New twist on old tales – Monaco’s ballet reinterprets the classics

By He Jianwei

For most theater managers, reproducing classics is one of easiest ways to guarantee attendance. But artists who try their hand at reproduction face greater risks.

Jean-Christophe Maillot, a French choreographer and director of Les Ballets de Monte Carlo, continues to grant old tales a new face despite a string of difficulties. This autumn, his troupe will perform adaptations of two classical repertoires.

It has been 10 years since Monaco’s ballet company last visited China. At that time, his modern interpretation of Romeo and Juliet astonished local theatergoers and the media.

For this second tour, Maillot is adapting Marius Petipa’s Sleeping Beauty into a contemporary ballet titled La Belle and Sergey Prokofiev’s Cinderella into Cendrillon. The adaptations will add new ideas and visual effects to the story, as well as introduce modern abstract concepts through dance.

Born in Tours, France in 1960, Maillot has worked with Les Ballets de Monte Carlo since 1987, two years after its founding. During the 1992-93 season he was artistic director, and in September 1993, Her Royal Highness the Princess of Hanover appointed him director-choreographer.

Although the company is relatively new to the ballet world, it has a deep history with Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, the cradle of contemporary dance and choreography.

In 1909, Diaghilev brought his itinerant company of the Imperial Ballet of St. Petersburg’s best dancers to Paris, and then continued a tour of Britain, Spain and the US.

Diaghilev’s was one of the most influential theater companies in the 20th century, due in no small part to its ground-breaking collaboration with the greatest painters, composers and dancers of the day, including Balanchine, Massine, Ravel, Stravinsky, Debussy, Picasso, Pavlova and Nijinsky.

Unfortunately, after the director’s death in 1929, the dancers scattered. In 1938, the company was reassembled in Monaco, and that residence is today the home of Les Ballets de Monte Carlo.