Last season the young choreographer Claire Croizé impressed us with her first group choreography entitled 'Affected'. At the invitation of Monty she then created 'Dido', based on Act III of Henry Purcell's opera 'Dido and Aeneas'. Dido, the queen of Catharge, is inconsolable when the Trojan hero Aeneas leaves her country.
'The amorous absence moves in one direction only and can only be expressed by those who are left behind - not those who have left.', says Roland Barthes in 'Fragments d'un discours amoureux'. In 'Dido', Croizé examines how to translate this 'amorous absence' for the stage. In this endeavour she works with the dancer and choreographer Etienne Guilloteau.