The Grand Theater in Carcassonne, France, is an outdoor amphitheater nestled in the castle's southwestern corner, sheltered by seventy-foot stone walls built six centuries before. It is not he easiest theater to play. Last summer the Festival of Carcassonne found only one dance company strong enough to conquer not only their formidable site but also their audience. Patrick Dupond's Ballet Franòais de Nancy captured the French citadel with a full evening of dances choreographed by Ulysses Dove.
The Ballet Theatre Franòais de Nancy was founded in the French city of Nancy in 1978 under the direction of Jean-Albert Cartier as a home for twentieth century dance. Specializing in works from the Diaghelev era and Balanchine's masterpieces, the company also showcased dances by contemporary choreographers such as John Neumeier, Maurice Bejart, Jiri Kylian, and Moses Pendleton, often performing behind ballet superstars such as Rudolf Nureyev and Patrick Dupond.
Two years ago Dupond made his association with company more permanent, signing a three-year contract as artistic director. He shortened the repertory, fired and replaced most of the corps de ballet, and began feeding his two dozen dancers his own diet of choice: classically trained teachers, widespread touring, and - most critically - master choreographers.
Dupond's single most important decision as director was inviting Ulysses Dove to Nancy for not one but four ballets. A former dancer with Merce Cunningham and Alvin Ailey, Dove pushes dancers to their limits and beyond, creating works of previously considered impossible physical and emotional intensity. For one month in 1988 and four months in 1989 Dove pushed and molded Dupond and his company. In May the Ballet Franòais de Nancy became the first company to perform an entire evening of Dove's choreography, a coup they repeated two months later in Carcassonne.
The program opens with Faits et Gestes, a reworked version of his piece for the London Festival Ballet, Episodes, which he created in response to the sudden death of a close friend. "I really just wanted five more minutes to say how much I cared for him,” Dove explained, "how much he meant to me, that I loved him. I didn't have that five minutes." The people in Faits et Gestes do not repeat his mistake: they appreciate every moment, every relationship as it unfolds.
With the first boom of Ruggieri's electronic percussion score, two men race into a diagonal of light as if they are running for their lives. Images strike home like bullets: One man knifes through the air just over his comrade; without warning their heads snap in unison and they lock eyes; shoulders roll like panthers flexing; one leg uncurls and whips their pirouettes to the floor.
The mood becomes more desperate as a woman enters, flinging herself through the air, to be caught at the last moment by her two partners. Clenched hugs and hesitant touches are abruptly cut short, resumed, and cut again. Every moment is a heart-rending good-bye and plea to continue. Faits et Gestes is a whirlwind of life's most poignant moments, and Dupond is the eye of the storm, an instant and overwhelming focus. Entering half way through the ballet, Dupond makes any measurement of intensity meaningless: He is off the scale in both directions, at once wholly wild and utterly controlled, life's victory and
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