ROME, JULY 26, 2002 (Zenit.org).- French dancer and choreographer Maurice Béjart will devote his next ballet to Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
“I shall take her creed, her religion, her public and private life to the stage,” the Marseilles-born dancer said.
Béjart added that this ballet, premiering in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Oct. 17, would be his way of “supporting youth and new convictions and hopes.”
The work, “Mother Teresa and the Children of the World,” will star Marcia Haydée, along with Béjart’s own pupils from the Rudra Béjart Lausanne school.
“I did not want their talent, after school, to be wasted; that their energies and vitality should disappear or be marginalized,” he said. “When I look at the pupils of the Rudra, I see them happy, enthusiastic, dynamic, positive.”
“I would like to transmit this strength to youth,” the choreographer added. “Even in the midst of misunderstanding and general suffering, one must continue to believe in a better world.”
Although Béjart never met Mother Teresa personally, he knew her through “her writings, her works, her word.”
“Perhaps she is too great a figure to be represented on the stage,” he said. Hence, it will not be a biography.
Marcia Haydée incarnates a “rich, famous and popular woman who is absolutely determined to look after abandoned children and shelter them following the example of Mother Teresa of Calcutta,” Béjart concluded.
