Daphnis é Chloé

The characters Daphnis and Chloe, whose origins are obscure, first appeared in a Greek novel attributed to Longus, and became known to us principally because of the music written by Maurice Ravel in 1912 for the Ballets Russes, in which Nijinsky triumphantly danced the title role.
When, in 1982, a few months after his ballet Ulysses, Jean-Claude Gallotta presented this pas de trois, he continued to argue (Chloe, wife of the young shepherd Daphnis, is captured by pirates and brought back to him by a miracle caused by the god Pan) that he merely sought to work with the movement, to capture the energy, the softness and the violence of the lovers’ joust.
Choreographed for the Avignon Festival and first performed by Mathilde Altaraz, Jean-Claude Gallotta and Pascale Gravat, with music arranged and played on stage by Henry Torgue, this choreography is moving because of its ability to fuse intelligence, instinct, humour and joys of the senses. It was received enthusiastically by the French press – described as a “kind of small masterpiece” by the French daily Libération, as “one of the most beautiful things to be seen” by the weekly Nouvel Observateur and as having captured “the essence of romantic relationships” by the daily Le Monde.