Gloria

Some titles are genius as they transport you into a marvellous world: this is the case of Gloria, the next opus by José Montalvo. “Today, Gloria  is being created in a sort of dialectics of the planned and the  unforeseen. It is constantly changing. I would like it to be baroque,  bizarre, luxuriant, bulimic, inventive, passionate, but everything  remains to be done.” whispers the choreographer. José Montalvo sees  Gloria as the passionate manageress of a dreamlike cabaret that is  called L’auberge espagnole for the moment, but could also be called Le  cabaret Voltaire.” A cosmopolitan space, it will celebrate life as well  as its impetus, born from the hybridisation, the mix and the  transformation stemming from new and unexpected combinations between  human beings, cultures, ideas, dances, songs and music. This space would  bear a song of love, “rejoiced by the joyful bastardisation that is  within us” and would be frequented by extravagant characters like “as  many spots around which I would like to build my work and make the  ballet of the world dance,” indicates José Montalvo. Vivaldi will be the  musical companion of this piece. “As a challenge, as I believe that it  is absurd to oppose the knowledgeable and the popular, depth and  superficiality, genius and lightness.” Montalvo concludes: “Faced with  the predicted ecological chaos, faced with violence, terror, blind  cupidity, exclusion and extreme globalisation, Gloria carries a utopia  within it, a naivety, an antidote that remains fertile to me.” Glory be  upon it.

Philippe Noisette 

Source : Chaillot – Théâtre national de la danse