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Benjamin Millepied: "I want to put online everything that is important for dance"

2020-05-14T11:46:55.888Z


The choreographer at the head of the Los Angeles Dance Project is launching a digital platform to react to the closing of theaters.


Like all residents of California, the former director of the Paris Opera ballet has been confined for two months. A period he took advantage of to invent a new scene. Virtual this time. He will dance a long distance duet with Woodkid this Saturday at 7.45 p.m. Its platform is available on Apple and Android stores and on the LADP website with a free seven-day trial.

THE FIGARO . - How is this period going for you?

Benjamin MILLEPIED. In California, the Covid is not going down. We have 1500 new cases and 100 deaths per day. We were told about confinement for three more months. From the start of the epidemic, I thought that we had to adapt and invent different things. I had been thinking for some time about launching a digital platform. It was time to get started.

Read also: Benjamin Millepied, everything for dance

Financially, how is it going for your company?
For the first time since 1995, when I started working in the United States, we received money from the state, a loan that we will not repay. Our dancers are among the few still paid, but we live, apart from patronage, from our ticketing receipts and have canceled all our shows until the end of the year. The next one is Romeo and Juliet at the musical Seine in Paris in January!

How do you see the future?
For two months, I rolled up my sleeves. We weren't going to hang around and put the key under the door. We are a company of 12 dancers who need to work. I think that in the long term, we will be able to bring together some dancers subjected to daily tests and thus start again to rehearse and create in small groups. But I prefer to be more pessimistic than optimistic. Without a vaccine, people are not ready to return to the theater cheerfully. And the vaccine is not for now.

What does this new virtual scene consist of?

It's a paid platform, which you subscribe to for ten dollars a month. It is available worldwide. We're counting on momentum. If we have people on the platform, this will make a significant income for the company and will make it possible to support everyone and continue working. The editorial line is to put everything that is important for the dance.

What is the program?

I turned into a journalist and I carry out long-term interviews, of about an hour, with performers or dancers like Misty Copeland, the first African-American star who changed the look on classical ballet. Soon will come Tamara Rojo who has put together the English National Ballet beautifully. Then Carolyn Show, a young composer who won the Pulitzer Prize. First, I focus on women. Another section is dedicated to books. This month, Misha Baryshnikov talks to us about Ewin Dunby, poet and dance critic who wrote on Balanchine, Robbins, Cunningham. Misha says he learned more about dance from reading this book than from his career years.

Do you also bet on cinema?

Without containment, I will be spinning my Carmen. The relationship between movement and image captivates me. In my Romeo and Juliet , dance and films mix. I film live what is happening on stage but in a very different way than what Ivo Van Hove does, for example. On the platform, I open a photo and cinema section which comments on the choreography inscribed in the scenes of the films. Not especially dance movies. Aronovsky or Robert Bresson for example, have a keen sense of this.

Are there also courses on the program?

Of course, courses for professionals, and for amateurs, in English and French since Marie-Agnès Gillot star of the Opera, will provide one. There are also fitness sessions with Michèle Rodriguez whom I had brought to the Paris Opera and the advice of a nutritionist. We change the format: the dancers' lessons given from their kitchen, we went around during confinement. The dancers will now come to our place, and give class from the studio.

And your choreographies?
I will sign one, especially for the platform. A solo that I write with the composer Nico Muhly and the architect Frank Gehry. I receive the music from one and send the movements to the other so that he realizes the scenography. I hope to soon be able to create small forms for my dancers.

How do you think your platform will evolve?
I hope to maintain the link with my American and French public. I also hope that the technology linked to this kind of support will evolve rapidly. Because of this Covid crisis, the tools will develop at full speed. I bet virtual reality will be home soon.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2020-05-14

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