Clavigo Ballet – Roland Petit

For Clavigo, Wilmotte imagined four pure, minimalist tableaux: taut, orthogonal lines, sober colours – black, white and grey – to better highlight the dancers, and provide a counterpoint to the particularly refined neoclassical costumes designed by Luisa Spinatelli. Wilmotte’s geometric rigour is evident in the composition of the tableaux. In Un Bal the great white portico, whose vertical scansion echoes the movements of the dancers, provides a box for the dance. In the set for La salle de jeux, Wilmotte plays with a ‘screen’ that slowly descends onto the stage, obscuring the action. The horizontal weave of the screen creates a pattern over the long rifts of light. Tragically, the ballet ends in an Italian-style fresco, with each tile forming a labyrinth. Clairemarie Osta, Nicolas Le Riche and Yan Bridard perform in front of an inverted black and white motif, like a photographic negative.