The French Ariane Labed is not a professional dancer, but she is an outstanding actress. Seeing her at L’Opéra, it’s hard to believe that she hasn’t dedicated half her life to dance. She labed she danced as a child, but she hadn’t worn spikes for many years. Several of the interviews that she did on the occasion of the premiere of the first season of this series created by Cécile Ducrocq insisted on how disturbingly plausible her work was. She, halfway between surprise, obviousness and the arrogance of a star that she knows she is, always gave similar answers: “I am an actress, I worked very hard on the interpretation of a dancer and there is the result”.
Zoe, the star of L’Opéra, is not just a gifted dancer. She is also a woman obsessed with perfection, not always consistent and rarely likeable. At the beginning of the series he is 35 years old (the same age as Labed, who is now 38) and he is in a difficult moment: his professional zenith could be a peak after which it is not that there is a relaxed downhill, it is that you will find a precipice. The discipline and cruelty of elite ballet collide with Zoe’s inner chaos, which she expresses in contradictory ways. She is a broken woman and she is an artist. She is an athlete and she is a mystery.
Aside from Ariane Labed’s magnetic creation, there are many other interesting things at L’Opéra. From the story of Flora (Suzy Bemba), an ugly dance duckling whose engine is having previously read that story (she knows it could be a swan, but it won’t be easy), to the setting of the series. The Opera Garnier in Paris, photographed in all its splendor and all its decadence, is the hallucinating and not at all discreet setting that Ducrocq chooses for his story.
So it is not necessary for L’Opéra to explain to us that the world of Zoe and Flora is not available to everyone. The series leads us behind some doors, those of the “staff only” rooms of the iconic Charles Garnier building, which we will never go through in real life. In one of those rooms begins its second season. Specifically with Zoe receiving oral sex. Whoever believes that L’Opéra is a goofy adolescent fiction will be in for a big disappointment. This is an adult, torturous and dark series. Like Zoe. Like Flora.
And whoever has the sharp knives to criticize their dance scenes will have to sheath them. Directed by many hands, L’Opéra perfectly manages the difficulty of mixing acting dancers with dancing actors. The result, whether you are a fan of classical dance or not, is very effective. Available in Spain on Disney, this is a series that strives to convey physical and primary sensations: fear, pain, disgust, rage, tiredness… He strives and succeeds. It’s easy to fall into L’Opéra’s trap of beauty and disgust, in its mix of palace intrigue (the Parisian opera is almost a ministry) and inner exploration of characters whose dramas and challenges couldn’t be further from ours and, precisely for this reason, they could not attract us more.
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