"Malraux or the Metamorphosis of the Gods" is an admirable work, unique in its combination of concise and rapid narrative with intenseness and meditation.

Bejart stages a prose epic in which the Malraux's personality is ever before us. What a world of wonders in this ballet, all aglow with ambitions and conflicts, with marvels of strange lands, full of perils and rescues. Bejart presents a ballet which deeply stirs the emotions. To my mind, Choregraphy of wonderful suggestiveness.

Created in 1987, this ballet deals with André Malraux in the multiple facets he gave of him : the Hero, the Writer, the Adventurer, the Eccentric and the Devil.
Because integral part of his life, Death is the main theme. Death comes of strength and pride. Omnipresent, in constante metamorphosis, incarnated as a woman or in the form of an "obsidian head", it's on the prowl, supervising who is dancing, measuring apparatus of the glance who notices it, laughing , often making fun and closing as a winner the finale in a terrifying ambiguity.
On this picture, the dancer (Rouben Bach) takes place after making up himself on a corner of scene while the spectators have their attention diverted on a couple formed by the Writer and the Death who are waltzing like carefree persons.
Music suddenly stops and gives way to a great inspiration, unveiling this dancer metamorphosed into an Obsidian Head, into another morbid form.
His variation on a repetitive and mechanical music, is fabulous, great, sculptural and singularly distressing.

This ballet is complex as Malraux would do : a character that cannot be reduced  just to one individual. Also, the Word weaves the ballet from beginning to end, introducing almost each sequence.

Little after a vague background noise evoking some continuous breath, the Ballet starts with cries, kinds of exclamations by which every Malraux (the Hero, the Writer, the Adventurer, the Eccentric and the Devil) set in scene, are expressed already but different: they are the most projecting facets of Malraux and meet then only twice during all the ballet: first around the figure of the mother interpreted by Lynn Charles and at the very last scene of the ballet where they meet in the center and eventually were holding hands.

Essential "things" are said during the spectacle, as well in gestures of the dancers as in sentences launched to the public with force and persuasion or exchanged between interpreters. Understandable mixture of matter and acts : Malraux was a man of action and words. Malraux shines through Bejart's masterry of language and choregrahy.

The ballet ends as it started, except that the characters don’t shout; highly advisable when you born, for you have to die silently

Each character speaks - imaginary like those of the "Human condition" or "The Hope", Tchen (Marc Hwang), Katov (Rouben Bach), Kyo (Eiji Mahara) or real (Malraux himself ). 

Passages of the Hope, Human condition, Eccentric Kingdom, Antimémoires are heard : key passages which even put in scene the ballet itself, give it rythm, tone, bringing out the finer points : their characteristic lies in the way of which they are said, at the support or to support the context of the action put in scene. 

For instance, I remember this sudden and almost stressed unforgettable exclamation when Death called out  :

"the empire of death, is called the eccentric kingdom !!!" 

or the speech about Jean Moulin’s moving in Pantheon (magnificently set to music by Hugues Bars):   "the destiny sinks ... Listen, the destiny sinks... His role is played and his martyrdom starts, ridiculed, wildly struck, head in blood, burst organs, the destiny of Resistance depending on the courage of this man alone".

I could quote with excess (Malraux has this advantage or this disadvantage : every sentence could do a quotation). What imports ultimately in this assembly, it’s what it is said, at the very moment it is said and by whom. Hearing such sentences with so a well-proportioned emotional load in every interpreters’ gesture or attitude cannot leave unmoved a theater. There, during such moments, quality of silence is shown. 

After the beginning, Tchen emerges from the back, turns towards the public and presents Malraux to us :

" Born, in Paris... at the dawn of November 03, 1901, 
André Malraux !.. .”

One of the strong moments of the ballet is incarnated by Tchen, who declaims his strange fervor, his anguish, his dreams, this "extase to the bottom" and translated their effects in a variation which further goes than the words alone couldn’t do, with the finale of the VIIe symphony of Beethoven, where the self-destroying madness illuminates passionate and distressing splendor. At a certain point, some white dressed girls gently appear tiptoeing to dance on Beethoven’s Quartet, opus 135 :  carefree, laughing, towards the end, with fresh and resounding laughter, hardly covering the exploding but imaginary bomb launched by Tchen .

Death is walking down this ballet often a friend, sometimes enemy, like some familiar seductive presence which comes to scoff those it covets. Death belongs to Malraux's home.

A splendid pas de deux between the hero Donn and his  incarnation.  Lynn Charles faces them. At the end of the variation, Death obtains the last word, being turned towards the hero and nonchalantly waving her hand to him, slightly agitating her fingers, one by one. 

There would be much to say on the subject of this ballet, about these men in striped suits, who appear and wander, to the Prisoners’ song in Fidelio. Or this variation to a Chinese traditional music, where each one is driven with delicacy and slowness, in a kind of light suspension, which is faithful to music. Then there is Shiva (interpreted alternatively by the dancers Tony Fabre and Gil Roman) who occurs, slips among connected prisoners. A solemn face and thin figure dancing as wavers a flame on the point of a candle.
Apollo is announced and crosses the scene. 
Men are introduced on scene, back to the audience, hands in the air to await the fatal gust which never comes.
In turn, black dressed women are emerging, rhythmically clapping their hands while advancing step by step (variation and music included later in the ballet "Shéhérazade").

Alone, a dancer is stroking an invisible cat while another examines a map on the proscenium.
In front of the spectators - whereas the curtain is not yet raised - Russian revolutionists apostrophize themselves and discourse on Marxism and Communism (a woman of the audience rose and shouted "Vive of Gaulle !" ).
And obviously, always we find Death, the omnipresent watcher.
In the finale, it’s Death which seizes by the hand ‘Little Malraux’ : constantly this shock between the hope of living forever and the certainty to die one day. In my opinion (I underline), this ballet summarizes all. Béjart is entirely there : fine, tangible concentration, multiple faces which are ‘him’, sometimes dramatic shrilling feelings. And this extreme softness arising, growing and finally investing with innocence the scene. This piece of pipà and these dancers who gently twist, seeming to inscribe with their fingers haïkus or Chinese handwritings, created, one says, in imitation of stars course in the sky, traces of animals on sand.

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