Why Maurice Béjart Described His Ballet Dichterliebe as “Troublesome”

Within the March 1979 concern of Dance Journal, affiliate editor Norma McLain Stoop spoke with choreographer Maurice Béjart and 7 of the dancers who created roles in his evening-length Dichterliebe – Amor Di Poeta, which had debuted in Brussels in December and would seem in New York Metropolis that month as a part of Ballet of the twentieth Century’s season on the Minskoff Theatre. “For those who’re not fortunate sufficient to be geared up with a Cyclops’ eye in the midst of your brow,” Stoop wrote, “you’re certain to overlook a few of the essential actions that push ahead the fascinating plot. Even the dancers weren’t conscious nearly till the opening what the ballet was really about.”

Béjart, who performed the position of The Poet (who directs the characters, who largely insurgent in opposition to him), stated of it, “It’s a tough ballet as a result of it’s not story. It’s visions, and generally so many visions occur in so little time in so many various locations on the stage that you simply can’t take in all of them at one sitting….It’s constructed like a film, kind of, and like a symphony….The dream is coming and, an increasing number of the dream is destroying the construction of classical music and classical ballet, as if dream and the unconscious are stronger than the inflexible construction of ballet, and so they destroy it….However the true story of the ballet is the struggle between the creator and the interpreter. When it begins, [dancer Jorge] Donn and I are each sitting, like fighters, within the ring which is constituted of damaged classical ballet barres. It’s a struggle.”

By Stoop’s estimation, along with Donn because the Hero (who “is many personalities, together with a rock singer and a clown and, on the finish, turns into born once more because the Poet”), the characters in that “struggle” additionally included a younger woman, a spouse, novelist George Sand, Dionysius, Zarathustra, Pegasus, an eagle, a serpent, three Muses, a bunch of rugby gamers, and a few motorcyclists. And, Stoop concluded the record, “There’s a substantial amount of demise round, too.”