Choreographer

The Chamber of Love, of which legend sings, is a cave on the Basque coast, once flooded by high tide and since the 18th century the scene of a sentimental tragedy. History calls it Ura and Ederra (Water and Beauty). At the very moment when they were savoring life and love at their most, the ocean swallowed them with its caresses and threats, its calm and its fury. In the morning, their bodies still lay entwined on the sand.

Love Room

Theater Bonn Opera House

“She is a statue of beauty when standing or sitting: grace itself when she moves,” the 18th century English writer and artist Horace Walpole wrote about the legendary Queen of France Marie Antoinette. This colourful character from French history inspired the ballet by the French choreographer Thierry Malandain that premiered with his own ensemble, Malandain Ballet Biarritz, in 2019 in the very theatre that Marie Antoinette inaugurated on 16 May 1770 to mark her wedding to Louis XVI: the Opéra Royal Château de Versailles.

Marie Antoinette’s life in Versailles is central to Malandain’s ballet, which the choreographer has created to music by two of her contemporaries – Joseph Haydn and Christoph Willibald Gluck. The piece depicts her arrival at court, her wedding day, the opening of the opera house with Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Persée – as a ballet within the ballet – the attempted escape that would ultimately be her undoing and the infamous parties and balls associated with the Queen.

Marie Antoinette

Volksoper Wien

This original production combines Antonio Vivaldi’s famous Four Seasons and the little-known works of his contemporary and compatriot Giovanni Antonio Guido. Guido’s Seasons awakens memories of «belle danse» (baroque dance), which emerged in the seventeenth century from the ideal of governing one’s body and mind, and moving with grace, accuracy, and lightness. With Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, dancers are moved by a more natural, more human form of dance.

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Malandain Ballet Biarritz: The Seasons

Detroit Opera House

As a mosaic is made up of many tiles which, put together, make a greater picture, this dance performance is assembled from many different choreographies that together make for an unforgettable evening of dance.

Malandain Ballet Biarritz

Literature, music, women and love triangles: all these themes feature in the work of Cathy Marston, who has already explored such figures as Clara Schumann and Jacqueline Dupré. For her Paris Opera debut, the British choreographer brings together her favourite themes in a new creation dedicated to George Sand.

Choreographer

Thierry Malandain

Events

Upcoming events

Feb 11 - Mar 8, 2027

Nocturnal Correspondences · Opéra national de Paris

Past events

8 - 9 Jan, 2026

Love Room · Theater Bonn

Dec 20, 2025 - Apr 5, 2026

Marie Antoinette · Volksoper Wien

About

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