haydée loved his work and inspired him. Back in the 1960s, he was quite a revolution, having his company dance in jeans. Together with Cranko and Grigorovitch (all three were born in 1927), Béjart very much changed the aesthetics of the male dancer. Go to Youtube and look for Jorge Donn, you'll get a notion of what Béjart was. The American critics hate him with a vengeance 🙂, and I guess Britian did not see much of him, he was a French/continental thing. The first philosopher among choreographers...

[Peanut68]

8 hours ago, Sophoife said:

Paris Opéra Ballet performed a triple of Béjart last year: Firebird, Song of a Wayfarer, and Boléro .

 

We used to get quite a lot of Béjart in Australia when Maina Gielgud was AD of AusBallet as she had a personal relationship with Béjart. The company was filmed in Le Concours in the mid-90s.

 

Wayfarer is danced to the Mahler song cycle, but for some forsaken reason it is Song not Songs.

 

Alessandra Ferri performed L'heure exquise in the Linbury Theatre in 2021. 

Well that shows my own lack of taking note….I was at that wonderful performance in the Linbury!!

[Jan McNulty]

Goodness me Angela you’ve brought back some memories!

 

I remember seeing The Ring in Edinburgh (I think it was commissioned by Peter Schaufuss) and we enjoyed it so much that we went to Berlin to see it.  Unfortunately there were technical issues the night we had tickets for and we had to see Christopher Bruce’s utterly magnificent Cruel Garden again!

[jm365]

Clement Crisp, who was no fan of Bejart, thought his version of the Rite of Spring was one of the best.

 

[Sophoife]

At home over Christmas I copied some stuff from my old DVR and one of them was a broadcast of a documentary called Béjart : The Show Must Go On. It shows Roman and the company, including excerpts, in the years immediately post-Béjart's death in 2007. Quite interesting. Multi-lingual with subtitles.

 

Bolle seems to do Boléro whenever he feels like it including with the Béjart company. I missed him in Milan last year by two days.

 

It premiered in 1961, with the dancer Duska Sifnios on the table. The first man to dance it was Jorge Donn in 1979. The links are to YouTube videos.

 

In Paris last year I was booked to see Amandine Albisson and then Hugo Marchand. Due to minor injury I saw Mademoiselle Albisson twice, and I did wish I could have stayed on for Alice Renavand's [second] retirement show.

 

I also got to see both Germain Louvet and Mathieu Ganio as the blue man in Wayfarer and I can die happy now. The LINES my dears!

 

 

Edited February 4 by Sophoife
Added last paragraph

[jm365]

My first encounter with Bejart's ballets was at the Coliseum, when Bejart himself danced in Notre Faust.  It was so stunning that my friend and I - who at that stage hadn't known what to expect - went straight back the next night to see it again.  That was with the Ballet of the 20th Century in the 1970s - can't remember the exact date!  I have been a fan ever since and saw the company in Brussels and Paris, and then in Lausanne when it moved there.  I only hope whoever replaces Roman can keep the style as it should be.  For whatever faults Roman may have, he was a genuine 'Bejart dancer' - and an etoile.

[miliosr]

On 03/02/2024 at 18:35, Peanut68 said:

Showing my lack of international knowledge… can others please enlighten me as to Béjart choreographed pieces (should I know if these? Are they danced by UK companies?) thanks in advance 

Forum members have mentioned the surviving Bejart pieces most regularly revived outside of the Bejart Ballet Lausanne - The Rite of Spring, Bolero, L'oiseau de Feu, Song of the Wayfarer . . . 

 

The mega-spectaculars Bejart made for the Ballet of the 20th Century (his then-company) during the 1970s - Nijinsky, clown de dieu, I Trionfi, Notre Faust, Le Moliere imaginaire - are seen infrequently (if at all). The enormous cost it would take to revive them would be prohibitive for most companies. Also, the Ballet of the 20th Century as it existed in the 1970s had a high degree of personality, which would be difficult to recapture with today's dancers.

 

Suzanne Farrell, while closely associated with George Balanchine and the New York City Ballet, spent four years (1970-74) with Bejart and the Ballet of the 20th Century after she and Balanchine had their schism in 1969, and she remained intensely loyal to Bejart for the rest of his life. (See the Farrell documentary Elusive Muse.)

 

17 hours ago, Angela said:

The American critics hate him with a vengeance 🙂, and I guess Britian did not see much of him, he was a French/continental thing. The first philosopher among choreographers...

Bejart had the misfortune of bringing the Ballet of the 20th Century to New York (early 1971) when the New York dance world mantra of "dance has no subject but dance" was at or nearing its high-water mark. You might say that Bejart found himself caught between the twin pincers of Merce Cunningham (and the postmodernists) on his left and George Balanchine on his right. That Bejart was asking dance to speak to philosophy or religion riled the New York dance critics. Clive Barnes at the New York Times was the most vocal member of the anti-Bejart critical faction but Arlene Croce, from her perches at Ballet Review and The New Yorker, was probably the most influential in terms of shaping the anti-Bejart sentiment which persists among United States-based dance critics to this very day.  

 

 

Edited February 5 by miliosr

[Angela]

6 hours ago, miliosr said:

Also, the Ballet of the 20th Century as it existed in the 1970s had a high degree of personality, which would be difficult to recapture with today's dancers.

 

Yes it had, such great dancers! But who knows, maybe today's dancers could do the same, if there were choreographers who challenged their personality instead of using their flexibility. I know it's a cliché, but I honestly can't remember the same feeling of having seen a revelation, something life-changing in ballet that I had when I watched "Ring um den Ring" (the moment when the Ring turned into Parsifal!) , "Wien Wien nur du allein" (Jorge Donn's smile when the Blue Danube started among all the ruins!), "Ballet for Life" and all these evenings.

And yes, jm365, Gil Roman was a stunning, devilish, wonderful dancer. 

[LinMM]

Yes I saw those Bejart performances at the Colisseum including the wonderful Maina Gielgud who seemed extraordinary to me at the time. 
There was a ballet  performed to I’m sure one of Bach’s more “religious” Pieces …like St Matthew’s Passion .. or similar which totally blew me away at the time but as this is nearly 50 years ago now so memory a bit hazy on music but would love to know what it was …must have been 1972-75 roundabouts. 
I always wondered why we didn’t see more of the Company but only understood later on that he was not that well received in London either for whatever reason. 

[Emeralds]

Bejart made a few pieces later that were associated with Sylvie Guillem: the solo La Luna, and the ballet about Empress Elisabeth of Austria - Sissi.  La Luna is quite popular for galas and competitions. 

 

Although Bejart wasn't a classical choreographer the way Ashton and Balanchine were, I think he made his dancers look good in the ballets and he did have musicality. It's a pity his ideas were not appreciated for their creativity at the time- all he was doing was finding another way to express human experience. I think some critics also disliked his work because he staged them in arenas when those critics would prefer everyone to dance in a traditional proscenium arch theatre. Now dancing in an arena in summer is quite common- how things change. 

 

Of course, some of Bejart's works nowadays look very  classical (eg Song of a Wayfarer) compared to some other experiments and trends. 

Edited February 5 by Emeralds

[Angela]

According to a press release by the BBL, Julien Favreau will be Gil Roman's successor - as he was his successor in the company as leading male dancer.

 

"Following discussions over the weekend, the Board of Trustees is delighted to announce the appointment of Julien Favreau, currently a dancer in the BBL troupe, to take up the baton. The date of his appointment will be announced in the coming days.

 

The BBL Board of Trustees is today pleased to announce the appointment of Julien Favreau as Artistic Director ad interim. His talent, his experience, his perfect knowledge of the company and its dancers, and his artistic qualities make him the ideal person to take on this position and to infuse the company with the energy and high standards needed to make the choreographies of his mentor, Maurice Béjart, shine. Julien Favreau has accepted the offer to "continue to bring Maurice Béjart's work to life, through the finest instrument he created, the Béjart Ballet Lausanne, and in the company of the current artistic directors, who will support me in passing on Maurice Béjart's achievements.

 

From the shores of the Atlantic to the shores of Lake Geneva
Born in La Rochelle and trained in classical and contemporary dance, Julien Favreau entered the Rudra Béjart School in 1994. Quickly spotted by Maurice Béjart, he joined the Ballet a year later and was soon given important roles, including : The Chosen One in "The Rite of Spring", Freddie in "Ballet for Life", the Detective in "The Competition", Zarastro in "The Magic Flute", "Serait-ce la mort?", "Ce que l'Amour me dit", "Light" and numerous pas de deux. He has also danced as a soloist in creations by Gil Roman, Sthan Kabar Louët, Tony Fabre, Andonis Foniadakis and Yuka Oishi. Invited on stages all over the world and recognised as an incredible performer, notably for his role in the Mélodie du Boléro, the Foundation Board is convinced that he will also be an excellent artistic director, whose quality and high standards will enable the Béjart Ballet Lausanne to continue to bring Maurice Béjart's work to life.

The Maurice Béjart Foundation confirms its commitment to the BBL
The Maurice Béjart Foundation, whose committee members have been informed of this decision, is delighted to see the ballet's future secured in this way and confirms that the BBL will be able to continue to benefit from the rights to Maurice Béjart's choreographies under the current conditions."

 

[jm365]

One of Clement's criticisms concerned Bejart's use of music - he felt it was too ruthless in juxtapositions and cutting.  For instance, his use of Bach or Mozart alongside Tangos.  Bejart on the other hand felt that we hear all sorts of music on the radio or otherwise, sometimes quite jumbled together.  

 

I think sometimes critics accused Bejart of just using the beauty of his dancers' bodies and that his choreography was not that interesting (I could not agree less!!).  The American and British critics I believe thought his philosophy pretentious.  The company did come to Sadlers Wells some time in the 1990s, where Guillem danced Sissi with them.

[Lizbie1]

3 hours ago, jm365 said:

I think sometimes critics accused Bejart of just using the beauty of his dancers' bodies and that his choreography was not that interesting

 

That is a very good way of expressing how I feel about certain contemporary choreographers (I don't know enough Béjart to form an opinion about him).

[Sim]

I had such a crush on Jorge Donn.  In the mid-70s I lived in Switzerland and saw Bejart's company a couple of times, and they were on TV a lot in those days.  I then moved to London and kind of lost touch with the company, so I can't really form an educated opinion either.  I will just say that I hope they can now move forward and turn the page with new direction at the top.

[jm365]

Oh how I agree, Sim!  I don't think I have known anyone - even Nureyev in his prime - who had such a magical stage presence as Donn.  Obviously a very different dancer from  Nureyev, but matchless in the choreography Bejart made for him.

[alison]

4 hours ago, jm365 said:

I think sometimes critics accused Bejart of just using the beauty of his dancers' bodies and that his choreography was not that interesting (I could not agree less!!).  The American and British critics I believe thought his philosophy pretentious.  The company did come to Sadlers Wells some time in the 1990s, where Guillem danced Sissi with them.

 

Wasn't The Miraculous Mandarin one of his, too?

[Sim]

1 hour ago, jm365 said:

Oh how I agree, Sim!  I don't think I have known anyone - even Nureyev in his prime - who had such a magical stage presence as Donn.  Obviously a very different dancer from  Nureyev, but matchless in the choreography Bejart made for him.

From what I’ve read Nureyev had quite a crush on him too!  

[jm365]

Yes, The Miraculous Mandarin was also part of the Sadlers Wells season.  Another work was much less successful in my opinion, on Charlie Chaplin, with Chaplin's grandson in the cast.  Much though I admire Bejart, like all choreographers, some things were better than others!!

[alison]

Oh yes, I'd forgotten that.