19 BEATRICE BERRUT Your programme gives a prominent place to ballet music, with Pabst’s paraphrase on Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty and Agosti’s transcription of Stravinsky’s Firebird. To what extent was dance one of your sources of inspiration? I recently took part in a show featuring figure-skating champions. The choreography of one of the numbers, which it was my role to accompany on the piano, was based on The Firebird. Thanks to these ice dancers, I was able to connect with the music, to feel its animal side, the pulse, the changes of rhythm and the infernal dimension. The frenzy that grips the dancers’ bodies in this ballet reveals the unprecedented musical language that Stravinsky constructed. To experience this in direct contact with dance is utterly exhilarating.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTAwOTQx