Thomas Bangalter: Mirage - Ballet for 16 Dancers

A flat landscape unfolds before us—as we travel through this desert, long-forgotten buildings crumble into view. Gradually, singular sounds form cells: textural footprints that pick a path across the unknown. The instruments feel familiar, but are entirely from the imagination of Thomas Bangalter. We continue into this futuristic world under beating heat. Shapes fragment and reform—all is not as it seems. This is the mirage from the eponymous ballet for 16 dancers: electronic scene-painting conceived with choreographer Damien Jalet and artist Kohei Nawa. “There’s a ritualistic aspect to the soundworld, an idea of a ceremony from an unknown time, and of a past civilisation,” Bangalter tells Apple Music Classical. The music of Mirage shifts between atmospheric electro-minimalism and rhythmic beats, sometimes spattered with bell-like sounds or glittery chimes. These are all made from electronic waves, not samples, blurring the line between instruments that are real and invented. “This is electronic music, but it is not programmed music,” says Bangalter who, like composer Iannis Xenakis, blends computerisation with traditional scoring. “I use electronic tools that allow for gesture and spontaneity, so that dots of sounds are almost like a Jackson Pollock painting.” It’s the ideal medium to evoke the eerie phenomena of mirages known as Fata Morgana, caused by specific weather conditions, and a wandering search for meaning. The music is deceptive, appearing static but quietly developing. “It’s like looking at the sun or moon,” explains Bangalter, “if you’re watching a sunrise, nothing seems to happen; you look again and everything’s changed.” The repeated fragments form a type of electro-minimalism, where the emphasis is on texture rather than tonality. Thanks to software-based microtonal tuning capabilities, Bangalter can work with “a tone, semitone, or 10th of a tone, a 30th of a tone, 50th of a tone” and so on. Instead of melody, he takes inspiration from nature, from “a crackling fire or flowing river”. It’s a change of pace for the musician who, along with Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo as Daft Punk, created synth-pop hits including “Around the World” (1997), “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” (2001), and “One More Time” (2001). But Bangalter is not new to ballet, having composed Mythologies (2022) for choreographer Angelin Preljocaj and the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine. However, the process for both works was markedly different. “I worked on Mythologies for over a year before Angelin started to work on the dance,” he recalls, “Mirage was much closer to a film score—we workshopped the movement in Kyoto, and then I would put that to music.” The choreography reflects the sculptural use of timbre, and vice versa. There’s a claustrophobic tension to Part II, as the music becomes increasingly rhythmic. It evokes apocalyptic climate breakdown and a loss of society. The shimmering Parts IV and V suggest the central theme of imagined objects, while the final Parts VII and VIII ponder on this new world. Unlike conventional ballet, where the music is movement driven, often with a focus on specific dance forms, Miragemoves at its own pace. “It’s more like a living sculpture,” says Bangalter. Given the way Mirage was scored, it is perhaps unsurprising to learn that the music is not intended to be performed live. Bangalter recorded and produced the work, and it is this recorded version that is the most pure. “Mirage is a collage that has been layered, edited, with spontaneous snippets. It’s not meant to be deconstructed. It’s a bit like musique concrète,” he says, referencing the 1940s experimental music that spliced found sound. This is typical of Bangalter, an artist who loves mid-century avant-garde as much as ’90s house music. “The most beautiful aspect of music is diversity and opposition,” he says. “Lyricism and radicalism can peacefully coexist.” Vive la révolution.