Petrushka / Russian Seasons / Paquita
Bolshoi Ballet
Royal Opera House
29 July 2010

In the middle of a summer season dominated by popular full-length classics, Giselle and Le Corsaire were last week eclipsed at the box-office by a balletic Tom Thumb: a triple bill. The participation of the ever-popular Nikolai Tsiskaridze and of the undoubted stars of this tour, Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev, may have helped matters, but whatever the merits of individual dancers, this essentially Russian program is most overwhelming in the breadth of talent on display in the music, choreography and sets. Alexei Ratmansky’s remarkable Russian Seasons is confronted with Petipa and Fokine; from Stravinsky to Leonid Desyatnikov, a century of music written with ballet in mind flashes by. The Bolshoi Ballet has perhaps never been more conscious of its past, with two reconstructions shown in one evening, and yet by showing the strikingly different Petrushka and Paquita, the company is experimenting with its identity like few others.

Having recently seen the Paris Opera Ballet version of Petrushka, a fascinatingly colourful affair, Sergei Vikharev’s recent reconstruction came as a surprise to me. Why were the order of the music, part of the designs, and a great deal of the choreography so significantly different? This essential Ballets Russes work first came to the Bolshoi in 1921, 10 years after his premiere in Paris, but although the sets could be recreated, Vikharev explained to the Moscow Times that the choreography for this version was lost – what we saw last well was a reconstruction of the 1920 Mariinsky version, with the choreography, notated not too long after, “mostly that of Fokine*.”

Complicated though its history may be in this particular case, Petrushka remains an early 20th-century masterpiece, with Stravinsky’s powerful score an undisputed highlight. Set in a traditional fair in St. Petersburg, it conjures up images and legends both entertaining and enigmatic, from the bear brought in to entertain the crowd to the Charlatan who locks up his puppets in very singular rooms. At once lively and dark, its theatricality and deep Russian roots clearly open the door to a reflection on Russian identity as it is projected in ballet. (…)

» Read the full review in Ballet.co Magazine (August 2010)

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A late link, but I was in Monaco in early July for the last part of Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo’s season-long homage to the Ballets Russes – and my review of Maillot’s Schéhérazade and Shen Wei’s 7 to 8 and, a world premiere, appeared in the Financial Times on July 14.

Schéhérazade / 7 to 8 and
Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo
Salle Garnier
8 July 2010

With the centenary of the Ballets Russes, Monte-Carlo has an excuse to celebrate its own illustrious dance heritage. Diaghilev’s ensemble found a home in the city in the 1910s and 1920s; after it disbanded, other impresarios took over and set up a new Russian troupe in Monte-Carlo, which performed under various guises until 1963. The company was reborn in 1985 as Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo, and director and choreographer Jean-Christophe Maillot has since shaped it into a sleek, innovative neo-classical ensemble.

Its summer season is a clever mix of re-creations of Ballets Russes works and world premieres. The Schéhérazade Fokine created in 1910, for instance, was a landmark event for the young company, but Ida Rubinstein and Nijinsky’s startling eroticism, as the Sultan’s favourite Zobeide and the Golden Slave, has too often given way to Orientalist cliché in subsequent renditions. Maillot has gone back to the ballet’s roots, Rimsky-Korsakov’s sumptuous 1888 score, to choreograph a new version. The music’s sheer texture is hard to equal, but Maillot’s musicality sets his attempt apart. He adds nuances where they had disappeared over time, and his patterns and tableaux for the ensemble are endlessly inventive. (…)

» Read the full review in the Financial Times

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La petite danseuse de Degas
Choreography: Patrice Bart
Paris Opera Ballet
Palais Garnier
29 June 2010

“The Little Dancer Aged Fourteen” is one of the Musée d’Orsay’s best-known pieces. Perhaps even more than his numerous paintings of dancers, Degas’ small bronze statue with its inscrutable expression captures the ambivalence of a young ballerina’s dreams in the 19th century. The discovery of the model’s identity in the 1990s prompted the idea of a ballet based on her life: a romantic young girl studying at the Paris Opera Ballet School is pushed by her mother to seduce the “regulars” in a ballet world where sex is the route to preferment. And who better than the Paris Opera Ballet itself to dance the story of her demise?

The idea may have been excellent, but the resulting production, premiered in 2003, is almost fatally flawed. The score that Denis Levaillant was commissioned to compose is not dance-friendly – obscure and at times dissonant, it fails to evoke the lively atmosphere of 19th-century Paris, not helped either by the set’s drab backcloths. The costumes, from the reproduction of the Little Dancer’s tutu to an eccentric take on bustle gowns in the second act, are charmingly sophisticated, a trademark of the Paris Opera, but the world Patrice Bart translates to the stage emerges with little resonance, historical or otherwise. (…)

» Read the full review in the Financial Times

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Dusty Button (surely one of the most delightful names in the business?) has been with Birmingham Royal Ballet for two seasons, but in her teenage years she was also one of the most successful dancers on the US competition circuit. I found out why she decided to complete her training at the Royal Ballet School and stay on to work in England, and the article is in the latest issue of Pointe Magazine, which features ABT’s Maria Riccetto on the cover:

Cover of the June/July 2010 issue © Pointe Magazine

Onstage, Dusty Button defies categorization. The Birmingham Royal Ballet corps member from South Carolina uses her long, swan-like lines with typical English softness but bursts with energy in spiky contemporary work. Once told by a teacher at American Ballet Theatre’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School that she had “too many ingredients” in her soup, Button may be the unlikeliest dancer to find a home in an English company.

Ballet did not start out her favorite genre. Button began dancing at age 7, dividing her time between jazz, tap, hip hop and ballet. Within a few years, she was winning prizes at competitions like Showstoppers and New York City Dance Alliance. “I loved it because it was a way for people from elsewhere to see me dance,” she says. (…)

» Read the full interview in Pointe Magazine

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A late post, but Kylián’s Kaguyahime is on at the Opéra Bastille until July 15!

Kaguyahime
Choreography: Jirí Kylián
Paris Opera Ballet
Opéra Bastille
21 June 2010

Western dance has been exploring the far east this spring at the Paris Opera Ballet. The season has brought a revival of the exotic La Bayadère, Siddharta, a new work based on the life of the Buddha, and now the company premiere of Jirí Kylián’s Kaguyahime. Based on the 10th-century Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, the oldest surviving narrative in Japanese literature, this 1988 work impressively intertwines two theatrical traditions.

It tells the story of Kaguyahime, a moon princess who descends to earth and whose beauty provokes war and chaos among men before she returns to the sky. Kylián’s contemporary staging is respectful of the tale’s enigmatic symbolism. Kaguyahime, in a glittering white unitard, is a remote presence. The men’s earthy dances evoke a latter-day Bayadère divertissement, while the broken lines and open palms, inspired by many-armed Hindu gods, insist on the message of peace the princess brings with her. (…)

» Read the full review in the Financial Times

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My review of this excellent evening of dance for the Financial Times -

Rambert Dance Company
The Art of Touch / RainForest / A Linha Curva
Siobhan Davies / Merce Cunningham / Itzik Galili
Sadler’s Wells, London
25 May 2010

“Triple bill” so often equals “mixed bag” that a beautifully composed one is cause for celebration. With a Siobhan Davies delicacy, vintage Merce Cunningham and a resounding finale, the sum of the three works that Rambert Dance is performing this week at Sadler’s Wells is a gratifyingly varied evening.

The Art of Touch, which Davies created in 1995, is all elegant musicality. Rambert’s dancers follow the anxious ebb and flow of Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas as if chasing time, bringing out the unaffected poetry of the work’s duets and patterns. Davies makes expressive use of the hands, hinting at fleeting narratives: one of the women seems repeatedly to let go of her secrets as she opens her palm; others knock at imaginary doors, seeming to initiate or terminate the score’s implacable cascades of notes. (…)

» Read the full review on FT.com

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The Merchants of Bollywood
Choreography: Vaibhavi Merchant
Peacock Theatre, Sadler’s Wells
21 May 2010

When in doubt, more sequins. This is the basic formula at the heart of Merchants of Bollywood, an Indian extravaganza currently playing at the Peacock Theatre, and it was apparently a winning one for the audience – cheers greeted one absurd number after the other, while I felt like I had landed in another dimension, where strange headgear and tacky colours were the triumphant norm. Now what do you write when a show is both terribly bad and predictably successful, or perhaps so energetically bad that it becomes successful?

I wanted to like Merchants of Bollywood. After all, Bollywood may well be the most successful film genre of all times, with, as we are reminded throughout the show, 15 million spectators every day – it also brings back memories of that magical heyday of musical films in Hollywood, when Fred and Ginger were gleefully tapping away on screen. The show is faithful to some typical traits of the 800 or so Bollywood films produced every year, with the presence of star-crossed lovers and a disapproving family. The plot itself is based on the choreographer’s own story: Ayesha (Carol Furtado) is the granddaughter of a renowned film choreographer from the classic Bollywood era, Shantilal, who ultimately disagreed with the direction Bollywood was heading and went back to his native Rajastan. Ayesha has been raised in the tradition of Kathak, but she rebels and leaves for Bollywood, where she becomes a successful choreographer. Still unhappy, she ultimately reconciles with her roots and is reunited with her love interest, Uday. (…)

» Read the full review in Ballet.co Magazine

Promotional image © The Merchants of Bollywood

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The recent Chroma / Tryst / Symphony in C Insight Evening at the Royal Ballet brought together quite a triumvirate of artists – Balanchine ballerina Patricia Neary, choreographer Christopher Wheeldon and composer James MacMillan – and I wrote a blog post about the evening for the Royal Opera House:

There is a very specific thrill to an Insight Evening – the emotion to see dancers up close, to learn how they rehearse, to see them take risks a few feet from you. Extra treats, however, were in store on 14 May to introduce the last triple bill of The Royal Ballet’s season, comprised of Chroma, Tryst and Symphony in C. One of the great Balanchine ballerinas of her time, Patricia Neary, was there to introduce the Balanchine masterpiece Symphony in C, and her presence in the studio seemed to energize dancers and audience alike. Tryst was then rehearsed by choreographer Christopher Wheeldon himself, later joined by Scottish composer James MacMillan for a discussion of the work’s score. An embarrassment of riches, and the rare opportunity to see ballets being passed on by a muse and a choreographer in the same evening.

Patricia Neary launched the evening with a delightful bit of history. Symphony in C was originally choreographed for the Paris Opera Ballet in 1947 as Le Palais de Cristal – instead of the white tutus and plain backdrop we know today, Balanchine had the four movements dressed in different colours. The ballet then entered the repertoire of the New York City Ballet the following year under the name Symphony in C, after the Bizet symphony it is set to, and Balanchine’s dancers always thought the two ballets were identical. When Patricia Neary was called to the Paris Opera Ballet to rehearse Le Palais de Cristal in the 1990s, however, she quickly realised they weren’t – Balanchine had apparently forgotten a good deal of the choreography he had created the year before, and he started from scratch when it came to New York, creating what Patricia Neary deems the better version of one of his most famous “tutu” ballets. (…)

» Read the full post on the Royal Opera House’s blog

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Primero – erscht
Choreography: Lisi Estaras
Ballets C de la B
Lilian Baylis Studio, Sadler’s Wells
5 May 2010

We ought to be grateful to Belgium – how did this tiny country end up making such an important contribution to dance over the past few decades? Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker is one of the names that readily come to mind, but Les Ballets C de la B have also enjoyed a true success story. Founded by Alain Platel in 1984 as a challenge, the collective has nurtured an eclectic range of dancers and choreographers, not least Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Argentinean Lisi Estaras is the latest example of a company member turned dance-maker, and with Primero – erscht, she offers eclectic, life-enhancing theatre in the best C de la B style.

Primero is a house of memories – padded chairs or a wooden buffet form the set, and the undercurrent of nostalgia is channeled by a mix of scratchy records and live Klezmer music, composed and played by the sole musician on stage, Yom. Lisi Estaras drew on the diversity of C de la B to bring together a strangely compelling group of dancers, as singular and heterogeneous as colliding memories. Primero starts slowly, with a boy (Nicolas Vladyslav) seemingly discovering the space he is offered, drawing geometrical shapes in the air and knocking over objects from a distance. He is soon joined by a lanky girl (Berengere Bodin), who wears a baby blue frock as if the child in her had grown too fast, by two other boys and by Lisi Estaras herself, as earthy and strong as Bodin is spindly and eccentric. (…)

» Read the full review in Ballet.co Magazine

Publicity image for Primero - erscht

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Gnosis
Akram Khan
Sadler’s Wells, Londres
26 avril 2010

Akram Khan est devenu un symbole au Royaume-Uni – celui d’une danse multiculturelle, capable de naviguer entre ses racines traditionnelles et les scènes contemporaines sans négliger les collaborations possibles avec des artistes venus d’autres genres, d’Anish Kapoor à Juliette Binoche. On en oublierait presque qu’Akram Khan a été formé avant tout au kathak, cette danse traditionnelle indienne aux mystérieuses narrations – et avec Gnosis, enfin présenté dans son intégralité après une première mondiale réduite en 2009 pour cause de blessure, le danseur d’origine bangladeshie retrace sa propre transformation, du classicisme indien à l’extraordinaire mélange de la seconde partie.

L’organisation de la soirée laisse d’abord perplexe – Gnosis, est-ce la somme des deux moitiés de la soirée, avec leurs prémices très différents, ou plutôt la pièce courte du même nom qui intervient après l’entracte et modifie complètement l’optique de la soirée ? Akram Khan apparaît d’abord sur scène dans une tenue traditionnelle, des ghunghurus (petits grelots) à ses chevilles, et entreprend de revisiter le classicisme de deux de ses premières oeuvres, Polaroid Feet et Tarana, pour lesquelles il avait travaillé avec deux chorégraphes indiens. Entouré de ses cinq musiciens, il offre ce qui ressemble à une démonstration de kathak – des solos assurés, limpides, d’une élégance raffinée. Les Indiens parlent de leurs danseurs comme de “musiciens du corps”, et c’est un trait qu’ils partagent avec le flamenco : une sensibilité musicale au-delà de ce que l’oreille perçoit, traduite ici par un dialogue intuitif avec les instruments. La difficulté est constamment déguisée, l’assurance du jeu de jambes servant à mettre en valeur l’incroyable fluidité du centre et la précision de ses bras, aux formes visiblement chargées de sens. Même les tours les plus virtuoses, tourbillonnant à la surface de la scène sans quitter le sol, possèdent une intégrité formelle qu’Akram Khan semble garder enraciné en lui. (…)

» Lire l’intégralité de la critique sur Dansomanie

Gnosis (Akram Khan) © Richard Haughton

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