Tragic Love

“Tragic / Love” met en lumière les voies de l’amour – grisantes, douloureuses, sinueuses, imprévisibles, sans logique, désordonnées et délicieuses – qui ont façonné le destin de partenaires mythiques tels Vénus et Mars, Roméo et Juliette, Maria et Tony…

In Tragic / Love, Stephen Petronio evokes the eternal problem of the feeling of love. Created by the New York choreographer Stephen Petronio for 25 dancers from the CCN – Ballet de Lorraine installed in Nancy, Tragic / Love highlights the paths of love – exhilarating, painful, sinuous, unpredictable, illogical, disorderly and delicious – that have shaped the destiny of such legendary partners as Venus and Mars, Romeo and Juliet, Maria and Tony, as well as so many other anonymous stories.

Bodies against bodies, groups against groups, this creation throws the dancers onto the hazardous paths of love affairs and unites them in solemn rites that make up “the great and difficult parade of love”.

The music commissioned from the New York composer Ryan Lott (a.k.a. Son Lux), is an original electronic score paying tribute to Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet

The text is taken from the recently published Letters to Juliet. Written by two American sisters, Lise and Ceil Friedman, this work is a collection of real letters sent to the Juliet Foundation, which receives letters from desperate lovers all over the world.

The setting is made up of a triptych onto which moving and changing images are projected, creating a mysterious and ephemeral world in which dance takes up position.

The video creation is entrusted to the Australian visual artist Mike Daly, and the costumes to the English artist H Petal.

Source: CCN – Ballet de Lorraine 2009 – 2010 programme