Benjamin Millepied / L.A. Dance Project

Co-production with La Filature, Scène nationale de Mulhouse

In collaboration with the L.A. Dance Project, the company he founded in 2012, Benjamin Millepied revisits Prokofiev's legendary ballet, Romeo & Juliet..

The former director of the Paris Opera Ballet offers us an electric version of Romeo and Juliet, combining dance, theatre, music and film. The projection of scenes, filmed live with a hand-held camera, immerses us in the brutal reality of all our impossible loves... while the dancers, disregarding a heteronormative vision of this mythical couple, embody all possible forms of love.

In this piece for sixteen dancers, Benjamin Millepied revisits the mythical story of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, creating a resolutely modern and singular version, sublimated by Prokofiev’s music. Far from the classical representations of this mythical couple, Romeo and Juliet Suite is a reflection of our society today. Benjamin Millepied explains, simply: "What happens on stage must depict the reality of the people in the audience. Not to do so would be terribly conservative”. His protagonists are therefore young adults from the urban world, confronted with retrograde and liberticidal social norms. The plot of the star-crossed lovers is related as a series of tableaux, some of which are filmed, a projection device that makes it possible to fully experience this immersive performance. The talents of the artists are forcefully expressed in this show that mixes dance, cinema and theatre. Encounters and confrontations develop in unexpected places in the auditorium or backstage. The dancers move from the stage to the screen.