Sex symbols and Swiss roles

MAURICE BEJART is one of contemporary ballet's most controversial choreographers. The Marseille native, who has a fanatical following in continental Europe but is loathed by most critics in the US and Britain, is one of the few choreographers who can stage ballets for crowds large enough to fill sports arenas.

Bejart has toured extensively throughout his career, including with his present company, Bejart Ballet Lausanne. His works have been staged by the Paris Opera Ballet, the Kirov Ballet, the Tokyo Ballet, among others. He's especially popular in Japan and has toured mainland China, although this week's three-night run at the Hong Kong Arts Festival (part of Bejart's 50th anniversary world tour) will be his first visit in 15 years.

'Last year, our company toured Beijing and Shanghai, where we got a very good reception from the audiences,' Bejart says. 'In Shanghai, I saw a very talented young man called Shi Qiweng from the Shanghai Ballet, whom I've now taken into my company. In Beijing, I visited the Dance Academy, and was impressed by the strong technique of the students.'

Bejart, 78, who is always on the lookout for new talent, says his company now has dancers of about 40 nationalities. 'My company tours a lot,' he says. 'In fact, we spend only half the year in Lausanne and the rest overseas.'

Bejart's works tend to be slick, repetitive and simplistically academic, their power mostly derived from sexy presentation as well as Bejart's uncanny ability to tap into popular consciousness. In The Firebird (1970), one of the four ballets to be shown in Hong Kong, the ballerina of the original fairy-tale libretto has become the male leader of a band of partisans.

Bejart's choreography shows off the men better than the women. 'For me, male dancing is more interesting, because I can make better use of the stronger technique of the male dancers and their physical strength,' he says. One of Bejart's best-known muses was Jorge Donn, who died in 1992 at the age of 45. Bejart says he has found many inspiring new dancers since then. 'Yes, certainly, in Gil Roman and Octavio Stanley,' he says. 'You'll see both in Hong Kong.'

Bejart's first company, Ballet de l'Etoile, was founded in Paris in 1953 with him as the star soloist as well as artistic director. It scored its first success with a 1959 production of The Rite of Spring, which was commissioned by the Theatre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. Full of the overt sexuality that was to mark his later work, it was so well received that the Brussels theatre invited him to form his own company there. Bejart named his new company the Ballet of the 20th Century. It remained in Brussels until 1987, when a dispute with the theatre management led Bejart to relocate his troupe to Lausanne.