Approached from a musical standpoint, Rambert
impresses by its eclectic breadth of sources tapped,
without pigeonholing any preferences. In its current 75th anniversary
celebrations, each programme features the live music making of its Associate
Orchestra London Musici, directed by Paul Hoskins, but
there is always taped music too, reproduced on state of the art equipment,
loud but distortion-free. For Hurricane a single dancer, Simon
Cooper, represented in commedia dell'Arte guise the complexities
of Bob Dylan's storytelling song of that name, with which everyone there
seemed familiar, about a black boxer framed for triple murder,. From
the programme note we gathered that he was cleared of all charges but
only after twenty years; surtitles would have helped some of us oldbeards!
It is always inspiriting to emerge from the 'new music
ghetto' and experience challenging music, in a variety of genres, in
the lively company of the young audiences who fill Sadler's Wells for
dance events and don't want to hear only what they know they like, which
has to be taken into account by classical music promoters. They know
the dancers, support them with whistling and screaming, but surely take
in the idioms of Stravinsky and Scelsi at the same time as they renew
acquaintance with Bob Dylan and his confreres.
This is one strand in musical life that holds out great
hope for the future - surely there will not be such a time lag for acceptance
of early C. 21 music as there was for that of the first quarter of the
C. 20?
Tracks by 'Aphex Twin' (presumably a composing pair?),
the final one from Ambient Works Vol II, served to accompany
the only premiere of the evening, Twin Suite 2, a goodly up-to-date
noise, but in truth rather monotonous. London Musici came into
its own for The Celebrated Soubrette, playing Michael Daugherty's
Le Tombeau de Liberace of 1996, which provided energetic, efficiently
orchestrated accompaniments for 'a tawdry journey through the glitz
and grime of Las Vagas', but was not music I would seek out to hear
again.
Far more memorable a musical experience was Stuart
Dempster's Underground Overlays, used by the veteran Merce
Cunningham for his compelling Ground Level Overlays, a computerised,
abstract creation - yes, dance too can now be generated by computer
programmes, just as music has been for Xenakis and Lindberg. Cunningham
choreographed Ground Level Overlays by processing 'movement phrases'
into LifeForms, the dance computer he utilises, continuing 'my
interest in dancers as people dealing with movement complexities'. The
dancing was at ground level, but Dempster's music had been recorded
by ten trombonists near Seattle, 14 feet down in an acoustically unique,
huge underground cistern, 'with an incredible 45 second reverberation
period, any sound reverberated with nearly perfect evenness of tone
quality and dynamic range'. Cunningham's partner John Cage, to whose
memory Ground Level Overlays is dedicated, had been deeply moved
by a CD Deep Listening (1988), recorded in that old water tank,
known locally as 'The Cistern Chapel'.
I found the Rambert dancing accomplished, indeed expert,
and always watchable and interesting to see, but it is a foreign language
and, all the music this time being new to me, I would not venture to
trespass on the territory of the dance critics, who were all enthusiastic,
especially about Rambert's acquisition of Merce Cunningham's work. Ground
Level Overlays had been premiered in New York, 1995, 'one of the
loveliest works in his company's repertoire - - Cunningham's gift of
consolation: Rambert joyously does it justice' (Jann Parry in The Observer).
In London, the multi-tracked taped score was supplemented by live trombonists
of London Musici, the whole reverberating around Sadler's Wells to wondrous
effect.
Peter Grahame Woolf
Dance on DVD
Marc Bridle reviews the Lyon National Opera’s
production of Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet and Peter Grahame Woolf
looks at DVDs of Carmen, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Coppelia and The
Nutcracker.
Romeo & Juliet
(Prokofiev),
Lyon National Opera Ballet & Lyon National Opera Orchestra Kent
Nagano, conductor
Arthaus DVD 100 246, region code
2 & 5.
This is the third version of Prokofiev’s great ballet
I have now seen on DVD – and immeasurably the best, even if it is sliced
and cut to less than half its usual length. Warner have already issued
the Nureyev production, classical and conservative in style and design,
and suffering from the most lugubrious account of the music I have yet
heard. It reminds one of wading through treacle. A horrendously cheap
DVD release on Video Land Klassik (with just four chapters supporting
more than two-and-a-half hours of music) purportedly dates from 1938
– yet is in such splendid colour (and sound) that this simply cannot
be the case. It is, however, beautifully conducted, coming nearest to
Nagano in setting almost ideal tempi for this work.
Watching this Arthaus release after either of those
DVD performances is likely to prove both rewarding and shocking. Rewarding,
because Nagano’s approach to the score is incendiary, with palpable
electricity lighting up the inherent darkness of the production at every
turn. Shocking, because this is the darkest imaginable vision of a great
love story stripped naked and then weighed down by a post-war, almost
apocalyptic, view of a Europe torn apart by hatred and ethnic cleansing.
The Montagues and Capulets are more akin to the warring factions of
Bernstein’s West Side Story than Shakespeare’s warring European nobility,
and there is more than a suggestion of fascist thuggery operating very
close to the surface of this gut-wrenching production.
Angelin Preljocaj agreed to create this production
for Lyons Opera on the condition that he could use a considerably foreshortened
score, a decision principally taken so the music would sit more comfortably
with a ballet told as a political and emotional parable. However, in
achieving this the scenes have been moved around in a bizarre fashion:
in Scene 3, for example, No.35 (Romeo decides to avenge Mercutio’s death)
appears before No.34 (Mercutio Dies). In the Third Act we have No 31
(incorrectly identified in the booklet as No 32) – Tybalt meets Mercutio
– misplaced when what we really have is Juliet with the ghosts of both
(in otherwords, No 44).
This complexity does not diminish the sheer audacity
of the production values, however, evidently coloured by the backgrounds
of both the designer and the choreographer. Those designs, by Enki Bilal,
a former Yugoslavian comic book illustrator, are principally drawn in
a bleak Berlinesque landscape of inescapable walls. They mimic in many
ways the eclectic design that Fritz Lang brought to his 1920s film Metropolis,
and there is also in this production an emphasis on the futuristic –
particularly illustrated by the pseudo robotic nurses who hive around
Juliet. With monochrome colouring, a pervasive illusion of darkness,
and a threnody of extraneous sound (such as helicopter rotor blades)
this is both everyone’s nightmare and someone’s depiction of a police
state in action.
In choreographic terms this production is a millennium
away from the staid artistry of Nureyev and Kasatkina/Vasilov. This
is, of course, very classical ballet – and in all three productions
it is difficult to separate the movements used in both Juliet’s Funeral
and the Death of Juliet, so similarly are the dancers matched in movement
between the different productions. However, when you look at how Preljocaj
has choreographed the Dance of the Knights – for once aggressive, and
not at all like the chessboard movements we always seem to see – you
can feel the abstraction which this choreographer brings to modern dance.
Entire bodies become balletic, even if the movements are predominantly
minimalist. Rather than an all-embracing fluency of movement the division
of labour is stark: Romeo and Juliet have a swallow-like freedom, whereas
the guards and nurses have an automaton, almost mechanical presence.
Generally this is a superbly danced performance – Pascale
Doye and Nicolas Dufloux tangible and emotive as the lovers. Nagano
grips the score with a vice, and the playing is both lithe and exciting.
Controversially, and given the passion of the playing, it is almost
sacrilegious that Juliet’s death should occur after the music has finished.
It is my only real point of contention in what is otherwise a superb
production.
Marc Bridle
Carmen
(Bizet/Schtschredrin)
Arthaus DVD 100 182
Sleeping Beauty (Tchaikovsky)
National Philharmonic Orchestra/Richard Bonynge
Arthaus DVD 100 054
Cinderella
(Prokofiev & Schwarz) Lyon National Opera
Orchestra/Jacob Kreisberg
Arthaus DVD 100 234
Coppelia (Delibes)
Lyon National Opera Orchestra/Kent Nagano.
Arthaus DVD 100 337
The Nutcracker (Tchaikovsky)
Orchestre Collonne/Edmon Colomer with Yvette Horner (accordion)
TDK DV-BLBNC (PGW)
All discs region coded 2 & 5.
I can warmly recommend to unprejudiced S&H
readers several excellent Arthaus DVDs plus one
from TDK, all distributed by Select
Music. All of them are updated
in different ways and have provided food for thought, alongside pure
enjoyment and admiration for unfettered imaginations. Whereas
opera has moments of visual repose when music takes over, dance keeps
the eyes continually engaged and makes for absorbing home viewing.
The maverick Mats Ek's Carmen
takes the Soviet composer Schredrin's popular
suite made from Bizet's music, and weaves a dance work of astonishing
emotional intensity, its searing feeling driving away questions of literal
interpretation of the familiar tale or thought of the opera. Mats
Ek's version of Sleeping Beauty, with
Tchaikovsky's score faithfully recorded by Richard Bonynge and the NPO,
eschews prettiness and has a strange version of the story with
male swans. Of a different ilk is Maguy Marin's Cinderella,
strictly based upon the original story, but seen through child eyes,
with all the characters masked living dolls with real human feelings,
reflecting how children identify with their toys. A wonderful DVD for
the whole family to enjoy during the Christmas festivities.
Maguy Marin's Coppelia,
is utterly different. Her version takes the story, about the breakup
of a real relationship because of infatuation with a mechanical doll
- representing an unattainable and imaginary ideal woman as fed
to us by the media - into our own time.
The archetypal theme of the image taking over from
reality (Golem, Frankenstein etc) is given in a modern, inner city setting,
with some violence. The first act of this Coppelia is
set outside a drab block of flats, with concerted dances that remind
one of the build up of tensions in West Side Story - abbreviated here
by omission of Delibes' folk dances, which interrupt the story telling
in the original ballet. Afterwards, paradoxically, the imagination
expands in Coppelius' small flat and the dance aspect improves
in an indoor fantasy with a bevy of scarlet dolls - a memorable image
of fantasy overwhelming reality; disturbing, very imaginative and brilliantly
filmed. The Delibes score is played excellently by Kent Nagano
with the Lyon National Opera Orchestra, and as well recorded.
Maurice Bejart's The Nutcracker is, in
its way, equally different from the perennial Christmas show seen revived
year after year at South Bank. It is lavish, gorgeous to look at and
innovative in its treatment, even though the dancing does not stray
far from classical ballet, with the Pas de Deux is given in Petipa's
original version. Bejart draws upon his own early life, interpolating
spoken reminiscences in his ballet's live presentation at The Theatre
Musical de Chatelet - Paris, especially in centring his new scenario
upon an 8-yr old boy who adores his dead mother, is unable to regain
her and becomes a dancer, incorporating also Mephisto from Goethe's
Faust. A circus setting provides new opportunities for the second act
divertissements, in which popular French music is introduced by
the accordionist, who even towards the end descants with the orchestra
in Tchaikovsky's music, charmingly done and sure not to cause offence.
A bright and colourful show; with expert and personable young dancers
and the famous score well played and recorded, this is another desirable
DVD for the holiday season, and beyond.
Peter Grahame Woolf
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