“To orchestrate a performance that creates shortcuts between Rameau’s opera-ballet and the gestures, postures and street dances. How can this music set in motion the ghosts of another era, shaped by other stories? Seeking to connect the incantatory quality of Rameau’s music with the cathartic power of these dances. I wish to start with these movements, which, each in their own way, tell the story of a minority, a community, and sketch out an entry into the world through gesture, in order to gradually disrupt them and bring them into contact with Leonardo García-Alarcón’s adaptation of Baroque music.”
Bintou Dembélé
« Leonardo García-Alarcón a dirigé avec beaucoup de justesse, équilibrant le dynamisme des passages les plus percutants avec la douceur des passages les plus délicats, même s’il faut reconnaître que c’est dans ces derniers que la version a atteint le sublime. »
Javier Sarría Pueyo
« L’idée fonctionne — et de quelle manière ! — du moment que l’on abandonne les habitudes historiques et traditionnelles. La musique puissante, superbement servie et accentuée par un orchestre d’époque […] fait vibrer tout un spectacle qui ne connaît pratiquement ni trêve ni repos. »
Arturo Reverter
« La mise en scène de la chorégraphe Bintou Dembélé a conjugué l’humanité qui se dégage de la lecture de García-Alarcón avec la force tellurique de danseurs déployant une énergie scénique et des rythmes dansants contagieux. »
Jordi Maddaleno
Les Indes Galantes – De la voix des âmes is an artistic experience that blends Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Baroque opera with the pure energy of hip-hop and krump, directed and choreographed by Bintou Dembélé.
Born out of the encounter between Bintou Dembélé and Leonardo García-Alarcón during the production of Les Indes Galantes at the Opéra Bastille in 2019, and inspired by the conductor’s innovative musical vision, this choreographed concert transcends the boundaries between musical genres and forms of physical expression.
By exploring the roots of Western music through contemporary popular cultures, this production reveals the universal pulse that unites music and dance. Rameau’s music is carried by Leonardo García-Alarcón’s two ensembles, Cappella Mediterranea and the Chœur de chambre de Namur, alongside a cast of leading soloists, whilst the hip-hop and krump dancers from the Rualité structure passionately embody the complex emotions and irregular rhythms of the human soul.
Les Indes Galantes – De la voix des âmes invites the audience to immerse themselves in a whirlwind of emotions, movements and sounds, for an unforgettable and deeply moving artistic experience.
Opera-ballet by Jean-Philippe Rameau (excerpts)
Libretto by Louis Fuzelier
Composed in Paris in 1735.
Amandine Sanchez, soprano — Amour, Phani, Fatime, Zima
Ana Quintans, soprano — Hébé, Émilie, Zaïre, Atalide
Mathias Vidal, tenor — Valère, Don Carlos, Tacmas, Damon
Edwin Crossley-Mercer, bass — Bellone, Osman, Huascar, Ali, Don Alvar
Leonardo García-Alarcón, musical direction
Bintou Dembélé, artistic direction, choreography
Structure Rualité
Chœur de chambre de Namur
Cappella Mediterranea
Noémie N’diaye, dramaturgy
Benjamin Nesme, lighting
Charlotte Coffinet, costumes
Thibaut Lenaerts, choirmaster
“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 unwavering 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 is exactly how I felt when I first watched Bintou Dembélé working with her dancers during a performance of Les Indes Galantes at the Opéra Bastille. When I realised that these dancers were creating something right before my eyes, as if the music and its composer were very much alive, I told myself that we were witnessing a miracle. The show premiered in 2019 to the success we all know. I subsequently had the opportunity to show excerpts from it all over the world, provoking the same profound impact each time. So I made it a point of honour to continue the adventure, to propose to Bintou that we recreate the conditions of this miracle by developing a new form of ‘choreographic concert’—a form that would allow us to freely explore the relationship between dancers and singers, and to continue to cherish and share the incredible bond that has been forged between dance and music.”
Leonardo García-Alarcón
Prêmio CONCERTO 2025 Lauro Machado Coelho de Ópera
For the production at the Theatro Municipal de São Paulo
A Cappella Mediterranea / Structure Rualité / CAV&MA coproduction.
With the participation of La Seine Musicale and la Maison de la Musique de Nanterre.
With the support of the CND (Centres National de la Danse), residence host.
With the support of the National Theatre & Concert Hall of Taiwan for the costumes.
A production inspired by Les Indes Galantes, staged at the Paris Opera in 2019.
This production is supported, for the orchestra and soloists, by Anne Geisendorf Heegard, Brigitte Lescure, Christian and Magaret Hureau, and Caroline Rilliet.
The concerts in Brazil are supported by Pilar de la Béraudière and the Institut Français as part of the France-Brazil Year.
The choreography is supported by Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels.
