Initially, this creation looked like a challenge: how to write a full-length ballet score for symphony orchestra that would not simply be a rehashing of what Delibes, Tchaikovsky or Adam had done in the 19th century, but indeed my vision of ballet music for today. Laying hold of history through the imagination: that was my answer. For me, music is the language of passions and the unconscious. Martine Kahane's subject and the way Patrice Bart wanted to treat it convinced me straight off that I could go in that direction.
I had already written about a dozen scores for contemporary choreographers and am quite familiar with dance, having practiced it and accompanied it on the piano. But this collaboration with the Paris Opera Ballet was my first commission for a classical ballet. What was important to me above all was the idea of creating a work accessible to a wide audience. I enjoy telling stories to people, giving them a listening context that attracts them and enables them to open up to the unknown. I wanted to give resonance to the Little Dancer's dream of becoming a star, a bit like an opera without voices where the music expresses the heroine's drives. Nor was my intention to be faithful to the historical account, but to give it a contemporary form: making a modern tale out of an old story.
Contrary to what is customarily done, it was necessary to write a scenario and then begin composing the music. The narrative plot of the subject is strong, and it was essential to first "sit down at the table" - as in the theatre - to cut up each scene. It was the author and scriptwriter Orlando de Rudder who was in charge of this preparatory work, and that helped me a great deal, as I was thus able to compose my music around a clear, precise structure. The idea was not to give the characters a psychological profile, but rather to define situations. This is what I call my "tropisms": for me, music does not spring from images but from human relationships, man's relations with the world, dramatic situations through which I project myself. I have always proceeded like this in the theatre, relying on a preliminary reading of the staging (and I could do the same for a film score). For example, it seemed obvious to me from the beginning that the incidental music for "l'Atelier" (the studio) had to be very slow, as if "frozen", thus depicting the Little Dancer's morbid fascination for her statue. The character of the Mother, a sort of wicked stepmother, should provoke a feeling of anxiety throughout the work, this explaining the asymmetrical rhythmic pattern and strange, harsh colours that are heard in the scenes in which the Mother appears, such as the one where she forbids her daughter to have any dreams.
Here, the music is in the position of a "subjective camera". One hears what the Little Dancer imagines, one listens to her reverie, perceiving it and, I hope, feeling and understanding it. To succeed at that, I almost changed into the "Little Dancer" for a year! All the situations in the score are imaginary: the dance class, the grand ball at the Opera and even the prison. The dream is permanent, with what that implies in terms of contractions or stretching of time, premonitions, transpositions and reminiscences.
It was in this spirit that I composed a grand waltz, an implacable dance class rhythmic pattern, cabaret music and pas de deux melodies, always maintaining the color of my music and applying techniques similar to film ("cut" montage, mixing of very different colors, flash-back, displacement, reversal, etc.). From beginning to end of the score, one can hear the result of intense work on harmony, rhythm (often jazzy), melody and orchestral colour. I chose an orchestra of sixty musicians, where the winds are in pairs but often change instruments and are all in turn "outside". One thus hears rarely-used colours, like the oboe d'amore (for all the melodies depicting the dream of being a star), contrabassoon, piccolo trumpet, alto flute, bass clarinet and tenor saxophone, as well as an accordion that blends with the strings and the woodwinds. All the soloists have privileged moments, from the solo violin in the pas de deux of the first act to the solo cello in the "white ballet" of the second act. The trombone has important phrases, the clarinet and trumpet have difficult parts in the "Black Cat" scenes, and the timpanist is in constant demand, as is the keyboard, the piano having a concertante role in the ball and at the end of the ballet. In this 400-page score, there is a wide variety of colours that are often novel for this type of symphonic ensemble.
By composing thus for winds in pairs and anxious for the form to be clear at first hearing, with a structure both strong and hidden, I am placing myself within a tradition that is, I believe, quite French. This way of thinking music suits me fine: structured, finely worked - despite its easy appearance - and open to a kind of unconsciousness. From Rameau to Ravel, I see it as a tree trunk on which I graft my own branches: the rhythmic and harmonic language that I drew from jazz, improvisation, the American avant-garde and all kinds of folk tunes. Achieving this synthesis in the framework of a classical ballet nowadays is rather exciting. For me, it is a matter of working towards a new type of spectacle, where I no longer propose "contemporary", but a French symphonic music decked out in the colors of our time and, with its melodies easy to memorise, aimed at a wide audience.
Denis Levaillant
From an interview with Laure Guilbert, May 2003
