Aria by Gil Roman

With Aria, Gil Roman perpetuates Maurice Béjart’s ambition: to create new pieces with the company and other choreographers.

Created in 1987 by Maurice Béjart, the Béjart Ballet Lausanne is the successor of the prestigious Ballets du XXe siècle, formerly based in Belgium. In 2007, after Maurice Béjart’s Death, without any doubt one of the Major figures of dance in the 20th century, choreographer of the Boléro performed today by companies all over the world, Gil Roman, a former dancer and Béjart’s assistant, became the company’s artistic director.

Since then, the Béjart Ballet Lausanne has had a double ambition: of course, to diffuse its famous founder’s art and style. But also to create new ballets thanks to several choreographers invited every year, so that the BBL does not become a company-museum. In 2008, the BBL created Aria, a piece choreographed by Gil Roman himself, his first creation since his master’s death.

Inspired by the Minotaur’s myth, Aria is a ballet on the search for unity. According to Gil Roman, “the myth of the Minotaur is above all the fight of a unique person, embodied by Theseus and the Minotaur who pursue each other, fight and destroy each other. None of them survives this fight but they come alive again as one. Like this myth, free and Dionysiac dance corresponds to the instinctive force and to energy, and classical and Apollonian dance to reason and construction. Two disciplines mix each other on stage and become a single one.“

Gil Roman entered the Ballets du XXe siècle in 1979 and became Maurice Béjart’s faithful follower from the beginning. His style shows his own personality and pays tribute to Béjart. Gil Roman received in 2005 the Danza & Danza Award of the best dancer for his performance of Jacques Brel in the ballet Brel & Barbara and the Nijinsky Award of the Monaco Dance Forum in 2006.