Of the Voice of Souls – les indes galantes

Of the Voice of Souls – les indes galantes is an artistic experiment fusing Jean-Philippe Rameau’s baroque opera with the raw energy of hip-hop and krump, directed and choreographed by Bintou Dembélé.

Born of the encounter between Bintou Dembelé and Leonardo García-Alarcón during the 2019 production of Les Indes Galantes at the Opéra Bastille, and inspired by the conductor’s innovative musical vision, this choreographed concert transcends the boundaries between musical genres and forms of bodily expression.

By exploring the roots of Western music through contemporary popular cultures, this creation reveals the universal pulse uniting music and dance. Rameau’s music is carried by Leonardo García Alarcón’s two ensembles, Cappella Mediterranea and the Chœur de chambre de Namur, as well as a first-rate cast of soloists, while hip-hop and krump dancers from the Rualité structure passionately embody the complex emotions and irregular rhythms of the human soul.

Of the Voice of Souls – les indes galantes invites the audience to plunge into a whirlwind of emotions, movement and sound, for an unforgettable and deeply moving artistic experience.

Program

Les Indes Galantes

Opéra-ballet de Jean-Philippe Rameau (extraits)

Libretto : Louis Fuzelier (1735)

Cast

Julie Roset, soprano — Amour, Phani, Fatime, Zima
Ana Quintans, soprano — Hébé, Émilie, Zaïre, Atalide
Mathias Vidal, tenor — Valère, Don Carlos, Tacmas, Damon
Andreas Wolf, bass — Bellone, Osman, Huascar, Ali, Don Alvar

Leonardo García Alarcón, musical direction
Bintou Dembélé, dance and set director

Structure Rualité
Chœur de chambre de Namur
Cappella Mediterranea

Benjamin Nesme, lights
Anaïs Durand Munyankindi, costumes

“Analyzing Western art music, trying to understand its origins through today’s popular music, brings us to the realization that human beings have always lived with music and dance: ever since parents cradled newborns against their breasts, and newborns felt the rhythm of their hearts through their chests… We don’t know who came first in music or dance, and we’d probably have to invent a word to describe the indefectible link that unites them. It is both the pulse of life and the apprenticeship of death. It is the rite of existence that enables us to face up to the unknown, the elusive that surrounds our presence in the world: music and dance link us to the universe, allowing us to be there, to take part in the great concert, the great ballet of stars, planets and black holes that is being played out in space.

It seems to me that the Baroque understood this, but not only that: it also perceived that every human emotion has an asymmetry of rhythm.Extreme emotions such as love, hate, anger, fear of death or abandonment have no measurable or quantifiable rhythm.Opera is precisely this utopian attempt to make the rhythm of music and dance coexist with that mysterious, elusive, all-too-human rhythm. So much so that – to pastiche Plato – we could say that in opera, emotion is the measure of all things. And that’s why we love this world so much, where everything finally escapes us and we lose our footing.

This feeling is not unique to learned or elitist music. Most of the world’s popular music is linked to this baroque feeling by the impulse, by the power of words, of text, of oral tradition… It is the power to touch – by simple and direct means – what is the very essence of all human existence.

That’s how I felt when I first watched Bintou Dembele working with her dancers in Les Indes galantes at the Opéra Bastille. When I realized that these dancers were creating before my very eyes, as if the music and its composer were alive and well, I said to myself that we were experiencing a miracle. The show premiered in 2019 to great acclaim. I then had the opportunity to show extracts of it all over the world, each time provoking the same shock. So I made it a point of honor to continue the adventure, to propose to Bintou that we repeat the conditions of this miracle by elaborating a new form of “choreographic concert” a form that would allow us to freely explore the relationship between dancers and singers, to continue to love and make loved this unheard-of link that has been woven between dance and music.”

Leonardo García Alarcón