Bitef

Photo / Foto: F. Paolini

BALLET FOR LIFE A little more than thirty years ago, as Jorge Donn and Hitomi Asakawi danced to Berlioz'astonishing music punctuated by the noise of bombs and machine-guns, a rather unconventional monk in the audience cried "Make love, not war!". Today Gil Roman, who was born almost as the same time as my Romeo and Juliette was first performed, replies from among dancers who have never seen this ballet "You told us to make love, not war. And we did. But why does love now make war on us?" This is the cry of a younger generation assailed by the threat of death through loving, and by the terrifying conflicts that have followed each other without respite, ever since the slaughter that was thought to be "the war to end wars". First and foremost my ballets are encounters: meetings between music and life, death and love; between beings whose lives and works are reborn in me - just as the dancer that I once was lives again, yet nearer perfection - each time that my ballets repeated. This ballet also reveals something of what the music of Queen means to me. It has invention, violence, humour, love, and much more. Queen is my inspiration, my guide; and in that no-man's-land where we shall all meet again once more, Freddy Mercury - and of this I am certain - occasionally sings to an accompaniment played by Mozart himself. Youth and hope are what my ballet is about. And as an incurable optimist I believe, with Queen, that whatever happens"the show must go on". Maurice Béjart June-July 1996 "It was just before or just after the death of Jorge Donn. He and Freddie Mercury died at the same age. Though possessing very different personalities, both had the same insatiable drive to live life to the full, and to declare their passion on the stage. Each, in my view, had something of the other. I had returned to my chalet above Montreux, with its panorama of mountains and distant lake that so fascinates me. A few days later the final album of Queen - the one made after Freddie's death - was released. On the cover of the CD Made in Heaven is a picture: it is a photo of exactly the view from my chalet. Coincidences of this sort affect me intensely. I then read all I could find about Freddy Mercury and his life. 1 learned that he was born in Zanzibar and had lived in India, that he was originally Iranian and that his family were of the Farsee religion. Farsee, which originally meant" Persian", designated the followers of the prophet Zoroaster, who were driven from their land into western India by the Muslims in the eighth century AD. Freddie Mercury's real name was Farouk Bulsara. I read that he had been buried in London, after a private ceremony conducted according to Zoroastrian liturgy. This ballet linked to my innermost feelings. I see it as a joyful work, not sinister, not defeatist, and 1 think that if I did not state that it is to do with death, the public might not catch this aspect. Although inspired by Freddie Mercury and Jorge Donn, it is not simply about AIDS, it is more about dying while still young, I don't say, either, that death took them too early, because I am not sure whether there is ever a too early or a too late - events happen when they have to happen and that is all we can say. Between the Queen songs I shall insert several Mozart piano or instrumental pieces, but no singing, because all the Queen numbers are vocal. Mozart too was someone who died young; his death at thirty-five gave him ten years less of life than Freddie and Jorge, both dead at forty-five. This is where I am. I turn all this over in my mind. I seek, I discover, I watch Queen videos, I listen to all their disks, I compare different recordings of the same pieces and find I prefer the live versions to the edited ones. On the stage, united with the audience, there's always more energy, more passion than into the studio. Maurice Béjart Extract from La vie de qui? Edited by Flammarion, 1996