The feature film, which is released in theaters on Wednesday, "really resonated with me", told AFP Marion Barbeau, "first dancer" at the Paris Opera, rank preceding the supreme title of star.

The film, which includes very beautiful sequences of classical and contemporary dance, "made me want to emancipate myself from my company, which is my home", says the dancer who will take a year off from the Opera this season. next.

"I really loved my experience at the cinema. Often at the Opera, you meet new choreographers and it's great, but it passes very quickly. To be on a film for months is galvanizing", she explains.

The public can see her both in this film and, until April 3, on the stage of the Palais Garnier where she dances a choreography by Hofesh Shechter who... plays her own role in Klapisch's film.

For the moment, no specific project, except this "vital necessity" to discover other universes.

"It's the first time in my life that nothing has been planned," smiles the slender, dark-haired dancer who was a "little rat" at the Opéra's dance school before joining the prestigious company, where she often appears in contemporary roles.

A "second life" that looks a bit like the story of the film.

"A fighter"

Élise, 26, is a talented classical dancer haunted by the memory of her deceased mother who had encouraged her to do ballet and whose father (Denis Podalydès) would have preferred her to study law.

One day, tragedy strikes: she is injured on stage at the end of a great ballet, "La Bayadère", and the serious sprain threatens to prevent her from dancing for two years.

Marion Barbeau, first dancer at the Paris Opera, on the set of the film "En Corps" at the Théâtre du Châtelet on March 29, 2021. STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN AFP / Archives

In Brittany, she meets Josiane (Muriel Robin) who has a passion for welcoming artists and one day, Hofesch Shechter's company allows Élise to have confidence in herself again and to be reborn.

"Like many dancers, Élise is a fighter," explains Marion Barbeau.

Unlike some films like "Black Swan" favoring actresses like Natalie Portman and stunt doubles for ballerina roles, the director chose real dancers for his 14th feature film, filmed in the midst of a pandemic at the Théâtre du Châtelet, in La Villette. and in Brittany.

Fell in love with dance at the age of 14, Klapisch, who had found Marion Barbeau "touching" in the casting, had directed "Russian Dolls" with the Russian ballerina Evguenia Obraztsova, as well as a documentary on the star Aurélie Dupont, current director dance at the Opera.

"There is something very wonderful in ballet, and when you have access to the backstage, it's even more magical," he told AFP during the filming of "En Corps" in 2021.

To those who could reproach him for putting forward a kind of cliché opposing the "straightjacket" of classical ballet to "liberating" contemporary dance, both the director and the ballerina reject this interpretation.

"No one wins over the other," Klapisch had stressed.

"Élise is a bit rebellious but her rebirth as a dancer is not a cancellation of her life as a classical ballerina. She will always remain in her", assures Marion Barbeau.

In the film, still shaken by her injury, Élise comments that she has become "a true classical ballet heroine with a tragic destiny".

These "heroines in white tutu are always dead women, flouted, betrayed, shattered".

"It's true that we are a generation that asks itself a lot of questions about classical ballets. But I also learned thanks to my coach Florence Clerc that there are several reading grids for these characters" d' another age.

© 2022 AFP