Ravel: L'Enfant et les Sortilèges (Ballet version by Jiri Kylian, DVD)

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Ravel: L'Enfant et les Sortilèges (Ballet version by Jiri Kylian, DVD)

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L'enfant et les sortileges creates real magic as a visual accompaniment to Lorin Maazel's recorded performance with prestigious soloists and the Paris Orchestre National with the Choeur & Maitrise of RTF. The sound is well balanced and the texts by Collette are available in subtitles in the language of your choice, which is a real bonus of the new system.
At first the dancing is attractive, but seems not so inventive as in Kylian's Black & White, but gradually we come under the spell of this tale about the chastisement of a naughty boy who finally shows his good side by tending an injured squirrel, and the likelihood to develop into a sympathetic, sensitive grown-up. There are complicated, athletic movements to characterise pieces of furniture and tableware and the representation of the mother is quite a coup de theatre. The amount of fascinating detail in his staging and choreography encourages re-viewing and there is no visual redudancy, as is inevitable in concerts on video & DVD, of which I am still sceptical.
Jiri Kylian also gives a delightful spoken introduction to L'enfant et les sortileges, which is substantially duplicated, about its origin as a projected children's ballet and transformation into opera over a ten year span; he tells us what it has meant to him and to his dancers in terms of their (and our) childhoods. Recommendable despite short measure
Peter Grahame Woolf for Musicweb.com

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Ravel: L'Enfant et les Sortilèges (Ballet version by Jiri Kylian, DVD)

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Ravel: L'Enfant et les Sortilèges (Ballet version by Jiri Kylian, DVD)

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Ravel: L'Enfant et les Sortilèges (Ballet version by Jiri Kylian, DVD)

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Ravel: L'Enfant et les Sortilèges (Ballet version by Jiri Kylian, DVD)

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