“He told me, you might as well go straight”

From the very first seconds, we are struck by the scale of this music played in the pit by the Orchester de chambre de Paris. Delighted to compose his first symphonic work, Thomas Bangalter offers dancers flights of strings and brass, like a musical journey. Minimalism à la Philip Glass, cinematographic lyricism, bursts of sound close to Stravinsky: it is the meeting between a choreographer who needs no introduction, Angelin Preljocaj and theex-Daft Punk Thomas Bangalter, pbear creation “Mythologies“, danced by the performers of the ballet Preljocaj and the Opéra de Bordeaux gathered on stage

Thomas Bangalter abandoned his machines and composed a symphonic score which surprised Angelin Preljocaj who, at the start, had asked him to also use his machines: “He said to me: ‘Ah no, as long as you do, you might as well go free. If I took off the helmet, it’s not to put electronics back into the music.’ He therefore wrote a very symphonic work. There is something furious in this desire to embrace many things that he loved, which influenced him, to restore it, but in his own way. We feel the reminiscences We feel where it comes from but at the same time, we go somewhere else each time.”

On stage, the show is total: projection of images, string lights and, above all, the virtuosity of the dancers. Whether they are more aerial or anchored in the ground, depending on whether they come from the Bordeaux Opera or the Preljocaj ballet – very clever whoever differentiates them. The thirteen girls and eight boys interpret a dozen paintings carried out relentlessly. Zeus and Danae, Icarus, Ares and Aphrodite, Greek mythology is very present, but also that of the Mayas or Roland Barthes, with wrestling masks, funny and kitsch at will.

With Mythologies, Angelin Preljocaj and Thomas Bangalter explore our contemporary rituals and the founding myths that form our collective imagination.
Oct. 22 > Nov. 5
⚠️ Last places
https://t.co/9cgiPWzO7P
@TheaVilleParis @operadebordeaux pic.twitter.com/itJn1voeJf

– Châtelet Theater (@theatrechatelet) October 18, 2022

“What do we learn from mythologies? asks Angelin Preljocaj. Do we really learn something or do we continue to stutter, repeat the same mistakes, commit the same atrocities? Et we realize that the world evolves without really evolving. These are concepts, behind the story that is told, there is a foundation, there is a very important subtext which sometimes even touches on psychoanalysis, like the Oedipus complex. All of this is exciting for a choreographer because the body is always the sounding board for all these issues..”

Faithful to his body language, which he continues to enrich – can we still speak of neo-classical when it is quite simply Preljocaj – the choreographer multiplies the duets. That of the Minotaur, as elegant as it is wild, joins the most beautiful pas de deux he composed.

“Mythologies” by Angelin Preljocaj and Thomas Bangalter at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris until November 5, then on tour.