Stories – Mogador Theatre, Paris

Stories continues at the Mogador Theatre, Paris until 27 June 2021.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

After two memorable performances at the Casino de Paris just before the second lockdown, we’re happy that the Mogador is alive again with a half-month’s engagement of Romain Rachline’s very theatrical storytelling dance show, cleverly mixing tap and modern jazz techniques with original music and high production values.

Starting off his career with tap at a very young age, Rachline moved on to jazz dancing, joining Rosella Hightower’s Dance Academy in Cannes before traveling to the States, where he trained with Alvin Ailey School and at Broadway Dance Center. After performing in New York with 360 Dance Company, he moved back to France to join the company of Dance of the Vampires directed by Roman Polanski at Mogador, followed by Singin’ in the Rain and 42nd Street at Théatre Du Châtelet directed by Stephen Mear.

Starting to choreograph himself in 2016 for the Champs Elysées Film Festival ceremony, and already showing his fascination with the movie world, Rachline then choreographed for Disneyland Paris and started writing music of his own for short films and eventually for the musical Cuba Libre, for which he served as lyricist and choreographer as well.

Creating the RB Dance Company in 2018 to develop his mix of tap dancing and urban jazz, part of his Stories was showcased in a popular French TV contest show ‘La France a un incroyable talent’, making it to all the way to the finals.

Stories is brilliantly told through Rachline’s personal dance vocabulary, using traditional tap dancing steps mixed with contemporary street jazz to his own urban music and quasi rap vocals. It follows the path of Icarus, a young actor on the way up who gets caught up in an oppressive relationship with his own director, ultimately becoming his prisoner.

Enhanced by a very cinematic scenic design by Frederica Mugnai, who, as in most contemporary Broadway shows, uses moving sets, together with effective lighting designed by Alex Hardellet, Stories brilliantly achieves the challenge of telling a story without words. With multiple references to the narrative dancing developed by the likes of Jerome Robbins (West Side Story) and Michael Kidd (Guys and Dolls and the movie The Band Wagon) whose crap game dance and girl hunt ballet are cleverly quoted by Romain.

By creating a link between the classical theatre dancing of the late 40s and 50s when the action is actually taking place as illustrated in the period costume by Margaux Ponsard and Janie Loriault and what is definitely contemporary music and modern staging, Rachline manages to create a bridge across several generational gaps, bringing tap dancing to today’s younger audience in a resolutely innovative way.

Served by a superbly talented cast of dancer-actors (headed by Enzo Boffa in the part of Icarus), Stories, with its mix of light and dark, constitutes the perfect antidote to the Covid blues. It really was a privilege to see this brilliant company live dancing on the Parisian stage. It would be interesting to see what Rachline, with his gift for narrative and theatrical dancing, would deliver if assigned to choreograph a fully-fledged Broadway show. For all its film noir ambiance similar to that of Cy Coleman work, City of Angels would be the perfect choice.

Don’t hesitate to rush to Mogador to catch up with Stories. The good news is that Stage Entertainment has a second show lined up following a run of The Lion King with the first French version of Mel Brooks’ The Producers, opening in December at the Théâtre de Paris.

Patrick Honoré