• Wednesday 4 May 2011 - 20h30
• Thursday 5 May 2011 - 20h30
• Friday 6 May 2011 - 20h30
• Saturday 7 May 2011 - 20h30
• Monday 9 May 2011 - 20h30
• Tuesday 10 May 2011 - 20h30
• Wednesday 11 May 2011 - 20h30
• Friday 13 May 2011 - 20h30
• Saturday 14 May 2011 - 20h30
• Sunday 15 May 2011 - 15h00

Preljocaj meets Genet again, and makes the wonderful decision to give textual and bodily shape to the anxiety of a high-wire artist forever falling.

Wisps of lively sensations, images laid smoothly on the stage. With The Tightrope Walker, 52 year-old Angelin Preljocaj performs his first solo after more than 30 years of experience, and not only does he pass the exam faultlessly, he also creates an indirect self-portrait. His risky adaptation of The Tightrope Walker written by Jean Genet in 1958 has a strange texture; it is rough like Preljocaj’s tense voice (he is not an actor), soft (like the paper ribbons Constance Guisset created for the set) and worried (like the choreographer’s figure). Dressed in plain beige tee-shirt and trousers, Preljocaj makes Genet’s tragic love affair with high-wire artist Abdallah his own. From that book he read as a young man, he extracts a sumptuous fable on the danger of art, the way it burns you, and its beauty. Seized by unfathomable fear, the internationally acclaimed choreographer, manager of the Ballet Preljocaj in Aix-en-Provence, dances and speaks the lines of the text with a mix of inspired expertise and spectacular fragility. This torsion might be the most peculiar quality of a solo which, rather than relying on efficiency, is more of a gamble on life itself.

Jeanne Liger