To Régine Chopinot the task of closing the 1993 edition of Oriente Occidente. Intriguing, a lover of excess, a 'queen' in name and in fact in the cult of the investigation of dance form, Chopinot is a true protagonist of choreography.
Her path, studded with challenges and re-interpretations, does not allow itself to be caged in too rigid definitions: from "Halley's comet" (Bagnolet Prize 1981) to "Appel d'Air" (also 1981), and "Ana" ('90) to "Chopinot danse St. Georges" ('91), just to mention at least some of her best-known choreographies, Chopinot has enjoyed surprising her audiences with intelligence and a taste for risk. Cunninghamian training and Hightower school for this Frenchwoman of Algerian origin, inventor over the years of shows charged with desecrating punk-rock fascinations ('Appel d'Air'), of works dominated by visual eccentricities ("Le Défilé") - accomplice number one the stylist Jean-Paul Gaultier - of strongly surreal creations ("Ana", dedicated to Carroll's Alice), of ballets in which movement is formally chiselled as if the author had transformed herself into a sculptor ("Chopinot danse St. Georges"). Georges').
Of 'Via' from '84, Régine said: 'it is a self-consuming piece, of which nothing remains except the energy'. Creation was still understood as something extremely ephemeral, to be enjoyed and not preserved. Today, Chopinot, and like her other leading French dancers, Prelijocaj in the lead, has another idea. The National Choreographic Centre of La Rochelle, which she has directed since 1986, is now home to a permanent company: Le Ballet Atlantique, a group whose project is to combine creations with the creation of a contemporary repertoire. Under this new formula, Chopinot debuted at the beginning of June in La Rochelle with the 1993 premiere of "Façade".
"Façade" was based on Edith Sitwell's collection of poems of the same name, set to music by William Walton. Written in 1922, "Façade" is a surreal and phantasmagorical little gem of English literature of the time. Aitwell, an eccentric character with a hidden melancholy and problem, staged the text, reciting it behind a curtain and using a megaphone. When Walton wrote the music he was only 19 years old: his meeting with Sitwell was decisive for his career.
From 'Façade' we know the transposition into ballet, signed by Frederick Ashton in '31, presented at its origins with the Ballet Rambert. The witty work is still in the repertoire of the Royal Ballet today. In an interview published at the end of '92 in Danser, talking about the project of 'Fraçade', Chopinot declared: 'I have already worked on the theme of delirium with "Ana", inspired by Lewis Carroll's work. I am now continuing this work on non-sense and the surrealist vision of the poet Edith Sitwell'...
For the first time in her career, Régine Chopinot started from the music to create the choreography. "I wanted to deepen," she recounted in the aforementioned interview, "the relationship with music and, taking advantage of the computer now available to us, I imagined, as I had wanted for a long time, a choreography that responded to the different instruments. It was the composer and conductor Cyril de Turckheim (Chopinot's collaborator for both "Ana" and "St.Georges") who proposed to the choreography if La Rochelle to create a new ballet on "Façade". At first,' Chopinot said, 'I had an epidermal rejection of that music: I found it horrifying. Six months later, I thought: it's for me... It reminds me of the passion I had for surrealism since childhood'...
Exoticism, mysterious gardens, childhood fantasies for a show created for twelve dancers, two actors and six musicians directed by Cyril de Turckheim. A short work, "Façade" is proposed by Chopinot in two performances and choreographic versions. The costumes, as usual, bear the signature of Jean-Paul Gaultier.
