SIX MINIATURES LOOKING FOR DANCERS
For Printemps des Arts de Monte-Carlo 2004, then artistic director Marc Monnet commissioned “miniatures” from seven composers, which were then choreographed for the Ballets de Monte-Carlo. In 2025, one of the seven commissionees, by then turned himself artistic director of the Festival, thought of extending the experience. This is how Bruno Mantovani decided to stage again two of the ballets created twenty years earlier – his own Ivresse for string quartet and Lur-Itzalak by Ramon Lazkano – and to commission four pieces from four new composers: Violeta Cruz, Aurélien Dumont, Martin Matalon and Misato Mochizuki.
The appeal of such an experiment lies in its systemic nature. How will so many creators tackle a single commission? Violeta Cruz and Martin Matalon responded like architects. In Huit carrés rouges, Cruz says she explored “a minimalist language that can be likened to abstract art: surfaces, volumes, lines, curves, freed from any evocation, yet capable of generating dynamism and vitality (…). While writing this piece, I think about how, in architecture, the choices of dimensions, proportions, materials, and textures condition the way we experience a space and create striking sensory experiences”.
Martin Matalon also claims a form of abstraction, having conceived his Caravansérail 2 as a succession of four linked sections: “Each of the four states of this work is defined by its own musical characteristics: instrumentation, dynamics, character of the material, number of layers or, conversely, the uniqueness of a single layer, instrumental color, rhythmic activity… A complementary relationship is established between the movements in order to create polarities between the sections and provide the choreographer with multiple material to build his narrative from.”
For both Bruno Mantovani and Aurélien Dumont, it was the need for energy that sprang forth. The former conceived his string quartet L’Ivresse as music that is “violently contrasting, arid, virtuosic. The discourse revolves around a few ideas that are easily identifiable when listening (unison in the high register, homorhythms, etc.). In the midst of this ocean of uncertainty and unpredictability, a more procedural sequence establishes continuity, still with energy, which gives the material an even more abrupt character.”
As for Aurélien Dumont, he drew inspiration from an extra-musical source: Philip K. Dick’s short story “The Preserving Machine”. “In it, an inventor builds a machine that transforms musical scores into wild animals in order to preserve them from a potential flood. This most bizarre experiment turns into a fiasco in an ecosystem where the wild beast Wagner, the lamb Schubert, the birds Mozart and Stravinsky, and the fly Bach are bound to meet.” His piece Steps for Beasts that Never Were “attempts to represent, within a haunting ostinato, the metamorphosis of a few brief quotations from the aforementioned composers into uncontrollable musical organisms, into pure sonic energy.”
Finally, Ramon Lazkano and Misato Mochizuki played with memory and the passage of time. The fleeting harmonics of the violin and cello in Lur-Itzalak (“Shadows of Earth” in Basque) sound like echoes of an elusive original music. Lazkano deliberately uses “modes of sound production that weaken and destabilise it, around conventional objects that are connotative, vague, inaudible, and loaded with meaning in their reference to a dizzying memory.”
Misato Mochizuki worked closely with “her” choreographer, Mimoza Koike, who wanted to honor former dancers who were among the founding members of the Ballets de Monte-Carlo. The composer linked this idea to “the Japanese aesthetic that venerates the beauty and depth of long-used objects, which are believed to have a soul and are called tsukumogami”. Three of the musicians therefore play a binzasara, a traditional instrument consisting of 108 thin wooden slats, used in rituals for a prosperous harvest. Then “its gestures, sounds, rhythms, timbres, and envelopes are imitated by the other instruments, which transform them according to their own differences. This creates a metaphor for the next generation, which, while learning from the founding pioneers, continues to develop in its own unique way.” What better symbol for this second generation of miniatures?
Tristan Labouret
