The Four Seasons

“It would never have crossed my mind before to choreograph to the music of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons,” says Bigonzetti. “If it had, I would have thought I’d lost my mind. The music is some of the world’s best known and most often interpreted!” Still, the choreographer risked the venture, and carried off the challenge of expressing something different through pieces that have been interpreted thousands of times, evoking people’s internal seasons, their states of mind and their changes of heart.

Created in May 2007 for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, The Four Seasons is Bigonzetti’s first ballet for a Canadian company. It is one of Les Grands Ballets' greatest successes on tour, performed, among others, at Les Étés de la danse festival in Paris in 2008 and at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival 2009.

The Four Seasons is danced on Vivaldi's four concertos for violin and orchestra, each painting a season and divided into three movements: Allegro - Adagio (or Largo) - Allegro (or Presto). By appropriating this worldwide hit, the Roman choreographer creates a contemporary ballet integrating arduous work on pointe and inventing a universe of his own. He explores the different facets and inner impulses of human beings. The bodies of the dancers become real instruments that bind and unbind. The dancers deploy a bubbling gesture and a theatricality crossed by humor, joy, and desire. The carnal impact is overflowing: the bodies are aligning, embracing, and repelling each other with impertinence.