And Now, Concrete Ballet

While Romeo and Juliet made shy love in the corner, a file of bare-chested men in pajama pants and motorcycling helmets marched on the stage to the martial roll of drums. Guns began to chatter, and Romeo toppled, a bullet in his heart. Orpheus appeared in slacks and V-necked shirt, turned to the audience with a bewildered cry: "Why? Why? Why?"

Few were prepared to answer him, but the audience nevertheless applauded like a bullfight crowd. Occasion: performance in Paris' Theatre des Champs Elysees of Orpheus, a ballet set to music by avant-garde Composer Pierre Henry, 31. The performers were members of France's sensational new dance troupe, Maurice Bejart's Ballet Theater of Paris, which specializes in choreography set to concrete music.*

Orpheus consisted of eight tableaux; seven of them were set to tape-recorded folk music, while the eighth (it lasted a fury-full 20 minutes) proved to be solid concrete. The surrealist scenery included outsize paintings of skeletons and angels with empty faces. In the first tableau Orpheus (danced by Choreographer Bejart) was transformed by turns into a snarling tiger ("His loins," says the program, "are heavy with solitude"), an arm-flapping eagle, a scared rat ("His heart is full of holes, like a cheese"). In a later scene he encountered assorted characters, including Romeo and Venus, who stepped from a giant pearl shell in a flesh-colored leotard. At one point he joined Death in a game of cards, with Eurydice's midriff serving as table. The deafening last scene found Orpheus hanging by his heels from the flies.

When Marseille-born Choreographer Bejart, 32, organized his own company four years ago, he banned tutus, dressed his dancers in leotards, slacks and T shirts, began using the music of Composer Henry (Voyage to the Heart of a Child, Arcane II). Since then, he has built a large and enthusiastic avant-garde following. Bejart likes to work with concrete music because it approximates "the infinite variety of the body's natural movements," and there is a system in his mad creations. He explains: "Concrete music can express all emotions, but it must shun the obvious sound effects. For instance, the tape can carry the sound of glass breaking, but not if the dancer mimes glass breaking. On the other hand, if you show a woman whose heart is breaking, then the sound of breaking glass is perfect."

* Invented by French Composer Pierre Schaeffer in 1948, concrete music utilizes musical and natural sounds, which are taped and re-recorded at varying speeds; bits of the tape are then spliced together in startling order.

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