Cold Cuts, With Whipped Cream

The performance started with The Best of Béjart - Love Dance, which included selections from the company's productions of Le sacre du printemps and Romeo and Juliet as well as choreographies to the music of U2 and Queen. Gil Roman, the troupe's lead dancer, who took over as its director after Béjart died almost two years ago, aimed with the piece to preserve the image of the troupe, to show off the extraordinary abilities of its dancers and to keep the machine he inherited from the master operating. But Béjart's dramatic solutions, his spiritual contrasts, the lyricism or the grotesqueness of the key figures in his   pieces are lacking. Slicing up Béjart's works like cold cuts weakens their effect. Anyway, Béjart's oeuvre was part of an elaborate framework - in addition to a monumental repertoire, he had his troupe and a dance academy - and is not well-fitted to a gala evening.