Boléro le refrain du monde

Since its creation in 1928, Ravel’s “Boléro” has been the most popular “classic” work in the world. A phenomenal destiny told with a beating drum, notably by some of his fervent admirers: the filmmaker Claude Lelouch, the singers Angélique Kidjo and Rufus Wainwright, the pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque or the popes of electro Carl Craig and Moritz von Oswald.

“I start very small to finish huge,” sums up Maurice Ravel in 1928, to characterize the musical UFO he has just composed, without imagining that he also describes the phenomenal and planetary destiny that his Boléro will experience. Perpetually revisited, remixed, sublimated soundtrack, this brief symphonic piece, commissioned by Russian dancer Ida Rubinstein for a performance at the Opéra Garnier, immediately won a triumph. Its repetitive structure, with the crescendo resumption, continuously, of the ternary rhythm of the bolero hammered by the snare drum and the two melodies of sixteen bars each, gives the work a hypnotic power. Over time, it has become a real “tube”, which inspires each year, from Paris to Tokyo, from Johannesburg to Berlin, artistic productions of an astonishing diversity, whether it be dance, cinema or musical adaptations of all kinds. With stunning archives and some of his fervent admirers (filmmakers Claude Lelouch and Kim Jee-woon, singers Angélique Kidjo and Rufus Wainwright, choreographers Marie-Agnès Gillot, Gregory Maqoma or Raimund Hoghe, pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque or the popes of electro Carl Craig and Moritz von Oswald…), this documentary retraces beating the extraordinary fate of what was, originally, a small masterpiece of modernity and radicalism.

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Source: ARTE France