Le Ballet Preljocaj leads the dance there where you least expect it! Created in 1998, the Groupe urbain d'intervention dansée (G.U.I.D.: the Urban Danced Action Group) has performed on many occasions in public spaces and unexpected venues to allow as many people as possible to discover contemporary dance.

“What hides beneath our contemporary rituals, in the folds of our existences?”

Suivront mille ans de calme (And then, one thousand years of peace) is part of a poetic and impressionist vein, like a work following on from a diligent but not reasoned reading of the Book of Revelation. We should thus looking for any images or clichés illustrating directly or in too referential a manner Saint John’s famous text. 

A fruitful source of inspiration, the very word Apocalypse, (from the Greek apo: lift and calypsis: the veil), nevertheless conjures up the idea of revealing, unveiling, or highlighting elements that, could be present in our world but are hidden from our gaze.

Thus the aim would be more to conjure up what is nestled in the folds of our existences than to prophesise compulsive torrents of disasters, irremediable destructions or the imminence of the end of the world. 

Is not dance, art of the unutterable par excellence, when the aim is to assume the role of developer (in the photographic sense), the best suited to fulfil this delicate function of laying bare our fears, our anxieties and our hopes. It mercilessly highlights the entropy of the molecules, programmed in the memory of our flash, which announces the Apocalypse of the body. It stigmatises our rituals and reveals the incongruity of our postures, whether they are social, religious or pagan. 

Suivront mille ans de calme (And then, one thousand years of peace) aims to touch on this blind drift of bodies, tossed and turned by ideals and beliefs, somewhat lost between the lines of the Apocalypse.  

Source: programme of the CND

Born in 1957 in the Paris region, Angelin Preljocaj began studying classical dance before turning to contemporary dance with Karin Waehner, Zena Rommett, Merce Cunningham, then Viola Farber and Quentin Rouillier. He then joined Dominique Bagouet until he founded his own company in December 1984. Since then he has choreographed 60 pieces, ranging from solos to large-scale works, and regularly works with other artists in a variety of fields, including music (Goran Vejvoda, Air, Laurent Garnier, Granular Synthesis, Karlheinz Stockhausen), the visual arts (Claude Lévêque, Subodh Gupta, Adel Abdessemed), design (Constance Guisset), fashion (Jean Paul Gaultier, Azzedine Alaïa), drawing (Enki Bilal), literature (Pascal Quignard, Laurent Mauvignier) and animated film (Boris Labbé)...

His creations have been performed throughout the world and included in the repertoires of numerous companies, from which he has also received commissions, including the New York City Ballet, the Berlin Staatsoper and the Ballet de l'Opéra national de Paris. He also makes short films and films featuring his choreography. He has received several awards including the ‘Grand Prix National de la danse’ (1992), the ‘Benois de la danse’ (1995), the ‘Bessie Award’ (1997), ‘Les Victoires de la musique’ (1997), the ‘Globe de Cristal’ (2009) and the ‘Samuel H. Scripps Award’ from the American Dance Festival for his body of work (2014). His first feature film, Polina, danser sa vie, directed with Valérie Müller and adapted from the comic strip by Bastien Vivès, was released in cinemas in November 2016.

In April 2019, he was appointed to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in the new choreography section. In the same year, he created Winterreise for La Scala in Milan, as well as Soul Kitchen with inmates from the Baumettes Prison Centre in Marseille, the results of four months of workshops held within the prison. The same year saw the release of the documentary Danser sa peine, directed by Valérie Müller, an intimate look at this creative process in a prison environment. The film won first prize at Fipadoc in 2020.

After Swan Lake in 2020 and Deleuze / Hendrix in 2021, he will choreograph and direct Lully's opera Atys for the Grand Théâtre de Genève in 2022. At the same time, he devised a short choreography for the ‘Danse Europe!’ application, a participatory project open to all. For Dior, he created the choreography and film Roman Night with the dancers of the Rome Opera Ballet as part of International Dance Day. He also took part in the television series Irma Vep by Olivier Assayas, as an actor and choreographer.

In July 2022, he presented his creation Mythologies for the dancers of the Ballet Preljocaj and the Ballet de l'Opéra de Bordeaux to original orchestral music by Thomas Bangalter. In February 2023 he created Birthday Party for senior dancers at the Théâtre National de Chaillot, commissioned by Aterballetto, and Torpeur in June 2023 at the Festival Montpellier Danse. His latest creation, Requiem(s), saw the light of day in May 2024.

The Ballet Preljocaj now has 30 permanent dancers and performs an average of 120 dates a year throughout the world.

More information

preljocaj.org

Since 2001, the National Center for Dance (CND) has been making recordings of its shows and educational programming and has created resources from these filmed performances (interviews, danced conferences, meetings with artists, demonstrations, major lessons, symposia specialized, thematic arrangements, etc.).

The Ballet Preljocaj leads the dance there where you least expect it! 

Created in 1998, the Groupe Urbain d’Intervention Dansée  (G.U.I.D.: the Urban Danced Action Group) takes dance into unexpected  places, showing extracts from the repertoire of Angelin Preljocaj. It  shines in the public space, from railway stations to market squares, via  school playgrounds and hospitals, to bring contemporary dance to as  many people as possible.