August 5th, 2009 §
One of the curiosities at ImPulsTanz this week was the stage performance of Transformers, the culmination of two weeks of rehearsals and workshop led by Eszter Salamon and Christine de Smedt.
This is one of three or four professional level two week programs, mainly populated by the DanceWeb dancers. For those not familiar with DanceWeb, it is a program run by ImPulsTanz which brings about forty dancers from around the world to Vienna to study dance at the ImPulsTanz workshops and at the performances as well for free. DanceWeb is one of those great initiatives which changes the world by providing a conduit for international exchange. Often DanceWebbers end up visiting one another across the globe. I have been the guest in Venezuala on a road trip with one of my friends from DanceWeb. This is not untypical. So that is the context of this two week intensive: working professionals from around the world, but with no prior experience dancing with one another.
Some will argue that Transformers should not be critiqued as it is just the results of a workshop. Not so. It is deliberately presented as a stage work and not in laboratory format.
Salamon & De Smedt & Pro Series - Transformers
© Alec Kinnear
Black box stage. Stage environment not accented, more black curtains and shadows than raw backstage. All the dancers are in everyday clothes: blues, reds, yellows, browns. Nothing remarkable.
A curiosity are the wires going into each dancers left ear. More on them later.
The show starts off slowly with heavy breathing moving to amplified shch whispering noises and lot of meandering around the stage. The whispering slowly accelerates to quiet howls over the course of twenty minutes. Frankly this warmup session is pretty painful.
We have cute little hobbit "hee hee" noises. Let your inner voice out, seventies kind of primal scream warmup. Definitely useful for ungluing uptight dancers from stiff cultures. Not so entertaining.
accelerating Transformers voices © Alec Kinnear
They now turn it up a notch and go into spasms and fits and real primal screams. Particularly amazing is a guy who looks like one of Ghenghis Khan's lieutenants with long dark hair and high cheekbones. You fear for his life and yours as he screams and thrashes.
Particularly effective is Chris Haring's dancer Alexander Gottfarb who doesn't let the spasms go through his whole body but confines it to one part of his body at a time in a controlled rotation, focusing your attention much better on the nuance. Alexander has an unfair advantage here though as Chris uses spasms as well as part of his stage vocabulary (albeit a small part rather than the whole enchilada as here).
This thrashing and screaming goes on for at least a quarter of an hour.
Somehow it turns into a love-in with dancers merging together and blending with other groups. At first it seems heterosexual but over time same sex couples and mixed threesomes appear. The dancers keep their clothes on but otherwise with the passionate breathing and screams you are witness to a full on orgy. Somehow it is unclear if this is meant to be sensual or off-putting.
When it quiets down the stage goes dark and you think the purgatory is over. Not at all.
The lights slowly come back up and the dancers begin to assault the audience verbally.
contact audience © Alec Kinnear
"Do you know what standing by means while the government kills your fellow man?"
"What about La Hacienda?"
"It is time for a revolution."
"Stop the injustice. Just wake up and stop it."
The dancers come right up to the first row and look in the eyes and shout in the face of the audience. Most of them believe in their revolutionary text and pronounce it with fervour. Quite effective.
They then move up the staircases of Halle G shouting at audience members higher up.
Sho Ikushima © Alec Kinnear
I thought they were all going to leave the theater as in Delgado or The Love Piece, leaving the audience alone to muse on what we just saw. It would have been quite effective.
But no, they made it back down to the stage.
Fairly robust applause when the lights went up, but the audience is mainly fellow dancers and friends - hardly impartial.
One could argue that Transformer is a workshop and not a performance to be critiqued. On the other hand, Eszter Salamon and Christine de Smedt made a conscious decision to present on mainstage and not in a laboratory session.
My neighbour Keith Hennesy complains about these white European kids appropriating the text from the Civil Rights movement (The Last Poets). This critique doesn't seem particularly relevant to me. The issue is with revolution and injustice, not with colour and civil rights. Colour is a very narrow view of injustice which has become as much as an economic issue as one of race.
I could live without the half hour of painful buildup as the young dancers build their nerve up to explode on stage and then do their love-in.
But the peak moments did have a genuine character, enough to make one reflect on what humanity means and the differences between man and beast. Apparently not a lot. A fair enough conclusion. Beasts do less damage to the earth as we do.
I do have issues with the technology used. Apparently the wire into the left ear is actually an earphone attached to an iPod shuffle. Each dancer has a soundtrack with both noises and instructions on it, to guide him or her through the performance. For me, giving them a constant hidden soundtrack to perform to is the equivalent of cheating on exams. Almost all of the sound the audience gets is from the dancers.
The dancers should have learned how to generate these noises unselfconsciously without doping themselves with dialogue in their ears. If the dancers need a conductor or fluffer, that should be provided from the first row.
However, Christine de Smedt says the title Transformers is about transforming those sounds and those instructions from the iPod shuffle into performance. Okay, but this is not really preparing the students for the true internal work on themselves. As a prep exercise okay, but I'm not convinced.
Technology should be used to enhance, not as a crutch. I'd like to ask the participants about how they feel. If any of them read this, feel free to leave a comment about the experience of performing to recorded instructions and audio.
© Alec Kinnear
It should be noted there is scant little dancing in Transformers, but given the sparsity of dancing in the entire ImPulsTanz festival, there appears to be scant need for contemporary dancer performers to be able to dance. If all pro dance workshops go in this direction, we are bringing up a generation of dancer cripples who will be able to do little else than howl and writhe.
Despite that caveat, Transformers is far from the dullest show among this year's mainstage performances. There is movement, there is emotion, there is excitement, there is a point.
Performers:
Sandro Amaral, Tim Darbyshire, Kathryn Enright, Elisabete Finger, Alexander Gottfarb, Arianne Hoffmann, Tahni Holt, Sho Ikushima, Lenio Kaklea, Benjamin Kamino, Igor Koruga, Karen Lambaek, Enora Riviere, Bert Roman, Salka Rosengren, Liz Santoro
August 5th, 2009 §
Of all the pieces I've seen at ImPulsTanz this year, Last Touch First is much the most careful art design work.
Last Touch First © Robert Benschop
The stage opens on the interior of an imaginary eighteenth century manor house, where three pairs are standing. There are window frames and doors to give a sense of place. The whole group are standing on a a great canvas sheet.
The light is sculpted and three dimensional. There is a slight sepia tone, like in the best preserved photos of the period.
Last Touch First mirror scene © Robert Benschop
The music is an atmospheric ting-ting-ting on a piano (Dirk Haubrich). Recorded as far as I could see and hear, rather than live, but still unnerving and compelling.
The trick of Last Touch First is the motion. The motion is unbelievably slow. The cast are all dancing but in stopped time.
The working group was formed on the ruins of Nederlands III, the company of retired stars who can still dance. Apparently it was just not possible to get enough funding to keep Nederlands III running. Jiri Kylian is still disappointed about it, as he was personally very closely associated with the founding.
When you see Last Touch First, you can understand why.
Nederlands III was the very best of Kylian's artists, nurtured over the course of decades into artistic forces. Each of them is able to command a stage alone, there are no beginners or mediocrities. All the dancers are charsimatic and spellbinding performers.
It is hard to believe that such a successful company would be scattered to the winds of time, a horrid reminder of the ageism of dance.
Rather than do what Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker did this year with the restaging of Rosas dans Rosas, and have older dancers do a show written for younger dancers, Kylian uses the special skillset of these dancers to have them control motion.
This is a much better approach to take to working with older dancers: give them work in which they can outperform younger dancers rather than moves which highlight their weaknesses in strength and speed and snap.
I'm still wondering what it all means. But the beauty and strangeness of Last Touch First remains after the noise of the rest of the festival all dies down.
Kylian & Schumacher choreography
© Robert Benschop
The underlying theme appears to be that bourgeois appearances are just that appearances. Under the finery and the well-set tables, each couple is world of primal violence and fractured intimacy. Pretty close to the truth. A mature truth - this is not Romeo and Juliet. But then most of life isn't either.
Revenge is best tasted cold. After the closing of NDT III, Last Touch First was crowned dance production of the year in 2007 in Holland.
Dancers:
Kristen Cere, Pedro Goucha, Cora Bos Kroese, David Cecil Krugel, Ester Karin Natzijl, Michael Scott Schumacher
August 1st, 2009 §
George Blaschke gets off to a running start with Rachmaninoff music and a tall thin dancer in a grey prison suit climbing the walls and sprawling on the floor. Really compelling movement.
Petr Ochvat © Georg Blaschke
The idiom is a bit dated and Chaplinesque but strangely compelling. Alas after about ten minutes it's over and two other gentlemen walk out from the back of Kasino. Everything is very cordial, they nod and greet the dancer and then sit down.
We watch the dancer rehearse some more and then a home movie is shown of the three men on stage in a rehearsal studio. The two gentlemen sitting turn out to be a choreographer and a dancer. The sixty year old choreographer Harmen Tromp learned this material directly from the original dancer/choreographer Andrei Jerschik (Linz 1902-1997). And he taught it to the forty year old teacher George Blaschke. Who is now passing it on to the young Czech dancer Petr Ochvat.
Jetzt bist du dran © Georg Blaschke
George Blaschke is a piece about passing material on from one generation to another. Perhaps the passing of choreography should be an impenetrable mystery to audiences. To me it's just a given. That's what happens.
In this context, the pickings here are slim.
Ten minutes of compelling dance and ten minutes of dull rehearsal and ten minutes of rather mediocre film.
On the plus side, I would like to see the dancer perform again. I would like to see more of the choreography again.
I'm not sure about the advisability of taking 12 euros from people for what is a non-show and a rather bare bones demo. Apparently I was in the minority and most of the people attending were actually on a whole evening ticket which included Maguy Marin and so you got a lot of minimalism for your 25 or 30 euros.
July 31st, 2009 §
Rosas danst Rosas is a historical work, the second mainstage full length work by then young choreographer Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker in 1982. One of the performances which moved me the most in my life is Rosas's A Love Supreme so I was eager to see Rosas danst Rosas in its entirety live.
Rosas danst Rosas has been filmed at least twice, once in something like the original version, more recently with the current cast. Rosas danst Rosas is something special, the seminal work on which a great dance company was built.
Normally every generation of Rosas dancer must learn Rosas danst Rosas and so the piece remains perenially young, each Rosas dancer taking her place as the latest incarnation of de Keersmaeker and her predecessors.
Rosas Danst Rosas
© HermanSorgeloos
This year, Anna Teresa did something completely different. She rejoined the production herself and recruited some of her top teachers, dancers from the past, all born about 1970. Her motivation for doing the piece this way is not quite clear.
Is her quest to try to break down preconceptions about the older body and aging? Is she seeking to reveal the difference of time? Is she seeking to immortalize herself before she leaves this earth?
This wouldn't be the first time a great dancer had such an idea: the very great Russian dancer Maja Plissetskaya had a 70th birthday gala where she danced much of her repetoire from her prime.
Indeed, our generation (I'm about the same generation as the second generation Rosas dancers) is very interested immortality or at least in remaining forever young. The eponymous New Romantic tune of the 80's foreshadowed our ongoing efforts to stay vigorous and attractive our entire adult lives.
So how do De Keersmaeker and her dancers succeed in their dance with time?
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker & Cynthia Loemij & Sarah Ludi & Samantha Van Wissen
© HermanSorgeloos
Rosas danst Rosas begins with industrial sounds and floor work. Eventually the dancers rise from the floor to reveal themselves in grey shirts and leggings, surprisingly contemporary - almost like Japanese school girl uniforms. Dark hair, long legs, slender waists, intelligent expressions: sophisticated European beauty incarnate and quintessential Rosas women. Anna Teresa De Keermaeker herself is very much in this mold. I sometimes wonder if her predelection for this type is narcississtic or just a matter of tast.
The opening section is all about breath. It's sound, it's feel. One didn't notice anything different about these dancers in the dusky light until the first hard falls, which the cast bravely took on at a speed to make the floor crack. All of the dancers showed extraordinary sensitivity to the floor and to weight. There was a great deal of finesse to all of their movement.
In the second movement, the choreographic language becomes more explicit, more about the dancer and less about atmosphere. The movement is predicated on the state of mind of a young woman from the age of 22 to 30. Each dancer revels in the physical magnetism of a woman of that age. During those years of her life, a beautiful woman may struggle with her emotional life but masters her exterior world and basks in her own perfect physical presence.
Alas sometime in the early thirties, this symphony of fertility and time comes to an end and either a woman tends towards too thin or too thick. Her curves become either lines or bulges and her face begins to crease. She wears confidence like a mask rather than as part of her own skin.
That young arrogance and naive joy in her own beauty is so much a part of the movement here that for the most part it seemed very strange on these dancers, all around forty. At one point each dancer touches her chest, her breast repeatedly. In Cynthia Loemij's movement you could see the inherent self-confident sensuality of the gesture. But in the architect of the movement, De Keersmaeker there was a tangible disinclination to touch her own breast, almost a sort of dislike of her body. Certainly devoid of any sensuality, at best perfunctory.
The dryness of performance almost feels like a betrayal of the original material, which is a celebration of life and sensuality.
Later on the dancers take turns to show the audience first one bare shoulder and then the other. Samantha van Wissen and Cynthia Loemij both invest themselves seriously in the seductive gesture. Again De Keersmaker is reluctant, perfunctory. As she knows the content of the choreography better than anyone else, I am surprised she wanted to appear in it on stage if she did not want to respect its spirit and fulfill its intention.
As the dancers whirled and flirted, one felt in some way like one was watching ghosts of Christmas past twirling on stage.
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker & Cynthia & Sarah & Samantha
© HermanSorgeloos
Of all the dancers, only Cynthia Loemij still danced like a Rosas dancer, swift of foot, supremely feminine, assured without arrogance. As Rosas dancers are wont, by the end of the show she had soaked with sweat her long hair, which whipped wet through the air across her shoulders. Her mouth bloomed red with exertion and her eyes flew wild from the passionate movement.
Loemij's energy, intensity and natural Rosas sensuality only made it more clear how strange it is to resurrect this work on an older cast.
Rosas danst Rosas speeds up enormously towards the final climax. At the end, Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker just couldn't keep up. The steps created by her 27 years ago overwhelmed her and she fell first a half step and then sometimes a full step behind.
All three of the ex-Rosas dancers enjoyed themselves. De Keersmaeker seemed more than a little dissatisfied at the end. Was she cross over missed steps or with her choreography?
De Keersmaeker should neither be surprised nor cross with herself...we all lose steps. Being fit is not enough. I think nothing of cycling the hundred kilometers from here to St Polten along the Danube. But in dance, I've lost a step now. There is nothing I can do, that faster half step is gone. This is the deal with mortality - and there is no other deal on offer.
Strangely as the architect of so much sensual feminine beauty and so much emotion in movement, Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker is severe and often dry in public and even to some extent in life. I don't quite understand her compulsion to perform her own works herself now.
A years ago in Desh, De Keermaeker and Marion Ballester were able to offer something different from the usual. Desh was an original work, built on their dancing in the here and now. What the reprise of older pieces with herself in the lead means, I am not certain.
The technology and availability of recording images has improved a lot since 1982, along with interest in the Rosas company and their financial support. Perhaps De Keersmaeker is seeking to leave permanent documentation, to fix a record of her own performance as well: images which will live on after she is gone when perhaps even the Rosas company will be dance history and not contemporary.
In artistic terms, I would find these recreations of older works more interesting if De Keersmaeker would rewrite the emotions on the dancers in the here and now: dance for forty year olds rather than twenty-five year olds. That transcription would be far more interesting than this imitation of what was then.
As a reflection on time and mortality, this restaging of Rosas danst Rosas provokes enough to leave no regrets. But that perhaps one has not used one's short time on this earth as well as Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker, whether she dances on or not.
July 26th, 2009 §
A new piece from Ultima Vez is always a big event in the dance world since Wim Vandekeybus first set the European dance world on its head with Les porteuse de mauvaise nouvelles and his physical theatre in 1989.
The last few years have been a bit strange, with a reprise of Les porteuse de mauvaise nouvelles in 2005 and the creation of a greatest hits piece Spiegel 2007. On the film side, Vandekeybus did find time for more original work in the full length piece Blush in 2005 (partially based on the stagework of 2003).
At the root of Vandekeybus's creative process has been a group of longtime dancers making up Ultima Vez, fellow travellers with Vandekeybus himself. The original Ultima Vez lived together, slept together, created together with Vandekeybus as a kind of Faustian overlord, an object of love and hate, respect and loathing. One could feel the intense group dynamics on the stage. You can see these deep relationships work themselves out in both Vandekeybus's films Blush and In Spite of Wishing and Wanting.
Nieuwzwart - The New Black is a bit of a double entendre. The group of dancers for Nieuwzwart are all new. No one remains from the original Ultima Vez (as late as Les porteuse de mauvaises nouvelles there were some original cast members in the shows). After an intense audition period, Vandekeybus gathered a new group of seven dancers and set to work for four months.
The work is based on a poem by Peter Verhelst about his experience at the end of the world along in Alaska. The poem is an existential lament about the sky and solitude and travel. Kylie Walters alternates from reading, chanting, singing and reciting the sombre lyric. Often she appears as a an early 90's David Bowie in white shirt and short blonde hair and mature elegance.
On stage we begin with what looks like huge piles of leaves rustling on stage. Out of nowhere we hear a huge sonic explosion. A few figures appear on stage in blue uniforms with flashlights. They search the stage and find naked creatures under the leaves. They stand over them and shine lights in their eyes, force them to move about the stage. For all the world, the uniforms, the flashlights, the naked victims, reminded me of nothing more than the awful photos out of the Abu Graib prison a couple of years ago.
naked creatures under the leaves
© Pieter JanDePue
Eventually this prologue comes to an end and some real dancing begins. For some reason, the dancers dance away from the stage and we see their faces very little. There is some solid solo work in here from the long limbed Tanja Marin Fridjosdottir and the astonishingly acrobatic Olivier Mathieu. A little bit later an unknown dancer hits the center of the stage wrapped in the golden heat blankets of the beginning, raging about the stage in a sort of blind frenzy. This golden apparition looked like one of the dragons from a Chinese New Year and seemed desperately out of place from the naked bodies of the prologue and the pure dancing in between.
wrapped in the golden heat blankets
© Pieter JanDePue
Eventually we return to high speed Ultima Vez dancing. Vandekeybus has a penchant for hard bodied men with long curly hair and beautiful women breaking their bodies at high speed. Ultima Vez 2009 is no exception. Ultima Vez is famous for their casualty lists, with more dancers knocked out of commission on a per capita basis than any other company before or since. And one sees why. Over the head foot flips at speed, high speed body slams, running spins from the opposite direction.
Tanja Marin Fridjosdottir & Olivier Mathieu
© Pieter JanDePue
It's all very spectacular, but we've seen it before. And one seeks a higher sense to the madnessm an artistic motivation to all the music and movement.
I had trouble finding it.
The music varies between Jim Morrison's American Prayer, David Bowie, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Bauhaus. The music was originally created by Maruo Pawlowski for Nieuwzwart and performed by him and the Belgian rock ban dEUS. Often in spite of chameleon-like changes, the music was very good. With her Australian/British accent and Bowie look and the dark atmosphere and naked bodies, one feels that one is in an extended outtake of Tony Scott's The Hunger's nightclub scene.
I don't mind as The Hunger is one of my favorite not serious films: The Hunger is more an exercise in style than a serious treatment of immortality.
And so is Nieuwzwartz an exercise in style.
At the end of the piece, more sonic booms and the dancer reappear naked and scuttle across the ground like crabs into the darkness as Kylie Waters wanders among them with a flashlight.
The whole theme appears to be you are born naked, you struggle a great deal and then you return naked to this earth. A timeless and honorable enough theme - but still something is missing here.
Perhaps Nieuwzwartz would work better with just two or three more outstanding choreograpic moments and a few less stage tricks. The golden heat blankets just don't make any sense in apposition to the wilderness theme - they look more like something out of a space story. Five huge panels for generating thunder sounds on the left hand of the stage go underused. Either they should be integrated into the story or removed. One often feels music or sound is used for effect and not purpose.
For me the biggest issue with Nieuwzwartz is the dancers. They are just not at the level of past Ultima Vez groups yet. They seem a junior company just getting into the flow of it. With few senior hands around to help them develop their numbers and no past historic relationships to develop further through their stage partnerships, they only seem to touch the surface of what they are doing.
The oustanding flips and high speed enthusiasm of Benedicte Mottart left an impression, particularly in her short duets with Olivier Mathieu, as did Tanja Marin Fridjosdottir in her frenetic solos. For some reason in her duets (most often with her fellow red clothed partner Mate Meszaros), Fridjosdottir did fine but not on the same level as her early solos.
Otherwise, the dancers disappeared into a kind of anonymous obscurity. In earlier, Ultima Vez shows one could remember each of the dancers for days afterwards, their individuality seared onto one's visual memory.
Vandekeybus appears to be at a creative crossroads, not having found the new nor having abandoned the old. His recent film work has been more spectacular and original than his stagework and he is still in development of a full length feature script with Verhelst.
Nieuwzwartz is a well-made show and not one to regret seeing. For the moment, it is not at the hauteur of Vandkeybus's previous works. The greatest rival of the master is often not other artists but his or her earlier self. And so it is here with Vandekeybus.
Performers:
Tanja Martin Fridjosdottir, Dawid Lorenc, Olivier Mathieu, Mate Meszaros, Benedicte Mottart, Ulrike Reinbott, Imre Vass, Gavin Webber, Kylie Walters
May 28th, 2009 §
After a slow spell in 2007 Choreolab is back with a vengeance, just short months ago we all trekked out to St Polten to see the Choreolab 2008 and we've just been to Baden and back twice this week. I'm dreaming of not having to lug all my camera gear to the ends of the earth again, but the stage in Baden is very good and well-suited to the scale of Choreolab. The town is also very pretty.
town of Baden
Jubilaums Stadttheater Baden
This year is the ten year anniversary of what has become a marvelous tradition in the Vienna State Opera Ballet. Choreolab for the uninitiated is an annual event at which dancers from the Staatsoper can put on their own choreography. Other dancers volunteer to fill the parts and the Balletclub of Vienna under the direction of Ingeborg Tichy-Luger organises the venue and marketing. It is difficult to say enough about the dedication and inspiriation of choreolab founder Tichy-Luger. Let no one underestimate the work and will involved in bringing such an event to life once, let alone to its ten year anniversery.
Ingeborg Tichy Luger
This year, choreolab featured nine choreographers. I suspect ten were planned and one got lost on the way. No matter. The nine young choreographers together put on a substantial evening, divided into two acts and lasting almost two hours with intermission. Some brought major works and some minor works, but all were under fifteen minutes.
Let's approach the works in order.
To Ella - Choreographer Samuel Columbo
Samuel Columbet to ella 2
The Ella in question is Ella Fitzgerald to whose music the choreography is composed. Here we see several couples flirt and love in elegant cocktail ambience. The dancers are dressed in extraordinarily simple and attractive costumes, like the dresses from an Alfred Hitchcock film. Blue with white buttons and belts.
Bernhard Blauel Iliana Chivarova
The feeling is casual and light. While one would be hard pressed to find much depth here, like Sunday brunch, To Ella charms and delights. The dancers enjoy the occasion to flaunt their good looks and some high kicks and everyone enjoys him and herself both on stage and in the audience.
To Ella could become a longer piece with a story between the couples. But it's just fine as it is.
Elena Li in to Ella
Samuel Columbo is French and has been in Vienna for five years.
...and then she looked up - Choreographer Marie-Claire D'Lyse
Rafaella Santanna
Mademoiselle D'Lyse must win the prize for the most exquisite name in Australia. She has the charm to match. This is her first creation for the stage since her arrival in Austria nine years ago.
Ketevan Papava Flavia Soares
d'Lyse's piece is almost too easy to watch - four beautiful girls seeking themselves in grey and blue bodysuits, under dramatic lighting and to the dulcet tones of Imogen Heap. Even a little bit precious until one reads the program notes, it's a dancer's own biography:
the story is about a girl who...is completely oblivious and blind to the political, religious and all global issues that are facing us today. Three wise ones represent the collective conscience of society telling her, almost begging her to lookup and realise what's going on in the world while she is dancing around and looking down all the time.
Fine, somewhat Lermontovian, even maudlin you say. Well I say, at least she's telling a real story which is important to her about the awakening of conscience. The story is told with simplicity and elegance.
Rafaella Santanna Ketevan Papava
Her casting is spectacular, with three Brazilian beauties, Rafaella Sant'anna, Taina Ferreira and Flavia Soares perfect in the role of the three graces of wisdom. Ketevan Papava sensitively handles the protagonist's spiritual growth in cool and measured dance.
Rafaella Santanna Ketevan Papava Flavia Soares Taina Ferreira
I'm very curious to see what Marie-Claire D'Lyse creates next. Will she be able to push her boundaries harder or will she remain lost in the beautiful? I could live with either result. Stay tuned for more news....
kuda - Choreographer Tin Kos
Tin Kos
"a lost type doesn't know is what direction he should go."
Well, Tin Kos is all of nineteen years old and clearly is wondering what he should do. Probably dance. Here he jumps around, does some break dance moves and runs away to the music of the saian supa crew. If any single item didn't belong in the program this was it. For all his charm and his ready smile, Tin Kos is just not ready to share the stage with the other choreographers. kuda is nothing more than a romp around the stage.
Tin Kos leaps
I'm no great fan of child prodigies, especially if they are not prodigies. I hope this is not a direction which will be developed at Choreolab (ballet school pupils as choreographers).
It looks like with dedication and work, Tin Kos will be a good enough dancer. In spite of his inexperience, he did not offend in a role in Samuel Colombo's To Ella.
Everlasting Pictures - Choreographer Dan Datcu
Rebecca Horner Kiyoko Hashimoto Kimoto Masayu
Alice Firenze Alexis Forabasco
At choreolab 08, the revelation was Romanian choreographer Dan Datcu who danced a striking duet with the powerful Rebecca Horner. This year, Dan Datcu took himself out of the production and added four other dancers to his reflective and moving work with Ms. Horner.
Kimoto Masayu Rebecca Horner Alexis Forabasco
The longer and more involved piece included even more ambitious lifts and between meandering couplings and triplings. His dancers seemed to put themselves into the work. Alice Firenze was fire and Rebecca Horner was ice, to whom the others gravitate and fall away.
Alice Firenze Alexis Forabasco flight
Alexis Forabasco struck a particularly strong note with his dramatic and craggy features.
arabesque Alexis Forabasco
The choice of music was powerful. Giovanni Solima's ambient melodic thoughts. The lighting was low and subtle as well, with muted tones to match the deep emotions.
Alexis Forabasco Kimoto Masayu Kimoto Masayu
Dan Datcu has a way with movement which goes beyond facile or pretty. He can directly communicate emotion through movement. He was the only one of the choreographers to work extensively with both air and ground.
Kiyoko Hashimoto Alexis Forabasco Kimoto Masayu Alice Firenze
"facing life and knowing what it is - loving it for what it is and giving it away at the end." Same tagline as last year, but this year filled out with some depth.
Dan Datcu everlasting pictures
drei unbekannte (three strangers) - Choreographer Valery Kaydanovsky
Alexis Forabasco 2
Very stylish. Black clad men with white face and dark clown makeup. In the end,Three Strangers seemed more an exercise in style than an attempt to solve a substantial problem. As I spend a lot of time lambasting the choreographers at Tanzquartier for trying to solve substantial problems without any style (or horrible style), perhaps I should Valery Kaydanovsky some slack here.
Richard Szabo Alexis Forabasco Valeriy Kaydanovskiy 3
Basically, Kaydanovsky's piece survives on the very strong stage presence of Alexis Forabasco here. Forabasco breathes as if born for the role as the mean stranger, holding the audience in his hand the entire time. We dread his next cruel gesture, wonder what he will do next. At some level Forabasco's charisma here is camped up. He should consider harnessing this power for more traditional roles as well.
Richard Szabo Alexis Forabasco Valeriy Kaydanovskiy mooning
This is Valery Kaydanovsky's first work as a choreographer. I am curious to see where his next work. Choreolab has a tradition of developing stylistic choreographers. Nicki Adler created many of his early works here.
Broken Wings - Choreographer Vesna Orlic
broken wings Ekaterina Davydov Samuel Columbet 2
Vesna Orlic's Broken Wings is a strange bird. Orlic reprises with Russian Ekaterina Davydova who was so good as the cool younger woman in Buenos Aires Hora Cero in Choreolab 06. Orlic pairs Volksoper dancer Davydova with Samuel Columbet, choreographer of the first piece tonight.
broken wings Ekaterina Davydov Samuel Columbet 6
Columbet is expected to wear a tutu here and is a strangely androgynous swan. A very difficult role for a man to carry off credibly - broken wings is deadly serious, no silly version of Swan Lake for men. But Columbet surprises with the power, consistency and focus of his dancing. He doesn't struggle with the Orlic's difficult lifts. Davydova is not much smaller than he is - the benefits of upper body training while you are in the corps-de-ballet hopefully will not be lost on the other men in Staatsoper. Be ready when your time comes.
broken wings Ekaterina Davydov Samuel Columbet 4
The piece is more difficult to evaluate. I saw it twice. The first evening it didn't seem to work, the second evening better. The biggest issue was the cold performance of Davydova. She just doesn't seem to give much emotionally on stage. There are parts where her icy princess persona is an asset this isn't one of them.
Orlic was trying to tackle big issues here:
In the beginning was Paradise. Clear water, green trees and the song of love birds. Then came the fifth and more dangerous rider of the Apocalypse and laid waste to civilisation. The birds wings were broken and love was banne from their thoughts.
A piece not lightly conceived nor lightly made. But what we saw on stage was not at the majesty of the conception.
broken wings Samuel Columbet Ekaterina Davydov 2
I had a chance to hear from the choreographer some of the story behind the piece. The all black background was not at all what she wanted. She was looking for a white floor and sky blue walls. This was supposed to be heaven and not dying swans. In a vote among the choreographers for a dark or light stage and floor, Orlic and Columbet, d'Lyse were voted down by the other choreographers.
Ekaterina Davydov Samuel Columbet Vesna Orlic
In Baden, broken wings was deeply flawed - like a broken Dying Swan. With an emotionally resonant ballerina and with a lighter décor I could imagine the piece as very powerful.
Tea for Two - choreographer Florian Hurler
Josefine Tyler lies languid waiting for life to start
Florian Hurler's Tea for Two felts more than a little self-indulgent. A bored girl lies in her bedroom waiting for life to happen: the sugar sweet Josefine Tyler in white. An older woman dances sophisticated steps at the back: charismatic Gabriele Haslinger. Sweet Josephine spies Gabriele, they shadow dance a little and then sit down to enjoy a luscious (post-coital) cigarette.
Josefine Tyler Gabriele Haslinger discover
Josefine Tyler Gabriele Haslinger in love
I am trying to think of something more to say about Tea for Two. A poignant story of sexual awakening and friendship with an older person who opened the world to the young lover. Frankly the story would fly better on two men than on two women. Even then there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the story. Alas the staging was maudlin, the dancing facile, the cigarette smoking cliché and superfluous (if you need cigarettes for effect on stage you are on crutches before you start).
Gabriele Haslinger Josefine Tyler smoke together
The older woman has symbolically passed on the gift of tobacco
to her young friend: mentors like that we can live without
As a life-long antismoker, perhaps I am not the best person to judge Tea for Two. Unlike most of the work this evening, Tea for Two did not benefit from a second viewing.
Cut - choreographer Eno Peci
Eno Peci cut
Like Kaydanovsky's Three Strangers, Cut is exercise in style. Eno Peci is one of the stronger male dancers in Staatsoper and just hitting his prime. This year Staatoper ballet director Harangozo named Peci a lead dancer after his fine work in Roman Petit's Die Fledermaus.
Mihail Sosnovschi Eno Peci
Peci's Cut begins with eight spot lights turned on the audience half blinding us. The dancers dance among the spots, leaving us to detect silhouettes and poses but not to be able to clearly register the individual dancers. The photos you see here are clearer than what the naked eye saw.
kimoto masayu mihail sosnovschi kioyoka hashimoto
Peci gathered a strong group of dancers around himself. Mihail Sosnovschi and Kiyoka Hashimoto particularly shine here. At first is Cut all seems somewhat casual and improvised. But a second viewing revealed that for the most part Cut is tightly choreographed. The music is also a strange collage of Johann Sebastian Back and Thomas Newman.
Kiyoka Hashimoto Eno Peci 2
Unlike the preceding piece, Cut is professional work. Peci seems to be relying on the strength of his dancers - including himself - to communicate. He says the piece is "without words: abstract and modern". As a proof of concept it works.
Kimoto Masayu Kiyoka Hashimoto
Peci here shows his professionalism and showmanship. You could rely on him to choreography your music video or a piece of your opera. He'd find a way to make you and the dancers you choose look good. Whether the creative flame in him is strong enough for richly imagined productions remains to be seen. Cut is Peci's first work. As an étude, there is little to criticise.
Mihail Sosnovschi
Iguazu - choreographer Karina Sarkissova
Karina Sarkissova's Iguazu
Choreolab veteran Karina Sarkissova's piece iguazu was chosen to close the evening. If she doesn't hold the title yet, Ms. Sarkissova is certainly about to become the most prolific choreolab choreographer of all time. This is her fourth piece in three choreolabs. But art is more about quality and not quantity.
Karina Sarkissova walking on men
Sarkissova continues to commit the same transgressions over and over again:
- overpowering the dance with music
- grandiloquence without depth, i.e. empty showiness
- trafficking in cliché without remorse
- selling nudity with a curious American prurience and prudery
Let's take her sins one by one. Musical grandiloquence: times three with fragments from Gustavo Santaolalla, Gaetano Donizetti and Inva Mulla-Tchako. To that potent mix, she added her own voice over beginning with a religious prayer addresses to "Our father". It turns out that Sarkissova meant her own father but that I would think she meant god gives an idea of the grandeur she is reaching for. Only in the film Titanic have I seen music to match Sarkissova's tendency to overwhelm her art with the soundtrack.
Irina Tsymbal carried like princess
Lack of depth. Here we have a woman on stage with a guitar with four men to do her every bidding, dance for her, carry her around on their hands, worship her and put her back on top of her alter. This very silly fantasy of a world enslaved to one's self was all set to fall flat on its narcissistic face. Then Irina Tsymbal showed up in the lead role. Sarkissova is getting better at both casting and coaching her dancers. Irina Tsymbal single handedly rescued Iguazu with her intensity and her evident pleasure in her male slaves. Absolutely compelling on stage and drop dead beautiful in the role.
Denys Chervychko Marat Davletshin Irina Tysmbal
The cliché. Tagline for Iguazu:
no one can predict the next moment. you can turn from hopeless to ecstatic just in one second because of one glance, when someone's eyes are talking to you...
How Sarkissova manages to live her entire life as an ecstatic fifteen year old girl is a miracle. It's dangerous living like that. It ends in broken hearts and broken lives. What exactly this tagline has to do with what we saw on stage in Baden remains a mystery to me. Apart than it sounds good. Calculated effect again, but it does not seem reflected in the art.
Irina Tsymbal hits her stride in Iguazu
Nudity. Sarkissova has the strangest relationship to the female body. Once again she has her dancer nude, but with a flesh bra on. On one hand Sarkissova is almost entirely aesthetically dependent on the music and near nudity. On the other hand, she is unwilling to actually revel in the human form and show us what she is selling.
Particularly offensive this time (for those who are comfortable with the human body and take joy in its forms and don't find anything prurient about it) is that there was no reason for false nudity. Sarkissova could very easily have made just as sexy a costume without the heavy handed flesh bra. She just needed to put a little red bikini top on Tsymbal and she was off to the races.
Irina Tsymbal Marat Davletshin
In conversation with Ms. Sarkissova she has told me pretending to show us the human body is her explicit wish and nothing else will satisfy her than fake nudity. This prurient puritanism is so American and provincial and so very, very out of place in the middle of old Europe.
Irina Tsymbal surrounded on her own two feet
Basically iguazu for better or worse - perhaps better, I like the film myself - is like outtakes from Conan the Barbarian (the original with Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Earl Jones). I can imagine Sarkissova on a good day choreographing the witch scene with the amazing Cassandra Gava.
Karina Sarkissova iguazu men
You can take the girl out of Moscow but you can't take Las Vegas out of the girl.
Irina Tsymbal - Conan Triumphant
Bathing in applause, her slaves before her
A resplendent Karina Sarkissova
bathes in applause of her own
In the end Iguazu is an undermanned Las Vegas number. Ending on iguazu is not an accurate reflection of the overall character and strength of the evening. On the other hand, where else would one put Sarkissova's work?
In fairness, I see quite a bit of development in Karina Sarkissova's work here. Iguaza is well cast. Working with a larger group this time which at least gives Sarkissova's grandiloquent and melodramatic conceptions a fighting chance at credibility. There is great commercial demand for choreographers who can put together solid flashy shows which pack houses, whether in Las Vegas revues or Paris's Folies Bergère. Much more than for subtle and complex and innovative leading edge dance, whether contemporary or classical.
Conclusion
So for those keeping track, overall score Choreolab 09:
- one masterpiece in progress: everlasting pictures, Dan Datcu
- two fine if not mainstage works by returning choreographers: Samuel Columbet, Vesna Orlic
- three promising debuts: Marie-Claire d'Lyse, Valery Kaydanovsky, Eno Peci
- some juvenilia not worth mentioning
- one Vegas revue fragment: Karina Sarkissova
Six out of nine for laboratory work is a very good score. Overall, the varied lengths is much better than the flat ten minute cap we had in Choreolab 2008. I still miss the one or two masterwork style pieces at twenty or twenty five minutes of the early choreolabs. This could work well with some five minute miniatures from debutants.
Choreolab is a fabulous initiative.* Something similar be part of every major classical company around the world. Some are already doing it, but those who aren't should. A very happy tenth anniversary and I for one look forward to another ten years of Choreolab.
* On an organisational note, I would also like to praise Ingeborg Tichy-Luger's choice in wine for her dance events. It's always the same and always very good. Longer parties with less food and better wine is a potent combination for joie de vivre. Life is so short - and it's nice to see someone getting the small touches right.
All photographs copyright Alec Kinnear. The stage crew are to be highly praised for the speed of the transitions between pieces. The lighting crew should be damned for making the whites far too hot all night.
More photos can be seen and prints can be purchased online in the full Choreolab 09 gallery.
April 9th, 2009 §
Opera Graz's ballet director Darrel Toulon is a choreographer of ideas. For years, he created dance works which were closely related to film and included projection elements.
Much as I find Toulon's ideas engaging, he is often more entranced with theory than my own wont. Occasionally I think Toulon would be even better happier as one of deconstructionist philosophy professors back in 1990 in Toronto. The problem with theory and dance is that dance is a tactile medium, little concerned with meta-conceits and epistemology.
If you wish to discuss the nature of being you have far stronger tools at your disposal with a pen and paper than you do with a stage full of dancers. If you wish to treat the meaning of love and the fragility of life, your chances of touching people deeply are much better with dancers and the stage than with simple pen and paper. Horses for courses. Dance is not the correct medium for literary theory or pure philosophy.
Unsurprisingly, Mr. Toulon and I deeply disagree on this subject. However Schwanen Trilogie has gone a long way to persuade me that there is a place for deconstruction in dance.
Schwanen Trilogie takes a single recurrent theme from the world of art and dance - the swan. From Tchaikovski to Sibellius to Petipa to Pavlova, many of the greatest creators of music and dance have returned again and again to the swan. What do they find in the swan which stirs them so deeply?
Schwanen Trilogie, Graz Opera.
A Swan theme stirs the world of art and dance so deeply.
First, beauty and purity (either white or black, swans are not cute and colourful ducks). Secondly, a heightened mortality, accented by their long and fragile necks. Thirdly, a latent viciousness - striking hard with their beaks when disturbed.
How to treat the whole motif of Swans in a single evening? Toulon takes legends, two of which are well known and a third which is unknown. Seeking story for dance in legend is the right start.
Dance is far more about archetypes than about the hurly burly of political movement, as the Soviets learned. The only really effective dance works in socialism I know of are The Stone Flower and Spartacus. Stone Flower is a legend. While on the surface, Spartacus is a political drama, it is another version of the Christ story, of a man who sacrifices himself for the greater good, of people who lose their freedom due to their inability to control their appetites.
The three stories chosen by Toulon include Leda and the Swan, where Zeus comes to Leda in the form of a swan and ravishes her.
A Finish fairy tale, Lemminkäinen in Tounela, tells the story of Lemminkäinen seeking the hand of a swan maiden.
Finally, Toulon approaches ballet's mountain in Swan terms - Odette/Odile.
Odette/Odile is the leitmotif of dance. Indeed my own life long engagement with ballet is a direct result of seeing Tanya Chernobrovkina incarnate this role in the Stanislavsky-Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre on Pushkin Street in Moscow in 1989. Had I not seen this work, I may never have understood the power of dance in general and ballet in particular.
Tampering with Swan Lake is fraught with danger. Any change you make is likely to be a significant diminishment of the original. By standing next to genius, your temerity to change it for the worse only bores the audience and makes you look like a fool.
Schwanen Trilogie takes this bold risk and succeeds.
Ironically enough Schwanen Trilogie begins with a bar and dancers doing class. Self-referential obligatoire. Fortunately the women are beautiful and the music is live. Live music is to dance as fresh air and fresh water for animals.
Schwanen Trilogie, Graz Opera.
The women are beautiful and the music is live.
Live music is to dance as fresh air and fresh water for animals.
The bar is gone and the dancers gather in groups and pairs and dance as swans. Particularly remarkable here is Bostjan Ivanjsic. Although in a secondary role, behind Ardee Dionisio and Michal Zábavik, when Ivanjsic is on the stage he dominates it. The movement is often a play on the movement of Swans but fortunately Toulon does not get bogged down in bird movement but follows the emotional lines between the pairs.
This section tells the story of Leda and Zeus. The costumes are minimalist, here reduced versions of the brown tunics from the bar class opening, the men half-naked.
The middle section based on a story in the Finnish mythology Kavala (think Beowolf and The Odyssey together but in Finnish language), the story tells of Lemminki's attempt to win the hand of a swan maiden as his wife where he drowns. His mother goes into the underworld to collect the pieces of his body from the river of Tuonela and is able to sew him back together.
The second half opens in a spectacular way. As the curtains open lights come up we see enoromous white eggs gleaming in the darkness.
Dancers come onto the stage and lie on the eggs and dance around the eggs and more swans come from inside the egg, springing full-grown into dance themselves.
Schwanen Trilogie, Graz Opera.
The second half opens in a spectacular way.
Enoromous white eggs are gleaming in the darkness.
Just the large Graz Opera stage, darkness and subtle light. Film is but a pale shadow of this three dimensional beauty. Toulon was long obsessed with bringing film into dance, but has at last harnessed the power of the pure stage with his collaborators Anne Marie Legenstein and Alexandra Burgstaller (stage design and costumes) and Klaus Zimmermann (light).
The stage is all dark as huge eggs are rolled in. From the eggs emerge dancers as swans born adult.
The three stories segue into one another and reflect one another. Both part two and part three could stand alone as short ballet in themselves. The evening is richer for constantly returning to the same question - the innocence of love and the swan again and again from different angles.
I remember from the end seeing Michal Zábavik as Rothbart. He is supposed to be conjuring the wind and the rain against Siegfried. There was something so indolent and self-satisfied about his movements that the moment was broken. Throughout the evening which he should have been leading (in part one Zábavik also has the role of Zeus), he seemed better cut out for the role of fashion model than dancer. He posed more than he moved and spent more time flicking his long hair out of his eyes than dancing. Zábavik has had other major roles in the Graz Opera so I can only assume I was not seeing him at his best.
Schwanen Trilogie, Graz Opera.
Returning to the same question -
the innocence of love and the swan again and again from different angles.
Clemmie Sveaas from England was one of several Brits shining on the Graz stage. Her Odette was charming if not earth-shattering. Compatriot Benjamin Griffiths as Siegfried in a Tutu was so incredibly sweet like candy with his perfect features and delicate dancing.
Jana Drgonova was remarkable both for her beauty and the intensity of her performance as both a grace and as Leda. Perhaps the indifferent Zeus of Slovak compatriot Zábavik let down her own work some little bit.
Stagecraft fabulous. Wonderful use of space. Excellent costumes.
What does it all mean? I don't know and by the end, I'm not sure it matters.
If one takes Toulon's word for it, Schwanensee Trilogie is about mortality and human striving for spiritual transcendency. Perhaps, but it's difficult to put into words. Schwanensee Trilogie is that and much more. It's the kind of dance work, which you want to see two or three times before analysing. Happily I can recommend the experience: Beauty and mystery await.
March 27th, 2009 §
On Monday, I thought I was dropping in on a young composers concert at Porgy and Bess. Something about the Konservatorium Wien. To my surprise, there turned out to be as much dance and performance as music.
MIR geht es gut - Petra Straussová
The best dance piece which I saw was called MIR geht es gut. It's about two girlfriends who meet repeatedly in the underground or at a joga class or via a quick handy call. If you've lived in Vienna any period of time, you are familiar with the persistenty shallow "Mir geht's gut und dir?" At first you think they really want to know. But not at all. It's equivalent of the empty North American. "How are you?" for which there is only one acceptable answer. "I'm great and how are you?"
MIR geht es gut - Petra Straussová
It's an absurd situation. Why do people speak at all if they have nothing to say. Both Petra Staussová and Simone Kühle managed to catch the inflection and frantic feel-good vibe of the modern urban woman perfectly.
MIR geht es gut at the Fidelio-Wettbewerb Konservatorium Wien Continues »
January 30th, 2009 §
In what seems to be an endless tour at Wiener Staatsoper of masterworks from great choreographers of the 1970's, the latest premiere brings us Die Fledermaus, a.k.a. La Chauve-souris from maestro Roland Petit.
Roland Petit brings his Chauvre Souris to Staatsoper:
85 years old and hard at work and happy
Early retirement is heavily overrated
La Chauve-souris is a particularly amusing example of how cultural cross-pollination can go full circle.
Mr. Petit's inspiration for La Chauve-souris was an operetta by Johann Straus (Jr.), the famous waltz king. Die Fledermaus is part of Austrian folklore, televised every year at New Year's on the national television station. Mr. Petit transposed Die Fledermaus's scenes at the ball to Paris's own Maxim's. This production is the first visit of the ballet version of Die Fledermaus to Vienna.
At the heart, the story remains the same. A man with a beautiful wife has grown too accustomed to her, as men do, even bored. Johann's wife Bella solicits her husband's attention to no avail. He prefers even the newspaper to her company. In evening however Johann has other plans. He likes to slip out to Maxim's to dance, flirt and even seduce.
Kirill Kourlaev Olga Esenina
While Johann is ignoring her, Bella - as attractive women, married or not, always do - has an admirer. In this case, the admirer is their children's tutor Ulrich.
Rafaella Sant Anna Olga Esina
When Johann has disappeared to Maxim's, Bella calls Ulrich to the house. Ulrich sees his chance and goes in for the kill, hoping to seduce Bella the same evening. But for the moment, Bella cannot bring herself to betray her husband. Ulrich has a backup plan - to disguise Bella and take her out to Maxim's where she can see Johann's womanizing for herself.
Eno Peci Olga Esina Chauvre Souris
Eno Peci Olga Esina fledermaus
Eno Peci Olga Esina faints
Eno Peci Olga Esina
Olga Esina Odile
Ulrich's hidden agenda is that when Bella has seen Johann's infidelity, she will be easy prey for Ulrich himself.
Roland Petit's Die Fledermaus (La Chauve-Souris) at Vienna Staatsoper Continues »
January 8th, 2009 §
The Vienna State Opera ballet has a new Artistic Director.
He is a familiar name to connaisseurs of European ballet, Manuel Legris. Manuel Legris has been one of the top men at the Paris Opéra since the 1980's.
Manuel Legris at the Opéra de Paris by Shinoyama
The Paris Opéra is sending us on of her best
He has danced everything from all the classics, through George Balanchine, John Cranko (Onegin), Sir Kenneth MacMillan (Manon's Story), Twyla Tharp, John Neumeier (La Dame aux Camélias), William Forsythe Juri Kylian (Il ne faut q'une porte), Trisha Brown (O zlozony / O composite: Legris came to Vienna's ImPulsTanz with this), Angelin Preljocaj (Le Parc) even to Vienna Statsoper's own Renato Zanella (Angel, Alles Waltz).
I cite all these choreographers names - most of them worked with Manuel Legris at the Paris Opéra - as this amazing cross-section of dance makers is exactly what Monsieur Legris brings to the Staatsoper: a first hand familiarity with the best choreographers of the last forty years.
As a classically trained dancer in a classical company, Monsieur Legris knows how to integrate contemporary choreography into the heart of a classical company. The Paris Opéra should be the model for all classical companies today: a vibrant classical repertoire combined with the very pinnacle of contemporary choreographry.
Meet Manuel Legris - Vienna Staatsoper's new ballet director Continues »
