THE REPERTOIRE

Frédéric Flamand has called on Brazilian designers Humberto and Fernando Campana to design the sets and costumes for his new creation inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the mythological poem which defies and explodes classical order. It contrasts impurity, hybridisation and crossbreeding with purity; it contrasts the notion of porousness and decompartmentalisation with that of boundary; it contrasts the notion of perpetual change with stability; and it contrasts the canonisation of imagination and its irrationality with cold common sense. The Campanas’ work is based on transforming artisanal products, recycling and infringing accepted aesthetic norms. They integrate the expertise of people in their local culture and draw on inspiring stories from their country. It is about being immersed in Ovid’s fantastic imagination, through different times and spaces, to analyse more effectively what these “metamorphoses” might reflect of our contemporary myths. Never-ending games of metamorphoses and hybridisation based on myths, gods and symbolic figures: Phaethon, Perseus and the Medusa, Pegasus, Diana and Actaeon, Narcissus, Pallas and Arachne, and Medea and the quest for youth. The approach of myths is an opportunity for us to reflect on the forces that make up human nature, the manifestations of desire, and the eternal battles between good and evil. Evoking an ancient time and place for us to question our contemporaneity more effectively.

Frédéric Flamand and his Ballet de Marseille have delighted audiences with Métamorphoses. Mario Pasi, Il Corriere della sera