Ever since I heard
that Isadora Duncan had danced to the
Beethoven Seventh Symphony, and
with all the talk about the work being
the "apotheosis of the dance,"
I’ve been hoping to see a ballet to
this music. I suppose there is no record
of what her solo ballet consisted of,
but perhaps all dancers see somewhat
the same things in the same music. I
often say in my reviews, "You can’t
dance to Beethoven." Like all generalisations,
there are interesting exceptions, and
neither I nor anyone else should take
this one all that seriously. But it
is true that you can’t dance to Beethoven
like you can dance to Johann Strauss,
and what you will not see here is a
pantomime of the music with the dancers
stepping or gesturing to each note or
phrase in the style of a Disney Silly
Symphony. They do express the mood
and motion of the music in a very satisfying
way, only occasionally exactly synchronising
a balletic gesture with a musical one,
and in general I found the dance a significant
enhancement to the experience of listening
to the music. The girls wear light uppers
with a very small skirt, the guys are
shirtless with long black skirts, which
they sometimes make look like pantaloons.
The orchestra plays beautifully, of
course, Haitink’s tempi and dynamics
are well chosen, and he gets the crucial
horn accents in the first movement just
right. The video direction is excellent.
I realise that all
ballet dancers are supposed to be slender,
but this group perhaps carry this too
far. After so long looking at stringy
arms, and gyrating male torsos with
the ribs sticking out, and girls with
nearly flat chests, I wasn’t sure whether
I was watching ballet or a documentary
on world hunger. In other ballet companies
(e.g., Grupo Corpo, The Bolshoi, or
the Paris Ballet) the dancers appear
to be healthier and more athletic, yet
certainly move with agility and energy.
In the "Grosse
Fuge," the girls wear light
tights and the guys the same black skirts,
which they shed for black briefs just
at the end. During the anguished sections
of the music, the guys dance, then during
the more linear melodic sections the
girls dance, then they dance together
for the conclusion. Again the musical
performance, sound quality, and video
direction are excellent.
With the final three
works, the pianist is on stage with
the dancers. In the Prokofiev, there
are just two dancers, one guy and one
girl. In the Satie, they are joined
by four more who continually push the
piano around on the stage on a moving
platform while the pianist plays the
music. In the Debussy we have a drill
team of twelve girls in calf-length
long-sleeve street dresses and high
heel shoes(!) executing precision group
movements observed and challenged by
one guy in Levis and sneakers. This
last ballet segues directly into
the lecture wherein the choreographer
explains what he had in mind in this
ballet, giving one a good reason to
want to watch it over again from the
beginning afterwards.
In all these ballets
the scenario is the same — boy versus
girl, attraction, challenge, seduction,
conflict, resolution. Spare sets, simple
costumes. The battle of the sexes is
what makes the world go round, but there
must be something else to dance about,
or perhaps I am just spoilt after reviewing
four performances of the Romeo &
Juliet ballet last year. In the
same time that it takes to watch these
ballets, I had both complex drama and
great music.
The sound quality is
excellent, with no impression of sound
being re-recorded through speakers,
but there is just a suggestion of ambient
stage sound so the dancers do not appear
to be separated from us by a soundproof
barrier. This is necessary because at
some points they slap or clap hands.
Although the dancers perform on a stage
there is no audience sound.
Van Manen speaks perfectly
fluent English without notes and there
are no subtitles during his talk. He
explains the meaning of the ballet "Pose"
and how he cast a kickboxer rather than
a male dancer as the male lead because
he wanted a particular type of gesture.
We see some of his still photo figure
studies (with frontal nudity) and excerpts
from some other of his ballets. He explains
that because he receives government
money he feels obliged to "take
risks" which necessarily means
that on occasion he "makes mistakes."
If he only went for success, he feels
that would be a selfish use of the money,
because groups which have to depend
entirely on audience generosity for
their financing cannot take risks. He
explains that he takes a generalised
attitude toward gender. If he produces
a dance for two men, it should work
just as well with two women and or a
man and a woman. "Homosexuality
is not a problem for me. I don’t have
a message to get across." "I
am not a teacher. I want only to be
a choreographer, very egoistic."
If you select a menu language other
than English, then during the interview
subtitles in that language are displayed.
Some minor cavils:
The cover says "16 page booklet
enclosed." But two of the pages
are blank, then there are four pages
giving credits, where the numbers of
the Debussy Etudes used in "Pose"
are misprinted as "12, 3, &
14(!)," one page of misleading
boiler plate "instructions for
playing this DVD," then the essay
in three languages. The result is that
the actual essay is three pages long
in English and in German with the French
version simply truncated at the end
of page two. And nowhere in all this
is there any mention of recording dates
or locations, or of the release date
of the disk. On the box, the length
of the ballet part of the program is
misstated as 125 minutes; 97 minutes
is the correct figure.
Paul Shoemaker
Paul Patton, piano 
ARTHAUS
Musik RM Arts 100 282 [97 minutes] 