Rave + L’Âge d’or de CCN

The Ballet de Lorraine celebrates the hybrids of the 21st century between classical technique and new forms born in the clubs. Twenty-five years apart, Karole Armitage draws on voguing to make Rave a colourful firework, while the duo MazelFreten taps into the raw energy of electro dance to divert the codes of ballet.

Created in 2001 for the Ballet de Lorraine and now passed on to a new generation of performers, Rave has the air of a virtuoso, festive and colourful parade.

The American choreographer Karole Armitage orchestrates an encounter between voguing, with its swift movements of the hands and arms, and various forms of martial arts, set to an infectious techno score by the composer David Shea.

The electricity of the music drives the bodies of the 25 dancers to a state of explosive tension. They make beat the heart of a piece conceived as a celebration of life and of the balls, ballets and carnivals of the 21st century, which enhance its flavour.

At its creation, Karole Armitage was midway through a career as exceptional as it is singular.

Trained in classical ballet, she joined Merce Cunningham’s company in 1976 but soon created her own pieces, notably Drastic Classicism in 1981, which combines the rigour of ballet with the raw energy of punk.

Since then the choreographer has never stopped making the worlds of high art dance and popular culture converse. For the past 10 years, Brandon Masele and Laura Defretin, under the alias Mazel Freten, have been doing almost the reverse.

The duo takes hold of the vocabulary of electro and hip-hop dance to forge a new language acclaimed around the world, with their piece Rave Lucid but also the tableau Obscurité from the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

Beyond their own creations, the two artists are fond of different experiences, as shown by their collaboration with the singer Hervé at Chaillot in 2025.

Today, Mazel Freten is imagining a large-scale work for the Ballet de Lorraine, set to the sound of a piece by the electronic music composer Chloé Thévenin.

Drawing on the technique of sampling, which takes, transforms and reinvents existing material, the duo diverts the codes of classical ballet to make them resonate differently, powered by the visceral energy of electro dance.