© Silvia Lelli
L’Heure Exquise
Variations on a theme by Samuel Beckett “Oh, les beaux jours”
direction and choreography Maurice Béjart
restaged by Maina Gielgud an Micha Van Hoecke
courtesy of Fondation Maurice Béjart
characters and performers
She Alessandra Ferri
He Carsten Jung
set and lighting design Roger Bernard
costume design Luisa Spinatelli
music by Anton Webern, Gustav Mahler, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Lehár
Restaging co-produced by AF DANCE, Ravenna Festival, The Royal Ballet London
special thanks to Lady Angela Bernstein CBE
created at Teatro Carignano in Turin on 13 September 1998, co-production Micha Van Hoecke Ensemble and Festival Torino Danza.
Italian premiere
With L’Heure Exquise, based on one of Samuel Beckett’s best plays, Oh les beaux jours, Alessandra Ferri celebrates her forty-year-long career in the significant and exciting role of Winnie, an aged ballerina re-living the joyful memories of her happy days in her present melancholy solitude—a role role created by Béjart for Carla Fracci in 1998, and perfectly suited to the artist Ferri is now. After Virginia Woolf, Eleonora Duse and Léa in Chéri, the portrait of another exceptional woman enters this chapter of Alessandra Ferri’s life. And while Ferri-Winnie is encased in a mound of faded pointe shoes, her former partner Willy, originally created for Micha Van Hoecke, is now interpreted by Carsten Jung of Hamburg Ballet John Neumeier.
