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Photo / Foto; F. Paolini
MAURICE BÉJART Maurice Béjart, son of the philosopher Gaston Berger, was born on 1 st January 1927 in Marseille. He made his debuts, first as a dancer and then as a choreographer, in Paris. In 1960 he formed his own troupe, the Ballet du XXe siècle, in Brussels, and a quarter of a century later the company relocated in Lausanne to be renamed Béjart Ballet Lausanne. Wherever his work takes him, it is there that Maurice Béjart puts down roots. The foundations of Maurice Béjart's training as a dancer were laid by Madame Egorova, Madame Rousanne and Léo Staats. This classical formation was his mainstay through an early career in Vichy (1946), and afterwards with Janine Charrat, Roland Petit and, most importantly, with the London International Ballet. It was during a tour with the Swedish Ballet Cullberg (1949) that he discovered his strength for choreographical expressionism. Shortly afterwards, during work on a Swedish film production, he met Igor Stravinsky for the first time. On his return to Paris, Maurice Béjart continued both as a dancer and a choreographer, and created works to the music of Chopin under the aegis of the critic Jean Laurent. In 1955, while with the Ballets de l'Etoile, he broke new ground with his Symphonie pour un Homme Seul (music by P. Henry and P. Schaeffer) and from then on, using a choreographic language of his own invention, he went
from strength to strength with Haut Voltage, Prométhée, Sonate à Trois (after Huis Clos by J.-P. Sartre). His first great triumph came in 1959 when, for Maurice Huisman the new Director of theThéâtre Royal de la Monnaie, Béjart created his monumental Rite of Spring. This gave the impetus for the launch In 1960 of the Ballet du XXe siècle, which triumphed on numerous worldwide tours. The Rite of Spring was followed by Boléro (1961), Messe pour le Temps Présent (1967) and Firebird (1970), Developing a marked taste for cultural diversity, Béjart went on to create works which expressed the lore of different civilizations in the form of dance ( Bhakti, Goiestan, Kabuki, Dibouk, Pyramide) and illustrated a rich musical repertoire extending from Wagner to Boulez, A natural teacher, Béjart founded the Mudra school in Brussels in 1970, and 7 years later also created a school in Dakar, In 1992 the Rudra school and workshop was born in Lausanne. The transformation of the Ballet du XXe siècle to the Béjart Ballet Lausanne (1987) took place without any interruption. In 1992, in order to "rediscover the essence of interpretation" the size of the Béjart troupe was trimmed to about thirty dancers. This move was followed by numerous ballets created for the new company: Ring um den Ring, Le Mandarin merveilleux, King Lear -Prospero, A Propos de Shéhérazade, Le Presbytère n'a rien perdu de son charme, ni le Jardin de son éclat, Mutationx, La Route de la soie, Le Manteau, Enfant-Roi, La Lumière des eaux and Lumière.