Thursday 6 April 2017

Taking It To Extremes

Although it wasn't marketed quite that way, my title could serve as the motto for the winter mixed programme from the National Ballet of Canada.

This mixed programme could hardly have been a greater contrast from the previous production of Pinocchio (read about it here: Nobody Nose What to Expect) if the management had deliberately set out to make it so.

This programme consisted entirely of works choreographed within my lifetime, but within that limitation we saw two decidedly modern pieces, one in a very classical style, and one that straddled the divide between the two.

Of the four works presented, two were pas de deux while the other two involved larger forces.  The styles shifted too, from darkly dramatic in the first ballet to lightly, brightly, wildly silly in the last.

And all that comes before even considering the extremes plumbed by the choreographers within each of the works that were presented!

The company's advance promotion focused most of all on the North American premiere of Genus, a ballet created originally in 2007 for the Paris Opera Ballet by Wayne McGregor.  The National Ballet has twice mounted McGregor's dynamic 2006 ballet Chroma, and obviously hoped for a repetition of the success of that earlier work.

Alas for good intentions, Genus managed to throw away much of what made Chroma so memorably powerful.  Instead of a hard-driving rock score, we got an electronic soundscape in which the musical parts consisted of small fragments endlessly repeated -- minimalism taken to the nth degree.  The brilliantly lit white set of Chroma gave way to a box of black curtains and dark mirrors, with much more limited lighting.  The dancers likewise were costumed in predominantly black leotards.  Instead of the relative concision of Chroma, this work sprawled over 45 minutes.

Much of this work thus comes across like a watered-down version of Chroma.  The extraordinary postures, extensions, and peculiar body motions are still there, but lacking the dynamism of the earlier work.  After a while, and particularly because of the lack of variety in the score, I got a feeling of "All, right, I've seen all this many times -- try showing me something different."  At the heart of the work lies a quieter, softer-grained pas de deux danced inside a box-like frame which is tilted at about a 10-degree angle off the plane of the stage floor.  Given the extremely intellectual tone of the interview with McGregor published in the programme, you can easily drive yourself to distraction trying to figure out what on earth might be the significance of that tilted box within the set.  But that pas de deux was the main feature that prevented Genus from lying down and dying altogether.

None of this, by the way, is to be taken as criticism of the dancers.  This company definitely is more than well stocked with the kind of physical ability and flexibility to take on such a piece.  Given my druthers, though, I'd definitely opt to see Chroma a third time rather than watch another staging of Genus.

The three works after the intermission neatly balanced the weight and length of Genus.  First up was a Balanchine ballet, Tarantella, using the Grand Tarantelle for Piano and Orchestra by nineteenth-century American composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk.  As the title clearly indicates, the music is a high-speed, dynamic moto perpetuo.  Balanchine`s choreography of this pas de deux captures not only the energy of the score but also the jovial, almost carnival-like character of the music.  As in most classical pas de deux, the work begins with the two dancers together, then goes through a series of "variations" for the two dancers alternately, and finally winds up with a concluding dance for both.

At first glance, the dancers don't appear to be throwing themselves around the stage with the kind of reckless abandon that the music suggests.  But as soon as you focus on just the footwork, you can quickly grasp how challenging this piece is to perform.  The dancers appear to be moving very easily across the stage but take a look at the complex crosses and turns which their feet are executing as they go.  It's all worlds removed from a typical Petipa pas de deux where the hurtling bodies draw gasps from the audience, but it's probably much harder to do well.

Rui Huang and Dylan Tedaldi gave Tarantella a breezy, enjoyable performance that made light of the technical complexities.  Especially notable was the sense that both dancers were having fun with this virtuoso showpiece.  Given the jolly character of the music, that's an essential component for a really effective performance of this work.  I've seen it danced once before, at one of the Erik Bruhn competitions (I think) and the dancers on that occasion looked a lot more concentrated and intense.  That's fatal to the overall effect,

Next up was another pas de deux, created by Robert Binet and based on music by the duo ensemble "Winged Victory for the Sullen".  It was entitled Self and Soul and was created for the Erik Bruhn Competition in November of 2016.  I've seen a couple of Binet's pieces before but this one struck me as a quantum leap forward in his choreographic career -- much more fully realized than his earlier efforts.  Although Binet has used a definitely modern idiom, the result is deeply poetic and commands the fullest involvement from the audience.

As did the dancing of Jenna Savella and Spencer Hack.  It's the first time I can recall seeing Hack in such a featured role, but I'm sure I'll be seeing him again.  Savella is, of course, as experienced and versatile a dancer as anyone in the company.  Together they built up an interaction which drew me right into the work and held my full attention.  It was both a delight and a stimulus of thought to watch these two create such a fluent and inspired performance out of Binet's pas de deux.

The programme concluded with The Concert (Or, The Perils of Everybody) by Jerome Robbins.  This half-hour work, subtitled "A Charade in One Act", was originally created in 1956 -- and the age certainly shows.  (That's one of the perils of hedging one's creative work round about with copyright walls).  Most obvious sign of ageing here is the casually physical attitude towards women called for in the choreography.

The concept is that we, the audience, are looking inside the behaviour and thinking -- and fantasies -- of an audience at a concert of Chopin's music.  Robbins took a decidedly ironic, humorous approach to this concept, and the result is a series of risible, visible jokes.  The role of the dancers keeps shifting -- at one moment they are audience members at the concert, the next they are dancers performing to the music.

Some of the best moments included the group of women performing a classical corps de ballet number where one dancer kept arriving in the wrong position at the wrong moment.  What kept this choreographer's nightmare light-hearted was the way that one of the other dancers would correct the wrong-headed one each time -- not by moving her into position with care, but with a sharp slap that would make her suddenly snap into the proper posture.

Also immensely amusing was the role of the older man with a perennial cigar stuck in his mouth, danced by Piotr Stanczyk.  His strutting, preening portrayal set the audience laughing every time he moved -- and the laughs rose even higher whenever he made a fool of himself (often).

It's also important to make mention of pianist Andrei Streliaev's performance.  The Chopin pieces used are certainly familiar, but the pianist has to take repeats in places other than as indicated by the composer, perform sections of a piece out of sequence, and keep dropping in and out of passages that have been re-scored using the orchestra.  Imagine an operatic soloist having to interpolate 12 bars from Tosca into a performance of a famous aria from Il Trovatore -- an aria which itself begins with its final page before the first page has been sung -- and you'll have the idea.  Not only that, but Streliaev had to also interact with the dancers at several key points in the work.  His deadpan facial expressions definitely brought the requisite laughs at those moments.

The Concert plainly lives in the same neighbourhood, perhaps even the same street, as Kenneth Macmillan's classic Elite Syncopations.  If it isn't quite as funny or as fully realized, it's nevertheless a useful reminder that ballet has no more need than opera to be eternally serious, deep, philosophical, or meaningful.  In that respect, it made a nicely light-hearted finale to a stimulating and thought-provoking mixed programme of dance.

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