Ulysse is a contemporary dance work created in 1981 by Jean-Claude Gallotta for eight dancers, freely combining the figure of Homer's Odysseus with Bloom from Joyce's Ulysses. It is treated in the source article as one of the founding works of the 'new French dance' movement of the early 1980s, and as the piece Gallotta returned to and reworked most often across his career, producing four distinct reference versions between 1981 and 2007.
What it contains
- Cunningham Technique · Whole work — the original 1981 choreographic material, retained through all four reworked versions — Ensemble group runs and large lateral traversals built from small pre-made choreographic units assembled 'event'-style, with the article stating the ensemble techniques were directly borrowed from Cunningham's practice, following Gallotta's period studying with him. Source: "ensemble movements whose techniques were borrowed from the New York choreographer"
What is danced
The article's account of the movement itself is impressionistic rather than technical, but consistent across versions: the choreography is built from 'incessant runs and large-scale lateral movements from left to right and right to left, led by series of small, agile steps,' performed by an ensemble against plain white sets and costumes (in the original and 1993 versions) or, later, harsher neon-lit minimal spaces. Gallotta assembled the piece from small pre-existing choreographic fragments — dating to a 1976-77 solo sketch called Sept Airs de cuisines — stitched into group 'events' in a manner the article explicitly ties to Merce Cunningham's compositional method, with techniques 'borrowed from the New York choreographer' and the flowing group writing compared to Trisha Brown and Lucinda Childs.
Each revival changed the demands on the dancers without discarding this base material. The number of performers grew from eight (1981) to eleven (1993, performed without Gallotta himself) to forty for the 1995 Paris Opera version, which was re-cut into twenty-four tableaux 'as many as there are songs in the Odyssey' and set on star dancers and corps of the Paris Opera Ballet within a four-week rehearsal period unusually short for that company. The 2007 Cher Ulysse version instead used dancers aged 30 to 65 under the 'Trois Générations' concept, juxtaposing each performer's individual, age-inflected interpretation of the same steps, with Gallotta himself moving through the space as an 'Aoidos or Ringmaster' with microphone or megaphone. A separate children's adaptation (Josette Baïz, 2007, dancers aged 8–13) stripped out lifts, partnered contact and erotic material while trying to preserve the original's emotional shape.
Context
Gallotta made the piece after returning from working with Merce Cunningham in the United States and winning prizes at the Bagnolet choreographic competition; he founded the Groupe Émile-Dubois in 1979 and based the company at Grenoble's Maison de la Culture, one of the regional centres central to the decentralisation of French contemporary dance in this period. The article frames Ulysse as marking, within this milieu, both the end of Gallotta's choreographic apprenticeship and the emergence of his mature style, and as a work that helped define the 'new French dance' identity of the early 1980s alongside imported American postmodern influences (Cunningham, Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs).
Staging history
The original premiered 13 March 1981 at the Maison de la Culture, Grenoble, and was remounted in a pared-down form (tulle backdrop, a free-roaming turkey) at the Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, in 1983, then toured to the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Arts Festival and the American Dance Festival. A second version, Ulysse re-création, premiered in 1993 at the Festival de Châteauvallon for eleven dancers, without Gallotta performing, and included a spoken tribute to Yvonne Rainer. The third version, Les Variations d'Ulysse, was commissioned by Brigitte Lefèvre and entered the Paris Opera Ballet repertoire in 1995 at the Opéra Bastille, expanded to forty dancers with a new score by Jean-Pierre Drouet and danced by Patrick Dupond, Marie-Claude Pietragalla, Jean-Guillaume Bart and Carole Arbo among others; it won a Victoire de la musique classique in 1996. The fourth version, Cher Ulysse, premiered 12 October 2007 at the Théâtre national de Chaillot with an electronic score by the group Strigall and a cast aged 30 to 65; a parallel version for children toured France until 2010.
How to watch it
Watch for the recurring large lateral group crossings and quick small-footed runs that Gallotta kept constant through every version, since these — not the set, cast size or score, all of which changed radically — are what the article treats as the work's true continuity. Compare, if possible, the vaporous white-costume aesthetic of the 1981/1993 stagings against the harsher, neon-lit 2007 version, and note how the 1995 Paris Opera staging re-segments the same material into twenty-four tableaux keyed to the songs of the Odyssey.