Paris Opera Ballet soars with Jiří Kylián but stumbles over The Nutcracker

This season’s treat is a mixed bill of works by Jiří Kylián. The Netherlands-based master, a perennial Paris favourite, had been missing from the repertoire for a few years — a shame, when his pencil lines are such a fine match for the French style. Three Paris Opera Ballet premieres rectify the matter here.

It may take a little while still for the company to settle into 1991’s Petite Mort, arguably Kylián’s most popular work worldwide. Léonore Baulac and Alexandre Boccara got its mix of sensuality and minute precision right, but others looked somewhat tense, not least because of the unruly rapiers the men wield at the start. The Paris audience was unsure whether to laugh at Petite Mort’s companion piece, the eccentric Sechs Tänze, with its vaudeville-style take on 18th-century wigs and gowns.

2008’s Gods and Dogs, also new to the Palais Garnier, required no such adjustment. The cast, especially Hohyun Kang and Nine Seropian, seemed instinctively to understand its mix of classical authority and existential disquiet. Silent screams intrude; dancers come and go in surreal fashion, crawling into the orchestra pit or rolling underneath a shimmery curtain.

Stepping Stones, last seen at POB in 2004, completed the programme. Three oversize Egyptian cats watch over this dancers’ night at the museum: throughout, they perform with tiny reproductions of sculptures in their hands. Set to Cage and Webern, it’s a sharp, surprising piece, playfully hinting at art history, and its four excellent couples wouldn’t have been out of place in an actual gallery.

★★★★☆

To December 31, operadeparis.fr

There is one tradition that the Paris Opera Ballet adheres to more assiduously than The Nutcracker, and that’s strikes. Few seasons go by without at least one cancelled performance or two, and this year it was protesting technicians who delayed the opening of the company’s Christmas production at the Opéra Bastille.

At least they hit the correct target: Rudolf Nureyev’s Freudian-heavy Nutcracker. Not revived since 2014, regularly declared dead, only to rise again, this version takes almost perverse pleasure in defeating expectations of the holiday classic.

The Kingdom of the Sweets is replaced by a drab house full of family ghosts; a creepy godfather-turned-prince acts as Clara’s love interest; the choreography is pernickety to the point that a lot of the cast looked as if their teeth were being pulled. The one moment of levity came from the dancer who missed her entrance for the heavily bewigged Waltz of the Flowers, leaving her partner to pretend-carry an invisible ballerina.

Leading the company as Clara, her first major role, 21-year-old Inès McIntosh conquered nearly every step with steely resolve. Still, even she might have wished she were at the Palais Garnier, POB’s other stage, which offers the greater holiday treat.

★★☆☆☆

To January 1, operadeparis.fr