L'Enfant et les Sortilèges

Photo: Jorge Fatauros
On this photo: Gerald Tibbs, Joke Zijlstra, Marly Knoben

Choreographer: Jiří Kylián

This ballet is an interpretation of the opera by Maurice Ravel, made to a scenario of the author Colette, which she had devised as a “Ballet for my Little Girl”.
It is a fantasy in the form of a confrontation between a little boy, the inanimate world around him, and the living world of nature.
As Ravel had no children, the child was changed from little girl to little boy, to relate to his own childhood, a request he made in one of only two letters that passed between him and Colette during the time Ravel had created the score.
The precisely realized script of Colette is a remarkable invention of poetry and drama.