Coppél-i.A.

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Image courtesy of Liceu

The Ballets de Monte-Carlo offers us Coppél-i.A, a new work in which choreographer and director Jean-Christophe Maillot revisits the famous romantic ballet to explore the world of robots and reflect on the development of artificial intelligence in present-day society. 

Coppélia, the emblematic classical ballet on which it is based, was created in 1870 by Arthur Saint-León and Léo Delibes and inspired by E. T. A. Hoffmann's tale Der Sandmann. 

Coppél-i.A. projects the audience into a near future, showing us how two young lovers, Frantz and Swanhilda, discover carnal love in a society which demands ever more progress, safety and hygiene. As eroticism bursts into their lives, an artificial being undermines their certainties and challenges everything they thought they knew about love.  

Jean-Christophe Maillot breathes life and feelings into the puppet created by Dr. Coppélius, endowing it with a human nature that goes beyond realistic movements.  

In this performance Maillot stresses the story as much as the dancing. The characters are carefully portrayed and Delibes' music is enriched and given a more contemporary air to underline their feelings.  

Is our ideal partner a being empowered by artificial intelligence which questions our status as members of the human species? In an age when proposed revisions to the Japanese constitution include the rights of robots, the question no longer belongs to the realm of science fiction: it is a reality which raises doubts and calls for a debate on the limits of artificial intelligence.  

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