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The French Ariane Labed is not a professional dancer, but an outstanding actress. Seeing her at L'Opéra it is hard to believe that she has not dedicated half her life to dance. Labed danced as a child, but it had been many years since she wore tips. Several interviews he did on the occasion of the premiere of the first season of this series created by Cécile Ducrocq insisted on how disturbingly plausible his work was. She, halfway between surprise, obviousness and the arrogance of a star who knows she is, always gave similar answers: "I am an actress, I worked very hard the interpretation of a dancer and there is the result".

Zoe, the protagonist of L'Opéra, is not just a gifted dancer. She is also a woman obsessed with perfection, not always coherent and rarely sympathetic. At the beginning of the series he is 35 years old (the same age as Labed, who is now 38) and is in a complicated moment: his professional zenith could be a summit after which it is not that there is a relaxed downhill, it is that he is going to find himself with a precipice. The discipline and cruelty of the elite ballet clash with Zoe's inner chaos, which is expressed in contradictory ways. She's a broken woman and she's an artist. She's an athlete and she's a mystery.

Apart from the magnetic creation of Ariane Labed, there are many other interesting things at L'Opéra. From the story of Flora (Suzy Bemba), an ugly duckling of the dance whose engine is to have previously read that story (she knows it could be a swan, but it will not be easy), to the setting of the series. The Opéra Garnier in Paris, photographed with all its splendor and all its decadence, is the amazing and not at all discreet setting that Ducrocq chooses for his story.

So L'Opéra does not need to explain that the world of Zoe and Flora is not available to everyone. The series leads us behind doors, those of the "staff only" rooms of Charles Garnier's iconic building, which we will never cross 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 silly teenage fiction will be disappointed. This is an adult, tortuous and dark series. Like Zoe. Like Flora.

And whoever has the sharp knives to criticize his dance scenes will have to sheathe them. Aimed at many hands, L'Opéra perfectly manages the difficulty of mixing dancers who perform with actors who dance. 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, anger, fatigue... He strives and succeeds. It is easy to fall into the trap of beauty and disgust of L'Opéra, in its mixture of palace intrigue (Parisian opera is almost a ministry) and inner exploration of characters whose dramas and challenges could not be further removed from ours and, precisely for that reason, could not attract us more.

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