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Sasha Waltz in Paris

“BEAU spectacle!” reports France’s Le Monde of a new production at Paris’s Bastille Opera. The choreographer inspiring this plaudit is called Waltz. Yes, that’s her real family name.

Sasha Waltz has been the toast-of-town in Berlin's dance world for a decade. Many of her shows, including perhaps her most famous, “Körper” (Bodies), have toured the world. Breaching the formidable walls of the Bastille is the 44-year-old German’s version of Berlioz’s “Romeo and Juliet”. It opened on October 5^th to extravagant applause, with another Paris daily, Libération, citing its “superb, fluid, aerial pas de deux”, performed by the Paris ballet’s stars, Aurélie Dupont and Hervé Dupont, as the star-crossed lovers.

At the post-premiere soirée, Ms Waltz herself could be seen in a twirl or two to the upbeat strains of a Russian folk combo. But how does a foreigner end up with the directorial reins at so revered a house? Its director, Gérard Mortier, has an internationally roving eye--and he loves quirkiness. Waltz caught his attention with her last big operatic foray: a staging of Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas”. That opened with dancers plunging half naked into a huge water-tank.

Waltz revels in the elements. Her last show, “Medea”, featured a gale-force wind blown across stage by vast propellers. In an earlier Waltz piece, “Tides”, a wall goes up in flames. And here? In her grave, asleep, not dead, Julie is covered, spectacularly, with piles and piles of pebbles. Call it: choreography going back to basics.