Rave | L'Âge d'or

Created in 2001 for the Ballet de Lorraine and now passed on to a new generation of performers, Rave unfolds like a parade, festive, exuberant and colorful. American choreographer Karole Armitage stages the encounter between voguing—with its agile hand and arm movements—and various forms of martial arts, set to an entrancing techno score by composer David Shea. The electric pulse of the music drives the 25 dancers into a state of explosive tension. They form the living heartbeat of a piece conceived as a celebration of life—of balls, ballets and carnivals of the 21st century that intensify its flavor. At the time of its creation, Armitage stood at the center of a singular artistic trajectory. Trained in classical ballet, she joined the Merce Cunningham company in 1976 before creating her own works, including Drastic Classicism in 1981, which fuses ballet's rigor with punk's raw energy. To this day, she continues to trace resonances between high art and popular culture.   
 
Over the past decade, Brandon Masele and Laura Defretin—working under the name MazelFreten—have followed a nearly opposite path. Drawing on the vocabulary of electro and hip-hop dance, they have forged a language recognized internationally, notably through works such as Rave Lucid and Obscurité, created for the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics. Beyond their own creations, the duo regularly explore new formats, as seen in their collaboration with singer Hervé at Chaillot in 2025. Today, MazelFreten creates a large-scale work for the Ballet de Lorraine set to a score by electronic music artist Chloé Thévenin. Inspired by sampling—the process of extracting, transforming and reinventing existing material—the duo reworks the codes of classical ballet, infusing them with the visceral energy of electro dance. This encounter opens an unprecedented space where disciplines intersect, seep into one another and are made anew.   

Text by Vincent Théval