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We've had the play, we've had the films. Les Liaisons dangereuses, Choderlos de Laclos's epistolary novel of 18th-century manners, has become a self-perpetuating industry. The wonder is no one has yet thought up a range of marketing spin-offs " Liaisons Dangereuses chocolates, Liaisons Dangereuses valentine cards, Liaisons Dangereuses... well, I leave the rest to other fevered imaginations. Meanwhile here comes the ballet, five years in the making, before finally finding Japanese sponsorship and receiving its world premiere last January in Tokyo.
Conceived and co-directed by the choreographer and dancer Adam Cooper and the designer Lez Brotherston, the production is an eyeful from the start. Vast voile curtains open; black-garbed, masked figures bearing torches pace ominously about a palatial room of mirrored ceiling and walls, apparently inspired by Versailles. In this simple but spectacular setting the aristocratic characters weave their web of liaisons and revenge. Obedient to strict etiquette in public, they form graceful Watteauesque social clusters; unbridled...