November 28th, 2011 §
November 12th, 2011 §
Balet Bratislava's premiere of Romeo and Juliet yesterday in Bratislava started the company's performances off very well. A delighted public. Here are some photos to whet your appetite. Review to follow tomorrow.
Balet Bratislava dance of patricians 1
Balet Bratislava: Romeo and Juliet Continues »
October 26th, 2011 §
La Sylphide is one of the easiest ballets to perform and one of the most difficult ballets to get perfect. The dangers of La Sylphide are multiple:
- the Scottish setting can seem very campy
- adequate stagecraft to preserve a sense of wonder
- the music can come across as thin and grating
- sufficiently large, gifted and beautiful corps-de-ballet
- the male audience can fail to fall in love with La Sylphide
- the women in the public fail to identify with Effie
- the women in the public can wonder what Effie sees in James
Manuel Legris has gotten it all right with Wiener Staatsoper ballet.
Irina Tsymbal as La Sylphide
All photos courtesy & © Max Moser
The decors are very sober, even a little bit drab. You feel inside a Scottish manor somewhere in the Highlands. Yet all the space of the huge Vienna State Opera stage is all there for the variations. In the second act the woods were tremendous and airy.
The small touches of stagecraft were a delight. Sylphides flying across the stage at 15 metres above the stage, Sylphides perched in the branches of the trees, La Sylphide disappearing vertically up the chimney or disappearing instantly into the floor.
The Staatsoper orchestra was in fine form, particularly in the overture which was sufficiently lyrical and touching that one wishes a recording. Through the rest of the ballet the performance was usually very good but the limits of the score were sometimes felt and the music hinted of military marching band. Still I'm far from sure one can do better without reorchestration.
Staatsoper corps de ballet La Sylphide
Manuel Legris has continued to work wonders with the splendid corps-de-ballet that his predessor Harangoza so paintakingly built. There are no less than 23 additional sylphides on stage in the second act. The whole corps-de-ballet looked great. There are small moments of synchronicity to perfect, but it is the premiere after all. There are few over-rehearsed ballet companies left in the world and Vienna Staatsopera ballet is not one of them.
Irina Tsymbal tears of La Sylphide
Irina Tsymbal is a perfect Sylphide. Her pallid complexion and somewhat tragic demeanor finds its natural home. Tsymbal can portray imperious roles as well. She is a very versatile ballerina. But La Sylphide is the most natural fit of all for her.
After the performance, Manuel Legris elevated Irina Tsymbal to First Soloist. It is good to see Legris keep an open mind about dancers. Initially, he planned to release Tsymbal before his first season as what he saw in rehearsal hadn't impressed him. Fortunately a good fairy told him that Tsymbal's talents flame on stage and not at the bar. If Legris can remain open to talent like this, he has a long and bright career as a director ahead of him.
Effie is a more difficult role. Danced with sufficient flair, James enchantment with La Sylphide would make no sense. Nina Polakova is almost as lyric a ballerina as Irina Tsymbal, with less of Tysmbal's undercurrents of dangerous passion. As Effie she very deliberately curbs her charms to become a real girl, in love with her man but more cheerful than deep, trusting than passionate.
Roman Lazik Irina Tsymbal La Sylphide
As James, Roman Lazik is in his element. James is the ordinary guy caught in a remote fantasy. Lazik plays James as a good old boy more than a dreamer. Still, in the second act, he struggles as one feels the the emotion is not in his bones. While Lazik is a very handsome man and a very correct classical dancer and an attentive partner, he lacks a certain passion.
With a truly charismatic and masculine dancer in the role of James - Sergei Filin from the Bolshoi comes to mind - the men identify strongly with James and the women understand and feel both for Effie and La Sylphide. Lazik didn't fail to move us, but didn't move us as much as I'd like. This single weakness explains to me why the audience reception was enthusiastic and not ecstastic. I hope we will see Vladimir Shishov in the role of James.
Andrey Kaydanovskiy as Madge
We did see some great performances in secondary roles: Andrei Kaydonovsky was truly wicked as Madge. The pantomine was writ large but he pushed through it with sufficient abandon that we believed in her evil. His movement remained strong but feminine.
Kamil Pavelka was a resolute and sufficiently antagonistic Gurn. One felt his contempt for his friend who was half heartedly stealing the woman he loved. Pavelka is the kind of dancer who is perfect in the secondary role, although I'm not sure how well he'd carry a prince.
The Scottish kilt complemented Mihail Sosnovichi's shape and gave him more traditional proportions, which along with a good leap and his usual energy helped both Sosnovichi and his partner Maria Alati to an invigorating pas de deux as the young newlyweds.
Mihail Sosnovichi Maria Alatii
Solo Sylphides Alena Klochova Marie Claire d Lyse Andrea Nemethova
The solo Sylphides - Marie-Claire D'Lyse, Alena Klochova, Andrea Némethová - were very good but perhaps a little bit too heroic. Super Sylphides, I would call them. But why must Sylphides always be frail.
Manuel Legris brought in excellent pedagogues: himself and Elisabeth Platel. Gradually he is pulling Vienna up to the level of Opéra de Paris. The danger is too much success and perhaps Paris will be calling him back too soon for Vienna's good.
On the whole La Sylphide earns a 9 out of 10. If I hadn't seen Sergei Filin dance James, perhaps I'd give La Sylphide 2011 at Vienna Staatsoper a perfect 10.
Special thanks to Max Moser for his ever excellent dance and theater photos. You can book Max's services at PhotobyMM.com. His full gallery of La Sylphide.
October 23rd, 2011 §
Jochen Ulrich Michelangelo ensemble cast in Landestheater Linz
The stage juts out into the audience, as the curtains open we see a tableau vivant of a sculpting studio in motion. The orchestra fills the deep back of the theatre. It's almost like Shakespeare's in the round Globe. This is the first of several successful staging decisions of the evening. With the orchestra pit closed and the orchestra at the back of the hall, LandesTheatre Linz becomes a magnificent concert hall.
Once again Jochen Ulrich has led a new ballet with the music. Here he chose Arvo Pärt's Collage" über Bach", "Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten" and "Spiegel in Spiegel" and finally Pärt's "Lamentate for Piano and Orchestra". From Britten we have the Requiem. Despite the two nominally very different composers, sonically the evening holds together perfectly. It a complete and powerful ballet score.
Fortunately, both subject and dance are up to the music this time round. In Michelangelo, across the centuries Ulrich has found une âme soeur. Like Michelangelo, Ulrich has lived an often lonely and tempestuous life of creation. Ulrich does not sculpt with stone but with live bodies.
Michelangelo's problems are Ulrich's very own. The personal relationship to his subject stirs Ulrich's deepest powers.
Jochen Ulrich's Michelangelo: a masterwork of music and creation Continues »
September 19th, 2011 §
Upper Room is a strange name for a dance piece. Dance is about movement and not about static space.
On the other hand, perhaps the title is not so out of place as space is crucial to Oper Graz ballet director Darrel Toulon's latest work. The Wilder Mann studio theater where Oper Graz ballet will work for the next two years of Next Liberty renovations is very special.
The space is exceptionally wide and very shallow. What this wide space means is that everyone in the audience as first to third row seats. In the front row you are so close to the dances you could reach out and touch them. Or as in Upper Room, feel the wind of a pillow flying in the hands of a pirouetting dancer across your nose.
Upper Room: pillows, pillows, pillows everywhere
notice the breadth of the stage: this is only about half of it
The great advantage of this stage is the possibility to work with multiple independent dance units at the same time. It's easy and even desirable to have as many as three different sets of action informing one another at the same time. For choreographers who want to control the audience's eyes and minds, the opportunity to have multiple action at the same time is frustrating. For those who accept its potential, multiple centres of action is very liberating and very modern.
Upper Room Bostjan Ivanjsic
We live in a world of intense sensory input: billboards, cellphone, radio, television, telephone, street traffic, computer all compete for our attention at the same time. We are constantly making choices of what information to absorb and what information to discard. Wilder Mann is a contemporary stage for contemporary dance.
Toulon's Upper Room is an evening length work divided into two distinct parts. Part one and part two include entirely different costumes and entirely different stagings. The only unifying element is the music of singer Vesna Petkovic and violinist Boris Mihaljcic.
Including live music is a wonderful decision. Live music brings dance to another level and Petkovic and Mihaljcic offer powerful performances which visibly infuse the dancers with energy.
Michael Munoz acrobatic handstand in part one
One could argue that also unifying the two pieces is that in both parts a single metaphoric prop is central to the work. Part one focuses on metal frames, about the size of a large door or a single bed. Part two focuses on pillows, large white pillows on which to lay your head for sleeping.
Sarah Schoch in front of frames Upper Room
In part one, the dancers lie inside the metal frames, walk through these frames, observer one another across these frame and jump through these frames. At times there are up to five frames on stage at a time worked each by a pair of dancers.
Even more striking are the costumes in part one: each dancer is wearing a bob of shiny bronze hair. Each wears dark silver pants. The men are naked from the waist up, the women in small tube tops. The look is very androgynous. As is the dance.
Upper Room: part one fantastic wigs and alien look
With the strange wigs and clothing, I felt a certain alienation and otherness from the dancers. As they all look identical and different from us, it's like watching another species live out their lives and feelings. This alienation creates an interesting distance and encourages scientific observation. At one point, Michael Munoz's wig flew off in a powerful duet and we could see him for the next fifteen minutes as himself: the impression was enitrely different. If the dancers looked more human, the emotional text would be far more powerful as we could identify with them as individuals and not conceive them as a group.
Much of the dance is pairings. Sometimes two women will live an intimate relationship, sometimes a man and a woman, sometimes two men. There is a very disturbing near rape scene of a woman trapped in her frame. Upper Room Part One takes a very violent look at human emotions. Vesna Petkovic's dark Serbian songs echo and lead the action. That most of us are not able to understand the words is intentional: Upper Room Part One is about emotional text and not about literal metaphor.
Dianne Gray - Bostjan Ivanjsic
Towards the half hour mark, Swiss dancer Sarah Schoch makes a very dramatic entry in a long red dress and a baroque coiffure. Moving with abandon, Schoch reveled in her moment in the light, kicking her long legs high. Her intervention was a delight in itself but I didn't entirely understand its place in an otherwise very disciplined exploration of the frame metaphor.
Sarah Schoch - Lady in Red
Another highlight is the solo by and duets including Bostjan Ivanjsic whose physique is in magnificent form. When Ivanjsic is center stage he dominates the other dancers who struggle to keep up with his presence. On the other side, after the summer pause, Michál Zábavík has returned with a spare tire more suited to a sedentary man ten years his senior.
Bostjan Ivanjsic in good form with Laura Fischer
Among the premiere audience, some suggested that part one with the frames could make an entire evening of dance. I'd agree with that. One might be able to cut the score back to minimalist elements, leaving most of the explicit text behind.
When we reenter the theater the dancers have taken our place and Vesna Petkovic is enthroned on a mountain of pillows. We surround her as she sings. Five minutes later, the dancers being to guide us back to our places one by one. The confusion and role reversal here is very powerful. I wondered why Toulon chose not to develop the switch further by creating multiple circles of action from which spectators could move from one to the other before sending us back to our seats.
Once we are back in our places, the dancers each take a pillow to caress.
Part two is an exhiliarating voyage through violence and tenderness. But by the time it windes down after forty odd minutes, the work with pillows feels like it has run its course by the time. Pillows have been used as a giant bed, as sleeping companions, as hurled weapons, as instruments to suffocate friends, as dance partners. After watching part two you will never doubt the importance of pillows in our lives.
You don't perceive it as you watch the show, but dancing with pillows limits the range and precision of dance. A pillow is an object constantly changing form and weight balance. Unlike the frames which are stiff and certain contexts with which a dancer can work carefully.
Sarah Schoch and Laura Fischer face off with pillows
The pillow piece feels more like a great fun experiment than the normally deep work of Toulon. There is some very good work with focused light in the hands of the dancer. Dianne Gray is particularly adept in lighting the other dancers dramatically while managing to stay low to the ground and move smoothly with the action. Newcomer Challyce Brogdon danced near my place and danced with discipline and flair as did compatriot New York native Serge Desroches. There is a particularly charming catfight between Areti Palouki and Agnès Girard.
Near the end, Vesna Petkovic breaks out in Fran Landesman's 1959 Beat classic "The Ballad of the Sad Young Men". While the duet between Serge Desroches and Ruo Chen Wang is powerful, the change of musical language grates after a full evening of song in Serbian.
Upper Room opened exactly one month after rehearsals started. The normal period of development for an evening lenth work is anywhere between six weeks and three months. With Upper Room, you feel that you are watching a work in progress. All the elements have been found but not worked through to the end. It's like a half-finished sculpture where you can see the grand lines of the form, but the expression has not been finished.
My hope is that Toulon if he revisits to Upper Room will return to the frame metaphor and the very groundwork he has done for a one act evening length piece. He could retitle it very simply "Frames". While the pillows piece was more fun and valid as a technical experiment, it remains more a divertissement than a work of art.
Upper Room can be seen 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 29 September and closes 2 October 2011 at Jakoministrasse 3/5 in Graz. On October 19, in the same space the single evening Tanz Nite 2 will take place.
Toulon and the Oper Graz ballet will be creating a ballet of on Henry Purcell's majestic baroque opera of Dido and Aeneas in May. Purcell's music will be performed live so this is not an occasion to miss.
Photos except Pillows, Pillows, Pillows by Werner Kmetitsch
Video & Pillows, Pillows, Pillows by Alec Kinnear
August 22nd, 2011 §
The Odeon is one of the most magnificent performance spaces anywhere in the world. A dance company need only take the Odeon down to sandy bricks and Corinthian columns to create an atmosphere of impending wonder.
Emio Greco when he brough Double Points: Hell to ImPulsTanz went one step further. He opened up not just the main theatre space but the wings. The performance space was massive. He chose to use the light pushing in from side windows and skylights as the principal lighting. Starting time very strang though: 19:30, too late for the daylight to really dominate the lighting, too early for artificial lights to work their magic.
The absence of coherent lighting weakened the spell Greco tried to cast with his two dancers Sawami Fukuoka and Dereck Cayla (in an role originally created by Greco on himself). On the other hand, the deep klang soundscapes resonate (uncredited).
Double Points Hell Sawami Fukuoka and Dereck Cayla
Photo Floriaan Ganzevoort
Cayla is clad all in black stocking, as a shadow. One cannot even see mouth or eyes. To open Double Points: Hell, Kayla offers a kind of neo classical frenzied solo. Anticipation is high.
What follows are solos by Sawami Fukuoka and sequences where she is shadowed by Cayla. Sometimes she seem coherent, other times she seems to rave. She pulls at her clothing, flaunts her sexuality. Fukuoka's initial oriental doll charm falls away entirely when she rips the black wig off her head and reveals the shaved head of psychiatric patient.
Double Points Hell Sawami Fukuoka Emio Greco
Photo Anna van Kooij
Fukuoka is the incarnation of a girlfriend gone wrong, a woman gone mad.
Yet strangely her monologues in Japanese failed to touch any emotional chord. I just felt a distance from someone with whom one would not want to share a space. Later when Fukuoka and Cayla dance an extended duet to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Double Points: HELL hints at taking wings again.
Double Points Hell Sawami Fukuoka 2
Photo Anna van Kooij
Yet somehow the night I saw Double Points: HELL even that duet remained relatively flat emotionally. Something happening to two strangers, a good idea unfulfilled, a promise not kept.
The existential questions about sexuality and violence which Double Points: HELL strives to raise remain unanswered and for me unilluminated. The whole piece seems a strong concept (similar to the Roland Petit's Le Jeune Homme et la Mort) in neither original nor virtuouso execution.
Double Points: HELL is only forty minutes long and there are passable steps hence as a spectator you don't have the time to be bored. In the end, I felt just lightly disappointed and somewhat empty leaving the miniature. Much of the general applause felt perfunctory in honor of Fukuoka's effort and Greco's reputation rather than an overwhelming spontaneous combustion. But the applause rang on long enough that I might be wrong.
June 20th, 2011 §
For the final Oper Graz dance work in June, ballet director Darell Toulon brought two promising choreographers to Graz to create new works.
The lucky pair: Vienna's budding star Nikolaus Adler lately of Homunculus and Villach born Guido Markowitsch, best known for his choreography for musicals and his work in Darmstadt Staatstheater.
While both pieces were part of a coherent evening, as separate and nearly full length works, I have divided this review into two sections.
Resurrection or the Alienation of Humanity - Nikolaus Adler
At first glance Resurrection appears to be a reprise of Törte für Alle, which premiered at Choreolab in 2006. Adler has brough back the cakes, the clowns, the brutal music from the Tiger lillies, a statue of the Virgin Mary next to a dead man and even a little girl singing a beautiful song at the end.
But in fact Resurrection is more a complete remake of the original with a little more time and a dedicated cast. The last piece was created at Choreolab where the dancers are just borrowed from Staatsoper between rehearsals for the main stage. Very happily Adler has made some of the explicity intellectual pretensions of Torte fur Alle (billboard style references to Sartre and Fox news) implicit and reinvested the returns in the dancing.
Nikolaus Adler - Resurrection oder die Befremdlichkeit
der Zwischen Menschlikeit: Cakes and Clowns again
Resurrection opens very strongly with high speed deep bending dancing with grinding rhythms. The opposite of what one could expect from the usually austere Adler. What is remarkable about his choreography are the contrasts. Even during a powerful energetic duet, Adler will stop to show delicate work with fingers. Without being afraid of movement, Adler has always shown an unusual fineness of gesture.
I've always wondered how and why Toulon chooses his performers for Oper Graz. His auditions go on for weeks and in the end, he usually chooses not particularly tall nor superficially attractive dancers in what is frankly a buyer's market. Now I've found out:
Opera Graz dancers can really move. Particularly astonishing are Laura Fischer, Michael Munoz and Bostjan Ivanjsic.
Bostjan Ivanjsic Laura Fischer duet Resurrection:
wonderful movement and powerful duets based on contact
After the opening burst of energy, Resurrection quickly slows down to Adler's usual ironic sadness: Adler's macabre clowns stand in a line and push a cake in one another's faces.
Adler takes us through a sinister pantomime of funeral by a group of clowns, complete with statue of Virgin Mary by the head of the deceased. Adler's clown-faced brutes kick the poor corpse in the head. Wtih all the cellars in contemporary Austria filled with the corpses of unwanted lovers and incest's children, Adler's wanton brutality seems part of daily life here in Austria.
The pace doesn't relent with a spectacular duet between Ivanjsic and Fischer without music: swinging arms writ large, difficult lifts and kinetic gyration. Stunning dancing: mesmerising enough to only notice the absence of music when sound reappears in the next duet.
Adler was able to go to complex, dangerous movement with these dancers experienced with one another and with enough rehearsal time. Much of the movement seemed polished versions of very good contact improv. Contact improv is about communication with the partner so refining it for the stage is to choose communication through movement.
All good things must come to an end and they do with a little girl on stage with another dancer. Tatjana Wiesenhofer sang extremely beautifully:
My papa was a wonderful clown. My father was a beautiful man.
All children are charming on stage. Wiesenhofer has a great voice and seems a natural.
Sometimes it is not nice to be me - Guido Markowitz
The simple narrow black stage was divided into three with two ten metre silk like transparent black curtains. Two men begin the action with an extended duet. Neither Mathias Strahm nor Gyorgy Baán much impress. Their movements are exaggerated and false, parodic. Not nearly so fine as the work Adler just showed us. The tall Strahm reminds one of typically world weary Nicolas Cage.
Happily enough the next duet between Michael Munoz and Shaohui Yi brought some real intensity back to the stage. Munoz seems to woo Yi to no avail. Yi's persistent rejection is relentless. Munoz's grimace of fury sears us.
On the curtains, water drops are cleverly projected. I'm as tired of projection as the next contemporary theatre-goer: most projection is mainly a worn out trope but here the moving drops felt real and right. Sounds of rain and water justified the visual. Stagecraft which works and is not expensive: you can see that Markowitz worked hard to bring light, sound and texture together to support the water theme.
Occasionally the antics to extend the water metaphor consume art, leaving only device: the dance with a full glass of water trying not to spill it was either pretentious or something from reality TV.
But then suddenly an astonishing solo from Dianne Gray stroking her own body with handfulls of ice offers a breathtaking visual and moves us with its strong emotional text.
Dianne Gray's exceptional solo with ice cubes in her hands
Action now takes place in all three stages, with two sets of action on the left. The drama in the center, solos and duets on the sides while Munoz still weeps as the Japanese ex-girlfriend slaps him around. The effect is symphonic.
On both sides, there are ice solos while in the middle a trio dance: Michal Zabavik and Ivansjic with Fischer between them. The two men beat each other senseless for Fischer's favours. The scene ends with Michal Zabavik drowning Ivansjic. Ivansjic's head is held under water several times for up to as long as a minute. Even two of the girls come in to help hold a struggling Ivansjic upside down. When Ivansjic's comes out of the water wet and gasping, it is not play acting.
The music splinters between klang effects, the crash of ice against metal (live) and vocal lullabies. The contrast makes each more effective in turn. The two men fighting on a wet floor means real danger, a sort of Ultima Vez light (Wim Vandekeybus's company will likely hold the record for the highest career threatening injury per dancer forever).
Now six of the girls lie on stage and gargle together, extending the water metaphor to undreamt extremes. Ivansjic is strapped by the men into a trapeze on the left. As he hanges there helpless, Fischer comes and dances the most astonishing passion with him.
At times she climbs up onto Ivansjic to embrace him. At times Fischer is on the floor and Ivansjic pulls her limbs up to him as she somersaults or hangs upside down in his arms. Fischer's long tresses cascade in the light, shiny and feminine and beautiful. They kiss kisses of passion. Finally Fischer rides Ivansjic like a broken horse.
Bostjan Ivanjsic & Laura Fischer on and off the trapeze together
one of the best duets I've ever seen: perfect conception
with touching performances from both dancers
For the last ten minutes into the golden age of Rosas and Ultima Vez. We don't often see dancing or choreography as raw and passionate as what Ivansjic and Fischer have just shown us. The duet is like all of Romeo and Juliet distilled to seven minutes.
Michael Munoz is still to go mad, spat on from all sides by seven comrades or ex-lovers. The ice crashes louder and louder. In the end, he slaps his own leg out from under himself in an amazing acrobatic and symbolic fall. Like Munoz, sooner or later we all slap a leg out from under ourselves. It is only human.
Still, Sometimes it is not nice to be me piece slowly disintegrates after the trapeze duet. There is nothing Markowitz or frankly nearly any other choreographer can offer to maintain the intensity after such a moment. Perhaps the piece should have gone out on a high. Perhaps it's better that it winds down with a slow thud. The last performers are not nearly as interesting as Munoz, Ivansjic, Fischer, Yi and Dianne Gray.
Envoi
A spectacularly successful evening on a very small and narrow stage. Markowitz, Adler and Toulon demonstrate you need neither large stage nor large budget to mount ambitious work. A will to create, strong dancers and the time to do it (rehearsals were spaced out over months and the premier date was moved a month later) are all it takes.
If you are tired of the Vienna silent non-movement conceptual scene, if you still love dance, if you'd like to see passionate movement, get thee hence to Graz while you still can. Jump Start is not an evening to be missed.
There are Jump Start performances on Tuesday 21 June, Wednesday 22 June, Saturday 25 June, Sunday 26 June. Keep in mind the performances are not in Oper Graz but StudioBuhne Wilder Mann Jakomimistraße 3-5 about ten minutes walk from the Opera. Photos © Werner Kmetisch/Oper Graz: frankly both shows are much more exciting than the photos show.
June 19th, 2011 §
The stage is a wooden arena, with benches on all sides including one before the audience. Above the arena sits a drummer who immediately begins to beat a large skinned drum. Talented deep rhythms, slightly foreign to our ears.
A man in a blue martial arts costume stands in the center. Drift in various young men and women in combative poses. The fight begins.
Long bouts of shadow fighting eventually bring in some long legged blondes in the back to watch the combat (Marietta Kro, Lucia Patoprstá). The dojo atmosphere moves towards that of film noir. The long legged blondes end up in writhing embraces with bands our half naked fighters. Very sexy, moving us quickly towards B movies and Russ Meyer and Tarantino.
The two Blondes Marietta Kro Lucia Patoprsta
Group sex where one woman submits to multiple partners against her will appears to be a recurring them in Ulrich's work. Lots more of it tonight. These fighters and ravishers carry around life size plush lions on their shoulders to amuser themselves between sexual assaults.
A lady in white enters with face hidden behind a wide brimmed hat, followed by the firsts man in a frightening wooden tribal mask. The first amazing dance of a man behind a mask follows. Flinging, lifts, flips. After a struggle nearly to the death an exhausted Fabrice Jucquois is revealed.
Our first clue as to the true nature of the evening has dropped. There is neither story here nor conventional characters. These figures on stage are symbols as in the Life of Man or Tsar Hunger of Leonid Andreyev or later the epic theatre of Berthold Brecht. Death, Life, Despair, Hunger, Desire. Nouns with capitals are come to reveal to us the meaning of life.
An enormous man in a death mask and dreadlocks follows the woman in white into the dojo. As a dreadlocked leather jacketed biker Wallace Jones gives the dance performance of the evening. The speed and grace and power of his long limbs terrorised the audience in his nightmare appearance.
Jones's overhead lifts of Anna Sterbová astonish.
Rumi in Flammen lifts this time Anna Sterbova flies
in the arms of Martin Dvorak
The next character still mystifies me. Mickey Mouse comes on stage. Yes, really, Disney's guy, the one from the top of mother's cookie jar from the fifties. Big ears, big eyes, big round smile. But Mickey's spoiling for a fight tonight and he gets it.
On beat the drums boombity-boom-boom in the steady hands of Mohammad Rez Mortazavi an alternately spellbinding and oppressive rhythm.
We storm the boundary of kitsch here with the mouse and go right over the other side with our next warrior. A downhill skier complete with skis and tall boots. He trudges into the center of the fighting ring and then stops. It turns out there are dancing moves you can do only in ski boots and Emilijus Miliakus does a good job showing how you can lean further forward and back than humanly possible and writhe in spellbinding ways. He throws a woman or two over his head before finally Sterbová pulls the skis and boots from his feet.
At that point the other fighters gang up on Miliakus and beat him to death.
Martin Dvorak is a curious choice for the Master as Ulrich has more overtly charismatic dancers to carry this lead. But Anna Sterbová does great work as his apprentice who is regularly tossed into poses foreign to flesh and blood.
Irene Bauer provides an atmospheric shadow across the back of stage, head to toe in black chiffon. Sarah Deltenre is a convincingly macabre lady in white.
I thought Bauer and Deltenre were Death and Life but they turned out to be Day and Night.
Apparently this symbolic dance drama began with the work of a Persian poet who died about a thousand years ago, Rumi. Rumi's full name is Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī. Rumi took his nickname from the part of Anatolia where he lives and which used to belong to Byzantium, aka Eastern Rome. In 2007, Unesco celebrated the year of Rumi, with international conferences with as many as 450 presentation. The guy is a big deal: think Persian Chaucer or at least William Wordsworth.
There's nothing in his writings to suggest a martial nature or a fascination with combat. Rumi was more into long walks and philosophical talks. His idea of love seems to have been more Platonic than consumed with trashy blondes and group sex.
Once again with Ulrich's work, we are left more impressed with the strength of the conception and the musical choice and performance than the choreography. Nearly two hours of live drums is an impressive sonic experience. The musical score and the performance are the work of a handsome young Persian musician, Mohammad Reza Mortazavi. His stamina and energy delighted both dancers and audience.
The choreography is more focused than Ulrich's preceding piece Winterreise: the combat area engendered a string of dance and movement events. As well as the action on the center stage also background notes which appear and reappear. Bauer as the night goes up and down the stairs and brings Mortazavi more into the performance. The other fighters/disciples remain on the stage actively observing the action when not participating.
Simon Corder's lighting is more consistently detailed than the lighting in Winterreise. Again, the tones tend towards the strong, apparently a consequence of the planned outdoor performanes of Rummi in Flammen. In open air, the dojo is to be placed among the spectators and the dancers will circulate freely in the audience.
Rumi in Flammen will be even more effective with the dancers among the audience. It still won't have much to do Rumi's poetry and will owe more to B movies than Persian literature, but can survive on its own merits. If Ulrich has managed to expose Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī's work and Persian literature to more Austrians, his appropriation of Rumi's name will have done no harm and much good.
Regardless of what the rest of the world and modern Persia may think of Rumi in Flammen at its premiere, Linz stood and applauded Ulrich and Mortazavi's work for over fifteen minutes of curtain calls.
More info about Jochen Ulrich's Rumi in Flammen, more photographs and tickets can be found on the website of Landestheater Linz. Photos courtesy of Landestheater Linz (uncredited). Do not miss the open air performance on July 2 on the MainDeck of the Ars Electronica Center (July 3 in case of rain).
June 18th, 2011 §
Winterreise is one of the best concerts you will ever attend. A splendid evening of Schubert music. Choreographer Jochen Ulrich worked hand in hand with composer Heinz Winbeck to develop a full length score of the best of Schubert's music for orchester and a singer.
The singer Martin Achrainer fills each song full of portent and passion. Fans of German lieder would swoon. I hope there's a compact disc for sale. In his dramatic performance, Achrainer often takes the role of the composer Schubert himself, writing out sheafs and sheafs of music on stage in the first act.
The stage is dramatically decked out with a huge round mirror overhead, about 15 metres across, which can flutter in moments of dramatic importance offering a strange through the looking glass feel. At the front corner of the stage there is an impressionist painting of Schubert's time. Alas, the painting at 1.5 metres wide is too small to be intelligible and too large not to notice. Most of the lighting is strongly green tinted for some reason. Alas for most of the piece, the lights are also just too bright. I'm no fan of watching dance in the dark, but until the last half hour of the two hour performance, one felt that one was under rehearsal lights and the light technicians went off duty while the choreographer and dancers worked.
Jochen Ulrich Winterreise ensemble
With such bright lights, the large atmospheric candelabra arrangements on stage had little effect.
In spite of the interrogation lights, the dramatic development is extremely difficult to follow. In the beginning there is a stream of beautiful women wandering on stage only to be accosted by pairs of men and disappear. Later when the women reappear on stage they are inebriated and stumbling. Now they are out and out ravished by packs of four and five men. Looking into the program one learns that there's a bride (Clara Pascual Martí) and her mother (Irene Bauer). Bauer changes costume more than anyone else in the production, strutting gorgeously in high heels and a tight tiny white skirt in her first appearance and with a long spell in the second act in a long black evening gown, an elegant precursor to the flappers. I've rarely seen someone dance so well in high heels but as the mother, Bauer is sadly often left to just wander around.
Fabrice Jucquois Irene Bauer Clara Pascual Marti
The cast list continues with a father (Fabrice Jucquois), a sister (Anna Sterbová), a brother in law (Wallace Jones) and an uncle (Daniel Morales Pérez). On the other side we have a groom (Matej Pajgert), his mother (Sarah Deltenre), his father (Alexander Novikov), his brother (Emilijus Miliauskas), his female cousin (Lucia Patoprstá) and his sister-in-law (Marietta Kro). Who all of these people are we really have no idea. They spend a lot of time kissing one another and pulling up the women's skirts. Kro is particularly winsome in her long dress with her attentive lover Daniel Morales Pérez. Wallace Jones impresses with his tender attentions to his partners male and female in his appearances. Jucquois convinces as a sufficiently dominant patriarchal presence.
Schubert's personal life was difficult, he often lived abroad. Towards the end of his life he suffered from severe illness and near blindness. But there is no direct equivalent in the Ulrich's libretto. Ulrich's starting point was of course Schubert's music and curiously wedding scenes from the films of Fellini and Kusterica.
Fellini's mad weddings are difficult enough to comprehend on film. In the theater, one doesn't have the same chance to change viewpoint or perspictive, unless its via selective light of which we saw little. I'm not quite sure how an early death to syphilis at 31 (Schubert's fate) is equivalent to incest and rape among the gypsies.
Still the lyrics of the Winterreise songs (the words were not written by Schubert but rather by a poet he admired, Wilhelm Müller or for some of the songs by composer Heinz Winbeck) do support Ulrich's dark vision:
Heart be still
Why do you hammer relentless
It's the will of the heavens
That I must leave you now.
Of course, with dancers as luscious as Bauer, Kro and Patoprstá one doesn't always need a linear libretto. The men don't look too bad stripped to the waist and in black trousers either. Whatever the story, there is far too much walking and too much pantomime. Why they wander and wander in circles is a mystery to me. I can understand that Ulrich wants to experiment with gait, but that doesn't seem to be his intention. It's as if we are watching an early walk through where the steps haven't all been set and the dancers are just finding their places.
Nearly all of these episodes could be energetically danced and bridged with dance. Grigorovich told stories through dance in his ballets, particularly Romeo and Juliet, I don't know why Ulrich doesn't want to take the final step and insist the movement tell his story.
No matter how fed up one gets with strutting dancers and the incoherently episodic story, one can always return in the end to Achrainer's singing.
Besides Achrainer's fine singing, the musical side had solid support from a good orchestra performance under conductor Takeshi Moriuchi's energetic leadership. Maaki Namekawa's solid piano solos.
The final half-hour picks up when the lights go down and something approaching a marriage and the family photo afterwards slowly devolves to surrealistic spinning of the stage while a figure in red silk lies crucified. At one point the feathers are thrown up in the air over the group as dancers pose in the middle giving us the effect of one of those glass snow scenes shaken up as the snow floats down. Later Achrainer plays with a wooden rocking horse in the foreground with dark glasses, slowly going blind and losing his mind.
One wonders why Ulrich waited for the last half hour to do something with the lights and to really work his story.
In the end, no harm is done. For the languid stretches, one can close one's eyes and just listen to Schubert's astonishing songs beautifully renderd by both orchestra and singer. Yet if it weren't for the wonderful music, Winterreise might be judged confusing and over long.
In spite of it all, there is great pleasure in Winterreise. At least Ulrich's dancers are doing something and there's great music to hear. Dance life can be much worse: one could be stuck in the Vienna contemporary dance scene, watching dancers sulk in the corner in dirty jogging suits, picking at scabs on their arms. Go to Landestheater Linz instead.
While you're at Landestheater Li, don't miss the Promenadenhof next door. There's a fabulous garden and the traditional Austrian pastries are top-notch.
Having seen Winterreise here in Linz, I'm very curious about the Hamburg Ballet's version by John Neueimeier from 2001.
For more information about Jochen Ulrich's Winterreise, including performance dates, photographs and tickets, visit the Landestheater Linz website.
May 31st, 2011 §
Le Concours is an amusing confection of a ballet put together by Maurice Béjart at the height of his fame in 1985. Béjart's own Ballet of the XXth Century danced the premiere of Le Concurs in Théâtre du Châtelet, a temple of contemporary dance.
Volksoper Le Concours: Olga Esina, Gregor Hatala, Erika Kovacova
Photo © Vienna Staatsoper
But Le Concours is no work of high art, but rather a simple theatrical murder mystery told in the language of dance. Cleverly Béjart sets his murder mystery at a dance competition which easily explains the constant pirouettes and the lifts. Curiously in real life Béjart turned down every invitation to do dance jury duty, finding ballet competition barbaric. In line with the dance theme, music is a very arch pastiche of Giselle, Sleeping Beauty, La Bayadère, Swan Lake and Coppelia bound by atmospheric orchestration from Hugues Le Bars.
At 58 years of age, irony is a more natural expression than passion. Béjart is one of the last of the great choreographers to feel that ballet and modern dance would become a mainstream art form, taking a place in the daily newspapers beside music, fashion, television and film. And so Le Concours was created: not as a masterwork or a deep expression on life but an ironic glance at life's beautiful surfaces.
Le Concours owes a deep debt to pop culture, with a protagonist drawn directly from Alain Delon's incarnations of trench coated police inspectors and Peter's Falk's Columbo. Do not search for any more meaning in Le Concours than in a good detective drama: there are only moments.
As ballet contestant Ada and murder victim, Olga Esina is a revelation. Esina has comedic talents one would not expect after seeing her as various Giselles, Swans and Bayadères. Perhaps our long armed sylph has wearied of perishing to heartbreak or schizophrenia every night in the grand ballets.
Given some passable dramaturgy and some delicate attention, Esina truly comes to life. Esina was particularly delightful as a lithesome showgirl to Igor Milos's masterful magician.
Other noteworthy performances: squared jawed Gregor Hatala certainly looks the part of a stocky cop but lacked intensity and focus the night I saw him.
Samuel Colombet as the French juror and chairman of the jury seemed drawn from life. He's ready for cinema. Serbian dancer Gala Jovanovic nearly stole the show as the American jurist. Many of her excessive enthusiasms apply just as well to certain Austrian balletomanes. But Jovanovic did not need to work so hard on letting us know that she finds her character kitsch and silly. She needed only be the character herself and let us find the humour ourselves.
As the celebrity TV choreographer, Eno Peci falls doubly into the same trap himself. In love with himself and his own work, his character's actions are funny. Absolutely no need to ham his episode up relentlessly. What should have been an ironic delight slanted towards tiresome shallow parody.
Ketevan Papava as Ada's mother, grande ballerina La Brambilla measured her performance more carefully, convincing as both a dancer and a terrifying mother. With every show, Papava gets better. If they could find a tall enough partner for her, there's more and more reason to rescue Papava from various gypsy and Mirtha rolls and offer some of the leading roles she danced in the Marinsky.
Kamil Pavelka acquits himself passably as Ivy, Ada's boyfriend although his passion seemed a bit too measured for first love. Former Staatsoper ballerina Susanne Kirnbauer had no difficulty portraying Miss Maud, Ada's frustrated first ballet coach. Serb dancer Igor Milos was a fabulous magician, with good dance technique and solid magic tricks. Milos straight performance allowed the comedy to arise from the situation and not from exaggerated grimaces.
As Ada's best friend, normally staid Slovak dancer Erika Kovácova frightens the entire house with an unrestrained bout of madness on stage. Her straight performance helps keep Le Concours on track.
Le Concours is a perfect piece for Vienna's Volksoper, well chosen for the public of that venue, who loves a good laugh and an easy evening in the theatre. Performances should be full and Le Concours could easily go into permanent repertoire. It's a nice respite for the dancers in a season of high art Staatsoper premieres.
As has become a habit, ballet director Legris made sure that the same level of coaching was available to his stagings as would be at Paris Opera. It's very likely hotel and coach's fees are a step higher than the accountants at Vienna Staatsoper would like to see for the ballet. But the results are worth it.
Dance director of Ballet du Rhine Bertrand d'At came into town to work with Esina and the rest of the cast. d'At danced and worked directly with Béjart for 15 years. Manuel Legris himself had danced the role of the inspector with Aurélie Dupont in 1999 in Le Concours premiere at Opera National de Paris, under Béjart's own firm hand.
One starts to see a pattern in Legris' relentless premieres in Vienna. He doesn't feel he has arrived yet - Legris is still on his way. Vienna is a dress rehearsal for the directorship of the Opera de Paris. If not in the next few years, then in ten. Better for us, that Legris' time in our heavenly purgatory stretches on and on and on. And good for Legris too: the water is better in Vienna, the air not so smoggy, the sidewalks not so crowded as in Paris.
