Ballet of the 20th Century
Ballet of the 20th Century (Ballet du XXe Siècle).The Brussels-based company formed in 1960 with Maurice Béjart as director. Attached to the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, it none the less toured widely. The repertoire, which was highly reliant on Béjart's own work, was noted for its mass spectacles and multi-media theatricality, qualities which earned the company international popularity through more than twenty years of touring, although many critics complained of bombastic choreography and musical compromise. Productions included Sacre du printemps (mus. Stravinsky, 1959, which Béjart choreographed for Ballet-Théâtre de Paris, the ensemble which eventually became the Ballet of the 20th Century), Bolero (mus. Ravel, 1960), Tales of Hoffmann (mus. Offenbach, 1961), A la recherche de Don Juan (1962), Les Noces (mus. Stravinsky, 1961), The Merry Widow (mus. Lehár, 1963), Ninth Symphony (mus. Beethoven, 1964), Mathilde (mus. Wagner, 1965), Romeo and Juliet (mus. Berlioz, 1966), Baudelaire (1968), The Firebird (mus. Stravinsky, 1970), Nijinsky, clown de Dieu (music Henry-Tchaikovsky, 1971), Stimmung (mus. Stockhausen, 1972), Le Marteau sans maître (mus. Boulez, 1973), Notre Faust (mus. Bach, 1975), Petrushka (mus. Stravinsky, 1977), Gaîté parisienne (mus. Offenbach-Rosenthal, 1978), Magic Flute (mus. Mozart, 1981), Wien, Wien nur du allein (mus. Schoenberg, Beethoven, and others, 1982), Messe pour le temps futur (mus. Wagner, Beethoven, 1983), Cinq nô modernes (text Mishima, 1984), Malraux; ou, La Métamorphose des dieux (mus. Beethoven, Le Bars, traditional, 1986). The company attracted illustrious guest artists, among them Rudolf Nureyev, Suzanne Farrell, Judith Jamison, Maya Plisetskaya, Vladimir Vasiliev, Marcia Haydée, and Jean Babilée. In 1987 the company was disbanded when Béjart left the Théâtre de la Monnaie to start a new troupe in Lausanne.
