BALLETS RUSSES

I said somewhere that it was not enough to hear the music, but that it must also be seen.

Igor Stravinsky, The poetics of music (1939)

Presenting in a single evening three mythical ballets commissioned by Diaghilev from Stravinsky for his Ballets Russes company – The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913) – is a musical achievement in itself. These scores, incredibly rich in colours and rhythms, and created in Paris with choreography by Fokine or Nijinsky and sets by Bakst or Benois, were immediately considered decisive milestones of artistic modernity, and caused a scandal. In order to rediscover the ideal of total artwork that they convey, three inventive film directors – Rebecca Zlotowski, Bertrand Mandico and Evangelia Kranioti – propose a free reverie about each of the ballets: three parables films that bring art, the human condition,
and nature into conflict with the idea of excess. In collaboration with the Orchestre de Paris and its music director Klaus Mäkelä, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence thus writes a new page of its rich history in the powerful setting of the Stadium de Vitrolles, weaving a privileged link between music and image.