"But no-one knows how to whip an audience into a lather quite like Béjart. His Boléro is a triumph of erotic kitsch, a lap dance in the guise of high art. At the center of the stage stands a red table, upon which a shirtless man pulses his legs forward and back, while slowly raising his arms, hands like cobra heads, then rubs his chest and thighs, staring out at the audience suggestively all the while. He puts his hand under his chin, as if blowing kisses, frames his crotch with his palms, pulses his bare and increasingly sweaty chest. Who can resist? All around him, men sit in high-backed chairs, caressing their chests and opening their legs as if becoming increasingly aroused. Then they begin to stand up in twos and threes to do their own bump and grind, stalking the object of their adoration, ready to pounce. Over-the-top and vulgar as it is, it fits the music perfectly-after all, Ravel composed it for a similarly exotic dance performed by the vampy Ida Rubinstein in Paris in 1928. Béjart’s Boléro represents the exaltation of the dancer as the utlimate sex symbol. The dance can be performed by a man or a woman. On July 12, the majestic Marie-Agnès Gillot managed to class it up a bit, but on the 11th, Nicolas Le Riche, one of the company’s senior stars, was fabulously predatory, a raging furnace of self-love and sex appeal. One imagines that after the show he must have ravaged a hundred virgins, but maybe he simply went home and soaked his feet in the tub, but in any case, he was magnificent, good taste (and choreography) be damned.' DanceTabs, By Marina Harss on July 13, 2012