Few places speak of dance quite like Monte-Carlo. A creative stronghold of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes for two decades, the Principality later reclaimed its place in the history of European ballet through Princess Caroline of Hanover’s founding of Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo in 1985. The gala evening of July 4, 2026 unfolded as an intimate, at times moving public address to the Princess by Jean-Christophe Maillot, who came on stage to present each piece as a milestone in a long artistic history built on affection, gratitude and trust. The programme alternated Maillot’s own creations with works by other choreographers, company dancers with invited guests, reflecting the way Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo has developed through constant exchange with outside artists.
The evening opened with an excerpt from Ma Bayadère, Maillot’s recent reinvention of the classical ballet, premiered at the Grimaldi Forum in December 2025. In the context of a gala, it was all the more striking to see how sharply and playfully he dismantled the outdated Orientalist atmosphere of the original ballet, parodying its exotic fantasies and its choreographic mannerisms.
Dov’è la luna was one of the evening’s most touching moments: a work of thresholds and passages, between light and darkness, life and death, private grief and public memory. Created in 1994, it was danced on this occasion by the wonderful Juliette Klein, Jaeyong An and Alessio Scognamiglio. In their hands, it seemed to encapsulate these forty years as a passage towards an unknown, and we all hope luminous, future. It also held much of the spirit of the night: a private story made public, much like the long collaboration between Maillot and Princess Caroline. And what are the best stories, if not that?
Other Maillot works included his 1996 Roméo et Juliette, one of his cornerstones, in which Katrin Schrader and Francesco Resch conveyed the ballet’s characteristic youthful carefreeness and joy. A breath of Christmas arrived with the 2013 Casse-Noisette pas de deux, danced by La Scala artists Nicoletta Manni and Timofej Andrijashenko, who entered Maillot’s language and style with remarkable ease. Their performance moved the audience, while reminding us of the rare privilege of witnessing such an extraordinary artistic partnership in our own time.
Works by other choreographers included Uwe Scholz’s 1986 Jeunehomme, with striking scenery and costumes by Karl Lagerfeld, one of the company’s early and most glamorous collaborators. Its central pas de deux was danced by Romina Contreras and Jérôme Tisserand, who finely traced the contrasting emotions of Mozart’s music through the image of a couple parting and tenderly reuniting.
Marco Goecke came on stage to present his new creation, Young Apollo, evoking Kevin Haigen’s 1986 ballet of the same title, also created for Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo to Benjamin Britten’s score. Lou Beyne and Jaat Benoot rendered Goecke’s difficult, nervous style with sharp physical intelligence.
Opus 100 – für Maurice was a moment of true poetry, danced with exceptional authority and sensitivity by invited artists Marijn Rademaker and Oleksandr Ryabko, in the presence of John Neumeier, who introduced the piece by recalling its dedicatee, Maurice Béjart. Maillot had joined Neumeier’s Hamburg Ballet as a young soloist before an injury brought his dancing career to an end, a deeply significant convergence of choreographic lineages.
Sooyeon Yi and Simone Tribuna were wonderful in Akram Khan’s Mud of Sorrow. Khan’s inclusion in the programme also recalled another dimension of the Monte-Carlo ecosystem: the Monaco Dance Forum, which had welcomed the Akram Khan Company with Chotto Desh in 2024 and continues to serve as the institution’s window onto the wider choreographic world.
Antonio Castrignanò, the Puglian singer and musician, came on stage to introduce Lu rusciu te lu mare, a fable about a poor man who falls in love with a princess, performed live. From there, excerpts from Core Meu, in the new version presented in Monte-Carlo last April, unfolded as a refined and stylised homage to the tarantella and southern Italian folk dance. The many former members of the company in the room, brought on stage to dance, turned the finale into a collective family celebration.
However hard it is to keep things secret in 2026, the mission seems to have succeeded: the company managed to throw a thrilling surprise party, with every detail curated under the sign of Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes. Their traditional dialogue between dance and the visual arts was revived through rideaux de scène chosen from works by Philippe Favier, Frank Stella and George Condo.
Among the many possible choices that, as Maillot himself acknowledged, could have shaped the night, the programme appeared above all as a homage to the Princess. The tribute was collective and heartfelt: Neumeier and Goecke appeared on stage, while Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Jiří Kylián contributed emotional video messages. Yet a female voice was missing, and the absence felt all the more audible in Monaco, where Bronislava Nijinska had been one of the crucial creative figures of the Ballets Russes, and where her Les Biches premiered at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo in 1924. The fable remained beautiful, but this missing counterpoint slightly troubled its enchantment.
Elsa’s trip was funded by Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo
