La fin du jour

About

La fin du jour is a conceptual ballet exploring the dualism between the physical body and the emotional heart. Choreographer-director Fabrizio Monteverde imagines the body as a machine that inevitably wears down over time, contrasted with the heart as an eternal engine of sensations and emotions. Inspired by Jeanne Ray’s novel Julie & Romeo, the piece stages exactly the relational dynamic Monteverde wished to portray. The choreography juxtaposes tiny, delicate gestures with violent, expansive movements set to Franz Schubert, revealing the contradictions that govern intense human feeling. Maurizio Savini’s scenography and the costumes by Kristopher Millar and Lois Helen Swandale carve out the identities and territories of the characters, while Carlo Cerri’s lighting underscores the work’s shifting energies.