At the Palais Garnier, the Paris Opera Ballet's opening program included a real novelty, Jérôme Bel's "Véronique Doisneau", a performance named after the single dancer who appeared in it.

Doisneau is a sujet, one of the 38 dancers in the company who are in that so-named category, which is approximately the middle rank in the Paris Opera Ballet's strict hierarchy. She joined the corps de ballet at the age of 18 and she is now 41 and near retirement from the company. As a sujet she occasionally gets a solo role, or dances in a pas de deux or pas de trois, or sometimes has an assignment in which she is lost in the background.

Bel had Doisneau on the stage for 30 minutes, sometimes talking about her life and duties in the ballet, sometimes demonstrating the often relatively simple steps and gestures she performs in her dancing assignments, ranging from classics like "Swan Lake" and "Giselle" to works by Merce Cunningham and Mats Ek.

The public gets to see some things its probably never sees because it is usually too busy watching the star performers to notice what the less prominent dancers are doing.

David Stevens 06.10.2004