April 7th, 2010 §
The premiere of A Midsummer Night's Dream at Vienna Staatsoper was a remarkable occasion for two reasons:
- Jorma Elo showed his first evening length ballet in despite ten years as a a choreographer including seven years as resident for the Boston ballet. One certainly has to wait a long time for one's chance in the modern ballet world.
- Gyula Harangozó saw the last premiere of his five year tenure as director of Dasballett of the Vienna Staatsoper and Volksoper
How was the ballet?
In the first act, Elo found himself too wound up in the plot intrigues of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. Oberon, Titania, Theseus, Hippoylyta, Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius, Helena: there's almost too many love intrigues to keep track of even in dramatic theatre, let alone ballet. That's before bringing in the company of players to whom Elo gave the stage, not just Bottom. Not to mention Puck.
The consequence of so many bodies on stage and so many stories to unravel was excessive pantomime. A leading figure of Vienna ballet aptly applied the word old-fashioned to describe the effect.
In the 19th century, it made sense to have so much nodding and poking and face pulling to try to tell the story. In this century, first Les Ballets Russes of Diaghilev and later Roland Petit and Juri Grigorovich managed to shake off the shackles of pantomime for direct expression of the story in dance. George Balanchine and Jiří Kylián took it a step further and removed linear story as a requirement for evening length dance. It is a strange feeling to go back to the wagging heads and clutched bosoms and gesticulating hands in a new ballet.
The costumes added to this baroque feel. So much gold and detail and filaments. If the goal was to create a gilded Shakespeare of the 18th century, San Francisco designer Sandra Woodall was very successful. But together with the pantomime, the look was very dated, like something out of the 1950's. While the ballet was created for Vienna, but there is no reason to add more gilded chocolate boxes than we already have.
The music is one of the principal delights of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The score is taken from the works of Romantic composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, principally a score of 1843. In the middle of the splendid string works, a woman's choir of about a dozen is called to crowd into the left of the orchestra pit. Simina Ivan and Lydia Rathkolb made excellent lyric work of their songs. One could attend A Midsummer Night's Dream with eyes closed for the music alone. Fortunately that is not necessary in this presentation.
Among the dancers there was little to criticize. Vladimir Shishov shook off his rehearsal doldrums and gave himself quite enthusiastically to his work, his elven locks and pointy features doing him no small good as the Fairie King. Mihail Sosnovschi is in incredible form, muscular from head to toe. With his fierce dancing in the role, he is a Puck more to fear than to amuse. Wolfgang Grascher was a regal Duke of Athens. Every ballet theater should have such a movie matinee patrician. Probably a bit dull for Grascher himself after the dance exploits of his long career but excellent for the production.
Midsummernight's Dream, 2010
Mihail Sosnovschi (Puck) & Elevinnen
Copyright: Das Ballett der Wiener Staatsoper und Volksoper/Axel Zeininger
Roman Lazik was an obliging Lysander. He is far better as a comic lover than a prince: his moderate athletic skills and smaller presence go unremarked. As Lysander, he is a delight to behold, light of step and countenance. András Lukács took the opportunity as Demetrius to show off his considerable caricature and grotesque talents. Levity followed his every appearance.
The theatre company was a splendid group of character dancers, led by Gabor Oberegger as Bottom. Thomas Mayerhofer, Dan Datcu, Christoph Wenzel, Richard Szabó and the striking gaunt Alexis Forabosco made the most of their opportunity for group standup comedy. I'm not sure if it added much to the ballet but in itself they were a lot of fun. At one point, Oberegger valiantly sings a love song to Titania in bed. Spoken word and song are unusual demands on a ballet dancer and Oberegger came across as a musical veteran.
Among the women, Nina Poláková shone most brightly, in her role as Helena, curiously outdoing both the Russians, Olga Esina and Karina Sarkissova. Poláková was smooth and swift, with fluid grand battements. Her performance as the rejected lover revealed a touching vulnerability. Karina Sarkissova was also quick and determined, if a little cold for my taste in her role as Hermia. She had ample opportunity to show off her considerable technical skills to which she availed herself. There was little to criticize in her brash work but little to love. One day I hope to see Karina Sarkissova dance a little more softly and with more feeling.
Midsummernight's Dream, 2010
Mihail Sosnovschi (Puck), Roman Lazik (Lysander), Karina Sarkissova (Hermia),
Nina Poláková (Helena), András Lukács (Demetrius)
Copyright: Das Ballett der Wiener Staatsoper und Volksoper/Axel Zeininger
Olga Esina as Titania is a special problem. She is a magnificent ballerina, perhaps the most physically gifted and most beautiful dancer ever to grace the Staatsoper stage. But with great gifts come great responsibilities and it seemed to me that Esina never moved at more than seventy per cent capability through the evening. She still could do little harm but with a little more effort she could do so much more. Watching Esina dance is an exercise in frustration. She is the best in the company but could be so much more. This abstraction from her work gave Poláková the chance to steal the the spotlight as Helena. In Elo's A Midsummer Night's Dream should belong unequivocally to Titania.
Midsummernight's Dream, 2010
Olga Esina (Titania), Gabor Oberegger (Zettel)
Copyright: Das Ballett der Wiener Staatsoper und Volksoper/Axel Zeininger
What is the remedy? In my opinion, direct one on one coaching for Esina with a strict Russian coach. It wouldn't cost all that much to bring one of the best in from St Petersburg (they don't earn much in the Vaganova Academy) for three years to see if she can make Esina into the international prima which she should be, rather than a splendidly gifted provincial.
Gyula Harangozó might do this as Esina is his personal gift to Vienna, but I'm not at all sure the new director, Manuel Legris will grasp the issue soon enough to bring quick remedy. Perhaps I'm not optimistic enough. Legris has brought Paris's Etoile system to Vienna and of the female soloists he has promoted just Maria Yakovleva and Olga Esina to Etoile so he does understand Esina's importance to Staatsoper ballet. While improving her steps, her director might order her some special dramatic lessons as well. It's not that Esina doesn't have strage presence, it's that it's neither harnessed nor controlled. Ideally, the right Russian ballerina coach could teach her both.
On a lighter note, whoever did Esina's hair and makeup for Titania deserves to be sent back to finishing school. Esina looked so much better in rehearsal when she put up her own splendid blonde hair herself with casual cascading locks. The hairdresser managed to strap her head under a jewelled helmet that made her look more like an evil sorceress than a good fairy.
Midsummernight's Dream, 2010
Olga Esina (Titania) & Ensemble
Copyright: Das Ballett der Wiener Staatsoper und Volksoper/Axel Zeininger
For all of these caveats about the confusion and pantomime of the first act of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the second act was genuinely splendid. Elo finally puts the story behind him and allows his choreographic imagination to take flight. The second act quickly becomes a marriage celebration with pairs followed by corps movements, by two pairs, by long pas de deux, with more group movements.
The different pieces cascade by without respite in a regale of dancing. The closest comparison I can find in George Balanchine's Jewels. A Midsummer Night's Dream offers the same varied but coherent variations. So the evening ends on a high note.
Both Iliana Chivarova and Oxana Kiyanenko lead the corps-de-ballet most valiantly in Elo's grand dances against Bartholody's famous Wedding March.
The second cast promises to be very capable as well, with Kirill Kourlaev as Oberon, Irina Tsymbal (sadly in her last season in Staatsoper, with every year comes more emotional nuance in her dancing) at Titania and with Maria Yakovleva as Hermia.
Despite the rather old-fashioned and too elaborate first act, A Midsummer Night's Dream is a splendid concotion of music and movement and light. Gyula Harangozó can be very proud of the company he is leaving at Staatsoper and of the final piece he has added to their repertoire. With the ice broken Jorma Elo will get more chances at full length ballet. It will be interesting to see whether he ever gets lost in pantomime again as in the first act or manages to communicate his meaning in dance as in the second act henceforth.
April 6th, 2010 §
Just digging into Ioan Holender's Closeup: 118 Premieren Wiener Staatsoper, the men's gift (Herrenspend) from the 2010 Opernball, this year. I wanted to have a look at the premiers of Gyoala Harangozo as Ballet Director.
Ioan Holender Opernball with Desirée Treichl-Stürgkh
To my astonishment, there was not a single image of ballet in the book. Ballet premiers are relegated to a two page list in the back.
I had heard of Holender's contempt for ballet but to just cut ballet out entirely from his commemorative goodbye album is a step too far.
While opera can be a magnificent art, most often it is tedious, filled with bombastic emotions of oversized egos.
Ballet on the other hand is the springtime, it is mortality in flight, it is delicate flutters of the soul made flesh.
The weak point in ballet is the music, which too often was primitively written for dance. Later that changed with Profkofiev and Stravinsky's ballet scores like Romeo and Juliet, Firebird and Rites of Spring.
Holender's Close Up was not even written by the author. He assented to five interviews about his time at Staatsoper where he answered the interviewer's questions about his work. The lazy man's way to writing a book.
In this case it works. Holender manages to come across as his irascible, irritable and bombastic self. The interviewer has edited the answers down to the essential so if you want to learn more about Holdender's methods, it's all there. He covers talent scouting, relationships with conductors when developing new talent.
I remember telling Muti about Angelika Kirschlager the first time. Muti didn't know her and therefore didn't want here. They all want the singers they already know. So you also have to fight with conductors and stage directors to convince them. And that is not an easy thing to do, believe me. (p. 455)
Axel Zeninger's photos as whole are excellent. As a stage photographer it's interesting to observe the changes in technology. In 1999, the early digital pictures have noisy shadows and are a little bit blurry due to long exposure times for instance in Don Giovanni, pp. 202-203). In 2009, the pictures are all sharp, as Nikon's high ISO actually works and one can shoot at 1/400 second and not at 1/30 second. But you can see what a blessing high ISO digital photography is by wandering through the photos from 1993 and 1994, such as Umberto Giordano's Fedora on pp. 84-85 or Richard Wagner's Ring on pp. 48-49.
In addition to the photographs and Holdender's insights, the program for each opera premier is included and reproduced at life size. Much nicer than a stack of programs in the corner of a shelf (as I have).
Closeup: 118 Premieren Wiener Staatsoper is recommended for Staatsoper, Holender and opera fans. It's an excellent idea to have a bound and visual summary of the Holender years, especially as it's well printed by Edition Lammerhuber. Alas there's nothing to recommend it to amateurs of ballet. Given Mr. Holender's contempt for ballet, I can't say I'm sad to see him go.
As I know more and more people from the opera again (in Moscow I spent a lot of time with opera singers and a fair amount of time at the Russian operas, but not the Italians) and I live in Vienna, I might very well read it myself to see what it is I'm missing out on.
February 11th, 2010 §
Cranko's Romeo and Juliet fills a peculiar place between the historic pomp of Leonid Lavrovsky's original and the very dancy minimalism of Grigorovich's later classic. The brown and black costumes seem a little dusty and remind me of the seventies. But the seventies unbelievably enough are back in fashion so perhaps the retro brown look is already trendy again.
How does Staatsoper handle this middle of the road Romeo from 1962? With relative aplomb. The orchestra did seem a little undermanned or thin for Prokofiev's magnificent score in comparison to performances I've heard in Moscow and St Petersburg.
On the dance front after two years of Harangozo's whip hand, the corps de ballet handles their part without a false step. Standardising on the Russian norm has left a very svelte and elegant corps.
Rafaella Sant'Anna, Ketevan Papava and Liudmila Trayan are all fun as the Montague good time girls. Thomas Mayerhofer and Alexandra Kontrus were fine as the Capulet parents but not extraordinarily stately. Still when Alexandra Kontrus is carried away with her son Tybald one's heart breaks for the bereaved mother.
Vienna State Opera Ballet: John Cranko's Romeo and Juliet Continues »
February 11th, 2010 §
Elio Gervasi is the great master of movement among the Vienna choreographers. His work is usually musical, the light design exquisite and artistic direction provoking. Gervasi has a talent to take simple daily objects and make them special.
Tanz Company Gervasi Geckos Kenia Bernai Gonzales Leoni Wahl
And so it is with Geckos.
Here we meet in the rehearsal hall on Laxenburgerstrasse. The ceilings are a bit lower than in a full theatre, the seating more limited. But no matter, Markus Schwarz's light makes the space bigger, pouring light through blinds set up between a side room and the main rehearsal space.
Leoni Wahl Salvatore la Ferla
The décor is a single red armchair which serves as a place for lovers to sit together, for one lover to miss the absent one and for another as a cliff from which she considers self-destruction.
Tanz Company Gervasi Geckos Leoni Wahl psychological tightrope
Gervasi is working with three dancers here, all excellent. The long and handsome Italian Salvatore la Ferla, the compact Kenia Bernai Gonzales and longtime muse Leoni Wahl.
Elio Gervasi - Geckos: The Extraordinary Ordinary Continues »
November 12th, 2009 §
The first thing you see these days when you walk out on the main alleé in Bratislava, is a huge advertisement across the front of the opera house for an ultra modern show. The image is of a woman looking up, surrounded by what appear to be mystical creatures. The name of the show: Everest.
I was certain that the very sexy poster - all over Bratislava - was for a visiting performance, an updated Lord of the Dance. But I was very wrong. Everest is home grown.
After two years in Bratislava, Slovak National Ballet Director Mário Radačovský has staged his second full length evening work. His first Warhol was a strangely mainstream look at an artist who was a determinedly avant garde. I'm not sure if others ever made more sense of it than I was able. Warhol was one of the first productions to grace the new stage of the Slovak National Opera (SND) and did properly fill the grandiose new space with its three story decorations.
Soloists and Choir During Everest Ballet of SND in Bratislava:
multimedia plays a huge role: notice the large projection
photos: Ctibor Bachratý for SND
With Everest, Radačovský has set his sights far higher. Everest seeks to communicate four stages of existence: life, death, after-life and resurrection. But the theology is definitely more pagan than Christian. Everest begins with the crawling and fluttering of Lemurans, the half-animal half-man inhabitants who antedate Atlantis.
SND Premiere: Everest from Mario Radačovský Continues »
October 26th, 2009 §
Agata Maszkiewicz torn by fellow dancers in Komposition:
Anne Juren's simple and poetic co-creation was the highlight of the evening
If nothing else, the season opener at Tanzquartier was extremely ambitious. Ten different performance venues in the TQW Studios, Halle G, Jungl, museumquartier21, the courtyard of MQ.
There were over twenty different performances in these venues starting at six. The performances offered a cross section of almost everything we've seen in TQW in the last five years. The evening was meant to be more inclusive than exclusive, a chance for the new director to work with all the resident choreographers and performance hangers on of TQW.
I managed to see about seven different shows. Here are my impressions.
Erste Tanznacht Wien: Lots of skits, a little dance Continues »
October 2nd, 2009 §
"Trisha Brown brings three dance works to Vienna's ImPulsTanz."
This sounds like something from the nineteen-nineties. In the nineties, Trisha Brown did bring eleven works to Vienna, including the three we saw tonight .
ImPulsTanz and Tanzquartier managed to collaborate on bringing this reconstruction to open the modern dance season this year. Over the last few years, dance has so lost its way in Vienna, that there are no steps anymore just words. For music at most one gets modern pop songs blasted too loud, at least just silence.
In the lobby of MuseumsQuartier's main stage Halle E, the excitement was palpable with a keen dance and cultural audience eager to step onto the time machine Karl Regensberger created for us this evening.
Curiously the best piece of the evening was the earliest creation shown, Set and Reset from 1983. The music is vintage Laurie Anderson. The constant bell rings alarm and and tension throughout the theatre. Overhead onto a triangular construction old films and advertisments are projected with the soundtrack behind the bells, the cacophony of modern urban and televised existence transmuted into art. Images of engine rooms and troubled nurses, as if in the bowels of a great ship.
The dancers fling their arms and move urgently across the stage, never staying more than a minute or two before another wave replaces them. The choreography is a celebration of movement.
Laurie Anderson's music reminded one of Liquid Sky, the cult film about aliens in search of heroin addicts in New York counterculture. We are transported to another time where solutions seemed more plausible and decadence still a veneer.
One doesn't notice it as much in Set and Reset, but the current Trisha Brown dancers are not nearly hard and lean or desperate enough. These are the academic movers of reconstruction and not the artists on the cutting edge of the avant garde who created the original work with Trisha Brown.
Set and Reset gets away with reconstruction as the elements of projection, sound and music are so dominant and can be accurately reconstructed.
In the other two works Foray Forêt (1990) and You can see us (1995), the reconstruction is less successful as they are both far more dependent on the individual performances. You can see us was originally a duet for Bill T. Jones and Trisha Brown, created relatively spontaneously to fill a program.
<blockquote>I didn't have the time to make a new piece, but honoured by the request, suggested he learn my solo If you couldn't see me and we perform it as a duet....front/back, man/woman, gay/straight, young/not so youn, black/white, etc..</blockquote>
With all the good will in the world Leah Morrison and Dai Jian can't fill those boots. Consequently, You can see us comes off as somewhat pointless. Shakespeare wrote his plays thinking of specific actors. So it is with the choreography of You can see us. A foggy mirror.
Foray Forêt fares somewhat better as it is a group effort. The accident of a marching band outside the rehearsal becomes the memory of a marching band inside the performance. National anthems take over the bodies and movements of the performers and we drift with them against the pink and golden skies projected on the back of the theatre wall.
The dancers wear garb which is a cross between the Arabian Nights and golden space suits: the whole effect is rather surreal, as if one has landed in another universe, somewhat like our own but different. The dance, a strange world of miscommunication.
The music is performed live all over the world, as one cannot count on the audio system of the theatre can't be counted on to reproduce space. So different real marching bands from Portugal to France to Austria have filled. The measured unpredictability of the score forces the performers to really pay attention, to be alive.
By way of comparison, I've seen Trisha Brown's o Composite performed by the Paris Opera, another Laurie Andersen collaboration. Here each slight emotional intonation becomes a precise movement. Foray Forêt was informative but could be performed better. But neither Foray Forêt could touch the frenetic energy of Set and Reset which left the audience and this reviewer on a high.
Set and Reset remains a vibrant and timeless work. Not reconstruction but living art. To see it live, made the whole evening worthwhile.
By bringing back works from Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker and Trish Brown, Karl Regensburger is giving a new generation of artists a chance to see what the excitement about dance is. That it movement and not just long faces and pretentious posing.
Perhaps they will be able to return to the high road and the world of performance installation can go back to where it belongs, the museums of modern art.
October 1st, 2009 §
Six different performances from five choreographers in a single evening. This starts to reminds one of Choreolab. And in fact one of the Choreolab choreographers did manage to make the main stage. No great surprise that it is fellow Hungarian Andras Lukacs and protegé of ballet director Gyula Harangozo.
Duo by Andras Lukacs & Alice Firenze
The good news is that Lukacs' piece Duo while short was the most emotionally moving of the works danced that night. Duo is simplicity itself: rich purple costumes covering just the torso (Mónika Herworth) and a simple dark stage. The lighting was atmospheric but at the same time clear. We weren't squinting in the dark.
The emotional character of the work had much to do with the music of Max Richter (from the Blue Notebooks) and with Rafaella Sant'Anna's performance. She is in the prime of young womanhood, a powerful dancer with graceful curves.
Her scissors in the air cut sharp like steel. Generally Sant'Anna carried her role with the class of a Paris Opéra étoile, though her footwork could sometimes be more accurate.
The Brazilian Sant'Anna has been in the Staatsoper a long time but despite her dramatic gifts and natural talents has been left to drift much of the time. Whenever she has had the opportunity to dance outside the corps she has always shone. It's nice to see her have this chance on the main stage.
While emotionally cooler than Sant'Anna, her partner Masayu Kimoto supported her performance with élan. He was always in the right place and handled his lifts as though effortlessly.
Ederlezi by Maria Yakovleva & Mihail Sosnovschi
The opening piece of the evening Ederlezi from choreograph Myriam Naisy was quite the opposite. Shrill, bathetic music as if from a second rate Hollywood melodrama bathed the audience in bathos. Goran Gregovic must take the blame. The choreography did little to rescue the situation, despite some pretty lifts, particularly notable when Kirill Kourlaev held Irina Tsymbal horizontal over his head in an acrobatic pose. To their enormous credit, both handled this visually effortlessly.
Ederlezi by Roman Lazik & Karina Sarkissova
Glow was a more ambitious work than either of the first two, with a cast of twelve dancers. Musically, choreographer Jorma Elo reaches directly for the sky, mixing a Mozart symphony and a Philip Glass's concerto for piano and orchestra. The music was live making Glow a perfect fit for the Vienna Staatsoper, which may have the best ballet orchestra in the world. Unlike other ballet orchestras, the Staatsoper musicians have the opportunity to play a mixed repertoire and do not become as jaded and cynical in their playing.
The piano playing by Lucas Mais was superb: you could have closed the curtains. Anything that happened on stage was a bonus to the concert level playing.
Olga Esina showed up the entire cast with her long arms Dancers like Olga Esina are the reason to justify a trip to St Petersburg or Moscow to see the Marinsky or the Bolshoi. Kudos to Gyulo Harangozo for bringing Esina to Vienna and keeping her her. When you see her on the program, don't miss the ballet. Kirill Kourlaev was the best of the men and partnered Esina adequately but for the moment the Staatsoper haven't found a man to match Esina. The search goes on though: she will be dancing Swan Lake with four different partners in October and November.
Glow Stop by Ketevan Papava & Alexis Forabosco
Of the other women in Glow - Stop, Ketevan Papava's long arms nearly matched Esina, but her movements have a more deliberate and posed feel. I prefer the natural and effortless style.
Throughout Glow - Stop, the dancers mix and pair and mix again, like the river of life which brings people together and takes them apart.
At the end of Glow - Stop, the last dancer makes some small mechanical gesture with his arms and hand, as it the dancers are marionettes. We are just puppets moving frentically through life driven by our feelings.
Slingerland is a short duet by William Forsythe, originally staged on Stefanie Arndt who came to pass the role on to Olga Esina. Esina this time was paired with Eno Peci. Strangely, while both of these dancers are very talented, something did not work in this performance. Stefanie Arndt is a very angular and sharp dancer. Esina has a silky smoothness to almost all her gestures, even when stacatto. Her grace is out of place in the brittleness of Forsythe's later works. Eno Peci is more at home in this idiom but he never seemed to hit full speed, nor was the any extraordinary chemistry between them. With all of the caveats above, Slingerland is the kind of work of which there should be more of in the Staatsoper repertoire and both Peci and Esina did sufficient justice to their roles. It's just the trifecta Forsythe-Esina-Peci raised higher expectations on paper. The music didn't help as it was a scratchy grinding bit of modern composition from Gavin Byers which irritates far more than it engages.
Slingerland pas de deux by Eno Peci & Olga Esina
Slingerland by Eno Peci & Olga Esina
The end of the evening was given to Juri Kylian with two of his masterworks, Petite Mort and Six Dances.
Petite Mort involves swordplay and fake dresses and great swooping pieces of fabric which are carried across the stage, set to sweeping Mozart concertos (Nr. 21 and 23). A lot of Petite Mort's effect is based on visual gags and surprises. I've seen it a few times, perhaps in Paris as well. To be frank, it was a disappointment for me last night. The men were very sloppy with their swordplay, not in sync. They didn't seem to have any military discipline in their timing. The women didn't move me either. Petite Mort did not seem to have the precision necessary or to be fully rehearsed. Had it been the first time I'd seen Petite Mort, perhaps I would have sufficiently delighted by the eye candy and visual surprises to forgive many of these faults. I've seen it danced better elsewhere. Staastsoper should be dancing work like Petit Mort, so I'd like to see them go back to the rehearsal room and get it right.
Petite Mort by Karina Sarkissova & Mihail Sosnovschi
Petite Mort by Rafaella Sant'Anna & Jaimy van Overeem
Six Dances is again the duo Kylian - Mozart, but this time in an overtly comic context with white pancake makeup on the dancers. Juri Kylian has a secret fascination with the word of slapstick silent comedy. He indulges this passion to the hilt with six dances. The dancers drove the staid audience to laughing out loud and put a smile on my own face. Under the white face I couldn't tell who was who among Alice Firenze, Gabor Oberegger, Céline Weder, Marcin Dempc, Iliana Chivarova, Thomas Mayerhofer, Liudmila Trayan and Richard Szabó but nobody danced badly. The danseuse who opened up Six Dances was perhaps the funniest of all. In addition to his talent for creating beautiful and emotional movement, At the end of Six Dances beautiful soap bubbles float down from behind the stage. The dancers look up and are surprised. They share their surprise directly with the audience, looking us in the face and shrugging their shoulders as if we were there on stage with them. And interesting breaking of the third wall before the curtain closes on their strange mime world.
Sechs Taenze by Mayerhofer & Chivarova & Szabo
Sechs Taenze by Trayan & Oberegger & Dempc & Firenze
New World Dances is the closest I've seen Staatsoper come to one of those splendid Opera de Paris Palais Garnier evenings of contemporary choreography. Never mind that most of the creations here were made in 1980's. There are a couple of newer pieces and this is a huge step in the right direction. There should be one or two of these evenings made every season. Costume ballets and classics are fine but to breathe a major ballet company needs this work too. I'd like to see newer works and less name choreographers but perhaps to sell contemporary choreography to the Viennese audience, it's a necessary evil.
All photos copyright © Das Ballett der Wiener Staatsoper and Volksoper/Axel Zeininger
August 7th, 2009 §
Actually the full title is "Manteau long en laine marine porté sur un pull à encolure détendue avec un pantalon peau de pêche et des chaussures pointues en nubuk rouge"
In other words: "A long wool coat in navy with worn over a sweater with a soft collar worn with peach leather pants and pointy red nubuk shoes".
In other words, you know this piece will be frivolous before you even get there. Frivolous not as in pointless, but frivolous as in the écume des jours (Froth of Days) of Boris Vian.
The stage is bare, without curtains.
The dancers enter from the house, each dressed in the sports clothes of the down on their luck, carrying a large plastic bag. Certainly from not such a good neighbourhood, ordinary folk. They begin by stripping off the ordinary clothes and showing off their very showy bodies.
Nadine Fuchs does gymnastic stretching in pink lingerie, staring matter-of-factly at the audience.
Delgado Fuchs © Sophie Ballmer
You can see this pair are either making the requisite sacrifices for their art. Neither of them has an once of fat on either stomach or hips. Either that or they hate food.
We are now firmly in the domain of the unpredictable. The conventional down on your luck dancer in sweatclothes to world class gymnastic stretching, it's extremely unclear where this is going. In the background there is very faint music.
dress change © Alec Kinnear
Now they dress themselves up in something else again. Marco is in black tie and patent leather shoes, his strange long hair making him look like an out of work British rock idol from the eighties.
Nadine puts on green hotpants and a lacy cowgirl shirt with tall boots. The pair circle one another warily, begin to dance and kiss. Nadine flings herself passionately on Marco but then starts to pull herself higher on his chest still thrusting her hips at him.
They make us believe for a moment it might be real passion and then it just changes into absurdity again.
Nadine Fuchs
by Catherine Leutenegger
Eventually the pair get to talking. Nadine speaks about Marco to the audience in first person.
"He got his start in dancing at a club in Brussels called Happy Fee, a strip club," she accuses him. At this point Marco is down to bare chest and black pants again. He lingers over at the side of the stage.
"Marco is waiting for a moment," continues Nadine. "A moment where the positive energy of the moment and the body come together." It's hard to tell if she is serious or not.
When Marco begins to dance now, slow turning movements, a spine sloped backward, hands at awkward angles, we get contemporary dance improvisation 101. Both Fuchs and Delgado are mocking their opponents, the earnest contemporary brigade.
Delgado is clearly comfortable and in control of the idiom which makes his mockery of it all the more delicious. At the end of his parade across the stage he stops and stands in one place. Fuchs strolls by to make some adjustments and distorts his face, before moving his arm into a grotesque thumbs up position.
grotesque thumbs up position © Alec Kinnear
Delgado's distorted half clown face makes us wonder about the poses we make and the poses people want to put us into.
A little bit later they find their way to naked and dance across the stage holding one another's crotches. From naked Delgado and Fuchs move to a pink sixties outfit for Fuchs and head to toe blue tails for Delgado.
naked Delgado and Fuchs © Alec Kinnear
Curiously as soon as they are perfectly attired they set to meticulously rebuilding the stage with metal and wood. On stage, they left to life size photos of themselves. Each photo includes a hole in the wood for a self-portrait like in the surface.
self portrait © Alec Kinnear
"I'm thirsty," proclaims the pink Fuchs. "We'll be up in the bar enjoying a drink. Anyone else who would like to have a drink too, come and join us."
Delgado hands someone in the front row a polaroid camera and then they both walk up through the audience and out of the theatre.
The audience sits in stunned silence for about thirty seconds and then they start to go for the self portraits.
The perfect anti climax. We are left taking pictures of ourselves in the cutout clothes of the two leads.
Marco Delgado
by Catherine Leutenegger
I wondered about whether it was necessary to include Marco Delgado's biography in the piece. I asked Delgado about it: "Who says it's my biography?," he smiled.
That bit of stagecraft - breaking the line between the real and the imaginary seems to me to be at the core of manteau long en lain marine. Delgado and Fuchs want to take the stage back from earnest explorations of your real internal self to the magic of let's pretend.
The constant costume changes are a reminder that surfaces are just that and that one's impressions of someone are only clothes deep. This simple paradigm of blurring reality and fashion wakes the world up. You wonder who you really are and who the people you know really are. For at the end of the day, you are the sum of your clothes and your presentation.
Or at least much of the world works like that. manteau long en lain marine is a wonderful voyage into appearances and the unpredictable.
Even nudity is anything but clarity in this show.
Seen a second time, some of the magic comes off. The jokes turn out to be more closely timed than you think and less spontaneous. The improvisation and unpredictable is actually carefully choreographed.
But it is amazing how Fuchs and Delgado manage to maintain that feeling of unpredictable spontaneity most of the time. I asked Marco Delgado about it - "The freshness is essential. It is sometimes hard. We are often changing the show to keep it fresh."
So take this review with a grain of salt. In a month or two, you may see a very different show than the one I saw in Vienna.
August 5th, 2009 §
The Love Piece is one of the more unique pieces in the 2009 ImPulsTanz festival: it is entirely experiential and completely different every time it is played and for every participant.
The creators and cast of The Love Piece provide an environment and a context and the rest is up to you.
The Love Piece: Where it all happens
The experience for the most part is positive, but as I wrote the quality of your experience depends mainly on you and what you bring to that evening.
Here's what the program says about the piece. This much is public knowledge:
The Love Piece unfolds along a loose score that can described as: there as many audience members as performers. As they come in, audience members are each taken by the ahand by a performer, who for the duration of the show 'give love' to his/her audience. What such a love can be, is the stake of the piece. Love songs are playing the whole time.
There are just 10 performers - so very few people had the opportunity to experience The Love Piece. I was one of that fortunate 100 and will reveal the details to you about my own visit.
*** SPOILERS FOLLOW - PLEASE DO not read farther ***
*** if you expect to attend The Love piece personally ***
ImPulsTanz 2009: Alice Chauchat - The Love Piece Continues »
