Saint Genet L'Africain

The Kennedy Center opened its Contemporary Dance series for the 2006/07 season with Saint Genet l’Africain—the dance-theater version of the celebrated play “The Maids” written in 1948 by Jean Genet (1910-1986). Genet, a prominent French novelist, playwright, and poet, based the play on a high profile murder case involving two sisters, the maids, who carefully plotted and executed a gruesome murder of their employers.

Saint Genet l’Africain is a modern interpretation of Genet’s drama with a peculiar twist – the story takes places not in Madam’s bedroom as in the original play, but in a prison. Moreover the maids, Claire and Solange, appear as male inmates inhabiting separate cells and watched over by a guard who is the Madam incarnate.

Read the review on Ballet.co.uk