Paris Opera Ballet Presents its Wares (DanceTabs)

In July, the Paris Opéra Ballet came to NY, where it offered three programs, including one in which it presented three works from the twentieth century: Serge Lifars’s Suite en Blanc, Roland Petit’s L’Arlesienne, and, most fun, Maurice Béjart’s Bolero. You can read my DanceTabs review here.

And here is a short excerpt:

“No-one knows how to whip an audience into a lather quite like Béjart. His Boléro is a triumph of erotic kitsch, a lap dance in the guise of high art. At the center of the stage stands a red table, upon which a shirtless man pulses his legs forward and back, while slowly raising his arms, hands like cobra heads, then rubs his chest and thighs, staring out at the audience suggestively all the while. He puts his hand under his chin, as if blowing kisses, frames his crotch with his palms, pulses his bare and increasingly sweaty chest. Who can resist?”