Ravel / Debussy

His Exhibition, to Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition in the famous orchestration by Ravel, is a polemic of sorts, as the work is rarely visualised as a ballet. From the beginning, it was intended as an in memoriam for the painter Viktor Hartmann, full of thoughts of death and with an elegiac mood. Dreamlike scenes mingle with the desire to recapture an elusive past.

Jeroen Verbruggen created a new choreography to Maurice Ravel's ballet music Ma Mère l'Oye (after the Tales of Mother Goose), prefaced by the sublime Pavane pour une infante défunte. His great inspiration is the death-transcending spiritual love between the late King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola.

In Faun, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui explores the animal side of human movement and the power of mythology. In this duet, which has formed part of Royal Ballet Flanders' repertoire since 2013, the faun meets his female counterpart. Cherkaoui asked the contemporary composer Nitin Sawhney to add musical interventions to Debussy's piece.