On December 1, the final day of the programme will feature performance of the Centre Chorégraphique National – Ballet de Lorraine (France). The Festival will introduce Russian premiėre of the ballets Record of Ancient Things, Rain Forest and Relâche (in two acts with a cinematographic intermission).

At various times the Ballet de Lorraine has been directed by Patrick Dupond, Pierre Lacotte, Françoise Adret and Didier Deschamps. Today it is Petter Jacobsson, dancer, choreographer, graduate of the Vaganova Ballet Academy and the Royal Swedish Ballet School, – who leads the Company. The Company, retaining imperial style and gloss even with today’s modern dance choreography, is not afraid of experiments and leans toward synthesis of arts.

The ballet Record of Ancient Things (2017) – a game with illusions and transformations – will be shown in the first act. Directors of the play are Petter Jacobsson and Thomas Caley, who worked for many years in the Merce Cunningham’s company. Three choreographic scenarios are played out in a glimmering translucent space, mutating from the stage to the ballroom, from the latter into the arena. At the same time, each of the platforms dictates its own “rules of a game.”

The second act will present the Rain Forest (1968) by Merce Cunningham, the legendary American choreographer and innovator of the second half of the 20th century. His surreal dances, when different parts of the body moved as if they were independent from each other, challenging the performers, used to provoke irreconcilable controversy among viewers and critics. Nowadays it considered classics of modern dance. A set design of the ballet belongs to no less iconic American artist – Andy Warhol.

Finally, the evening will culminate with the ballet Relâche (1924 / 2014) – a unique creation of the illustrious masters of the European avant-garde of the 1920s. This piece became a “reservoir” supplying with inspiration and ideas many masters of the 20th century. The Ballet de Lorraine’s “Relâche” is a reenactment of the paradoxical French artist Francis Picabia’s conception of 1924 staged by Jean Börlin with music by Erik Satie, an eccentric composer and a fellow of Sergei Diaghilev. The silent film by the great René Claire is woven into the fabric of the ballet. The audience was promised “an instantaneous ballet in two acts, a cinematographic entracte and “The Dog’s Tail”. “Instantaneous” means “happening in an instant,” however what was meant by the “The Dog’s Tail” remained a mystery.

The title is also thought to be a Dadaist joke, as the word “relâche” was used on posters to indicate that a show is cancelled. The first performance was indeed cancelled, due to the illness of Jean Börlin, a former Michael Fokine’s apprentice, who was the principal dancer, choreographer, and artistic director of the Ballets Suédois, which took much after the Ballets Russes. The show “Relache” eventually took place a week later, December 4, 1924 in the famous Paris the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.

The tour of the Centre Chorégraphique National – Ballet de Lorraine takes place in partnership with

Institut Français de Russie.