National Ballet 2018-2019 # 2: Eye-Popping Double Bill

I have trouble imagining two dance works less like each other, and less suited to be yoked together in tandem, than Sir Frederick Ashton's The Dream and Guillaume Coté's Being and Nothingness.  I've seen both works before (although The Dream is so long ago that I remember virtually nothing of it), but I was definitely intrigued by the management's sheer chutzpah in programming these two wildly diverse works into a single evening.

The programme began with Being and Nothingness. This work began life several years ago as a solo, created by Coté for Greta Hodgkinson. After that version was performed in a mixed programme, with great success, Coté then expanded the work into a longer creation in seven overlapping parts or scenes, and this too was performed in a mixed programme in 2015.

In the longer version, the original bare stage is supplemented by a number of ordinary everyday objects: a door, a window, a bed, a sink (with water in it), a carpet, a chair, and a row of chairs in the upstage shadows. The longer version also makes use of a larger company of 22 dancers.

Seeing this work again, I found myself even more convinced that it didn't expand well and doesn't stand up well to repeated viewings. The beginning solo, actually a pas de deux for the dancer and a glaring lightbulb that flickers from time to time, is as gripping and thought-provoking as ever. We at this week's opening night performance were fortunate to see Greta Hodgkinson once again dancing this edgy, desperate choreography.

It's the remainder of the piece that doesn't do anything for me. The choreography eventually becomes all of a piece, with only the personnel changing. The arbitrary movements of the group of dancers sitting on the upstage chairs interfere with concentration on the foreground performers -- in a word, upstaging them. Only at the end when the ringing phone returns us to the bleak despair of the opening solo does the piece redeem itself in some measure.

The piano music by Philip Glass which accompanies this work is the most tedious, mind-numbing minimalism I've ever encountered in music -- and that's saying something.

Kudos to all the dancers, especially Hodgkinson, and to pianist Edward Connell for successfully getting through the work with skill and power. But it's time to retire this one for good.

Ashton's The Dream is a curious anachronism containing a vital theatrical experience. Drawn from Shakespeare's famous comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream, and choreographed to Mendelssohn's equally famous music for that play, the ballet is set in a Victorian theatrical forest with Victorian costumes. The choreography for the principal couple and the female corps de ballet is pure classical dance seen through a mid-20th-century lens, and among the finest and most beautiful of its kind -- as well as requiring immense skill from the dancers.

What still kicks this otherwise dated museum piece into vivid life is Ashton's memorably clumsy choreography for the two pairs of young lovers and the Athenian rustics. Drawing on the particularly British tradition of pantomime, Ashton created some of the funniest comic choreography ever in a number of his most famous ballets -- and this one is the shining star of the lot. It's easy to zero in on his historic requirement for a male dancer to dance on pointe (Bottom, when transformed into an ass). But Ashton's comedic sense went much farther than that, and created numerous memorable vignettes with the Athenian rustics, Puck, and the 4 lovers, as well as a spectacularly oafish solo dance for Bottom in the final sequence.

As the National Ballet is staging The Dream this season for the first time in 17 years, I've no doubt that the memories and traditions of the company's most senior members were heavily called upon to help their younger colleagues find all the grace and grotesquerie, all the beauty and buffoonery, in this unique soufflé of a ballet.

The lead cast which I saw in this performance were pretty much the people I would have chosen if I could have cast the piece myself. Jillian Vanstone made a splendidly graceful Titania, sounding additional notes of playfulness that some dancers might miss. Her infatuation with Bottom was both believable and humanly vulnerable. Harrison James presented a regal Oberon, his princely bearing disappearing only as he plotted his revenge on his queen.

Together, this pair created a sense of sheer wonder for the audience in the beautiful and challenging reconciliation pas de deux, set to Mendelssohn's gorgeous horn nocturne.

Skylar Campbell commanded all eyes as Puck whenever he was on the stage, emphasizing Ashton's unique port de bras and stances for this character to great comic effect.  Puck is a demanding role, calling for a great deal of energy -- indeed, the dancer should seem to be giving off sparks at every turn, and this Campbell did in spades.

Joe Chapman captured both sides of Bottom: the almost delicate precision of his dancing as the ass, and the incredibly clumsy hoop-te-do of his final dance when restored to human form.  In between, he also made much of his character moments, in particular his reaction to Titania's infatuation and his own befuddled memory of the night when he awoke in the morning.

Tanya Howard, Chelsy Meiss, Giorgio Galli, and Ben Rudisin were a splendid team of young lovers, exuding energy aplenty in their chase scenes, nailing the comic timing of Ashton's sudden pratfalls, and giving nuanced performances of the moment when Puck sends each of them to sleep.

The corps de ballet really shone in this piece, their lightly ethereal dancing in the opening sequence a particular delight.

The Dream is a rare and special kind of ballet, and I wouldn't want to see it done to death by being performed too often.  But I do hope that the National's management won't on that account set it aside for another seventeen years or more.

National Ballet 2018-2019 # 1: Distilling the Epic

On the face of it, trying to adapt Leo Tolstoy's massive novel, Anna Karenina, into a single ballet seems almost as cockeyed an idea as the notion of adapting his even more massive War and Peace into a single opera.

Prokofiev successfully pulled off the opera, although sadly he did not live to see it staged.  I have to admit, though, that I approached the National Ballet's North American premiere of John Neumeier's full-length ballet of Anna with a bit of trepidation.

I need not have worried.  Neumeier is one choreographer who has completely mastered the art of telling a story, not through the external, visible action but through the internal, psychological lives of the characters.  In Anna Karenina, he has distilled the action of Tolstoy's sprawling, episodic book into a tightly-wound journey into the human soul, all expressed through powerfully dramatic movement which leaves the "prettiness" of classical ballet far behind in the dust.

And the gifted dancers of the National Ballet have pulled right along with him to dig deeply into that internal world of the souls of Tolstoy's diverse characters.

At three hours with one too-short intermission, Anna Karenina clocks in as the longest ballet in the National's repertoire.  But that's a misleading point, since there isn't really one single superfluous minute -- we're brought right down to the essentials throughout the piece.

Modern as Anna Karenina appears, it still requires the disciplined work of a large classical company to make this piece "go" -- and at that, a company thoroughly familiar and at home with modern styles as well as classical disciplines.  That description fits the National right down to the ground.

As in his Nijinsky, Neumeier has leaned heavily on a classical composer whose music fits the temper of the piece like a custom-made glove.  The score is assembled in large part from an assortment of the less well-known works of Tchaikovsky.  The fit isn't just in the fact that Tchaikovsky and Tolstoy were contemporaries.  It's even more a matter of Tchaikovsky's music managing to portray both the stylized elegance of the society and the claw-like forces of guilt which besiege those who don't live strictly according to its rules.  That description applies to Tchaikovsky, of course, with his life-long guilt over his homosexuality, but it also describes Anna Karenina.

Nowhere in this ballet is this more true than in the finale of Act One, where the concluding firestorm of Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony becomes the driving force behind the harrowing intensity of a pas de trois with Anna, her lover Vronsky, and her husband Karenin.  Neumeier even makes a strength out of Tchaikovsky's weakest moment in the symphony, taking advantage of the sudden and inexplicable interruption of a harmonium (chamber organ) to portray the scene of Kitty's wedding to Levin.

Alongside the Tchaikovsky excerpts, Neumeier has also employed some edgy modern works by Alfred Schnittke, and (far less expectedly) several songs by Cat Stevens.

The set, also designed by the choreographer, uses a white floor in front of a box of black curtains, and large rolling set pieces with doors on both sides and open ends -- allowing them to be used in almost infinite combinations and locations.  These are also painted stark, institutional white as is one of the several backdrops flown in and out for different scenes.  Costumes are modern.

The ballet opens with a small but significant shift for the character of Karenin -- instead of being a powerful bureaucrat, he appears as a campaigning politician.  This change gives the fullest motivation for him to have not just a picture-perfect life, but also a picture-perfect demeanour at all times.  As Karenin, Brendan Saye strutted and preened stylishly about the stage, always showing to advantage in front of the cheering crowds at the political rally and the omnipresent photographers.

Later, at home, he couldn't take off that public persona.  While Sonia Rodriguez matched him in polish at the rally, the raw edges of Anna's discontentment and loneliness dominated her dancing as soon as she was at home again.  And Saye's continued posing as Karenin made the reasons abundantly clear.

As the ballet progressed, Rodriguez grew more and more into the role, finding even greater inward depths of feeling to portray the slowly-growing despair of the woman.  A memorable performance.

Their young son, Seryozha, was played with aptly childlike innocence, playfulness, and abundant energy by Alexander Skinner, a new member of the corps de ballet.  The moments when Anna played happily with him on the floor were a delight.

Christopher Gerty brought sensuality and charm to his portrayal of Anna's philandering brother, Stiva.

Jenna Savella raged with equal parts power and abandon as his wife, Dolly, when she caught him with their children's governess.  Their quarrel scene was a high energy point in the first act.  Savella then gave a real feeling of force-in-stillness in the domestic scene where she returns to her children.

Meghan Pugh gave a brilliant, wide-ranging performance as Kitty, portraying the innocent excitement of the young girl and the overwrought desperation of the woman with verve and energy.

Naoya Ebe presented Vronsky as a cool, elegant man of the world, maintaining that polish even in the most energetic sequences with his fellow lacrosse players.  Only in the intensity of that pas de trois at the end of Act One did the air of sophistication drop away, revealing the raw emotions within.

The most coolly classical moment of the entire ballet was the romantic pas de deux for Anna and Vronsky at the opening of Act Two.  Set to the adagio cantabile from Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence, this duet seemed like a beautifully-framed museum piece amid the more hard-edged intensity of so many other scenes.  

Skylar Campbell gave great depth and weight to the later scenes in his role as the empathetic Levin, and did sterling work with the complex choreography of his first scene.

That first scene for Levin, choreographed to Cat Stevens' Moonshadow, struck me as the weakest point of Neumeier's conception.  The scene description as given in the programme calls Levin an aristocratic landowner, and says he is dreaming of Kitty (Dolly's sister).  What we got was a man wearing a lumberjack shirt, driving a tractor, looking for all the world like a farm hand -- and dancing with such an edgy, near-frantic quality that the dream seemed more like a nightmare.  Especially when set against the gentle, almost meditative quality of the song, the choreography of this scene came across as a major miscalculation -- a rare weak spot in a ballet filled with tensile strength.

Early in the ballet, at the railway station, Anna witnesses the death of a Mushik (a railway worker). This dead man drags his own corpse away in a sack while bent double. He reappears at intervals as the personification of Fate, always slamming the sack loudly onto the floor as he appears and dragging it slowly across the stage, heedless of whatever else goes on around him -- a powerful reiteration of a powerful symbol. And for a real pit-of-the-stomach moment, it's hard to beat the penultimate scene where first Vronsky and then Karenin appear dressed in the Mushik's characteristic neon-orange jumpsuit.

What really stuck in the mind at the end of the entire performance was not so much the rapid and fatal denouement as that terribly intense pas de trois in Act One. Well, that, and the great intensity, power, and emotional descent into darkness of the title character. As Anna, Sonia Rodriguez owned the stage from first to last.

Anna Karenina is not, then, a perfect ballet, but it comes pretty damn close.  It's definitely a first-rate vehicle to show the strength and depth of the company.  I'm only sorry I didn't have the chance to see it twice.

The Violin Ascending

Sunday night found me in the Music Hall of Middle Tennessee State University, listening to a senior student recital for violin (with piano or cello) given by Sarah Wilfong Joblin.

Conflict of Interest Alert:  Sarah Wilfong Joblin is my niece by marriage.  

The programme she presented gave a fascinating assortment of musical styles.  I was especially pleased that the empty, flashy virtuoso fireworks of the nineteenth century violin virtuosi were put on leave of absence for this recital.  

The evening opened with a truly challenging passacaglia for solo violin by Austrian composer Franz Biber, composed around 1676. This solo movement comes as a finale to his monumental set of Rosenkranz-Sonaten ("Rosary Sonatas" or "Mystery Sonatas).  It served as a prototype for many later efforts along similar lines, and is the direct ancestor of Bach's more celebrated violin chaconne in D minor.

The opening four notes outline the descending scale which lies at the foundation of the music.  These were played with an air of discovery.  As the work progressed, and the variations grew more and more elaborate, Wilfong Joblin allowed the tempo of the music to alternately relax and intensify, giving pleasing variety to what can otherwise be in danger of monotony.  Also noteworthy was her full, round tone when playing in Baroque style, without any vibrato.

The next work was The Lark Ascending, a long-time favourite of mine.  It's the true exemplar of composer Ralph Vaughan Williams' favourite technique of writing long, winding, improvisatory solos for a violin (or viola, in some cases), while the remaining orchestral players pause on a long-held chord as if listening raptly to the soloist.  

What's wanted here is a gentle, soft-edged legato in even the most complicated passagework of the solo part, allowing the audience to feel that a lark is truly singing for them.  Wilfong Joblin's tone and bowing completely captured that feeling, as well as giving again the sense of music newly discovered -- no mean feat after lengthy rehearsing.  She came as close as anyone can to accurately tuning the fiendish high double-stops.  Pianist Richard Blumenthal played the piano part with such subtlety and finesse that I didn't miss the orchestra.

The third piece came from a composer known to me by name only, William Grant Still, long known as the "dean of African-American composers."  His Suite for Violin and Piano of 1943 came from near the midpoint of his long composing career.  The second movement, which we heard on this occasion, has also been published in an arrangement for string orchestra under the title Mother and Child.

Wilfong Joblin played in this work with an aptly singing, almost coaxing tone colour, reflecting that title.  The themes and harmonies had something of the flavour of the American spirituals.  Long lyrical lines unfolded easily and naturally from both violin and piano.

For a change of pace, the next work (Limerock) was a traditional Irish jig, here arranged for violin and cello by Mark O'Connor and Edgar Meyer.  Cellist Amber Den Exter joined the violinist in a rousing, toe-tapping performance of this lively musical treat.

The major work on the programme was the concluding Violin Sonata No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 35 by Norwegian master Edvard Grieg.  This sonata was by far the most dramatic music we heard all night, and right from the outset, with its surging waves of violin sound, the drama and fire were there.  Grieg calls for a good deal of flexibility in dynamics throughout this movement, and all the moments of crescendo and diminuendo were well judged.  The coda built up from its quiet opening to a powerful conclusion, the final 4-chord cadence played by both violin and piano with terrific intensity.

The lyrical opening of the second movement was another delightful moment from pianist Blumenthal, simply played and beautifully shaped.  Soaring violin lines soon joined in to carry the melody.  The faster central section brought more energetic, yet still light, playing, marked by Wilfong Joblin's crisp pizzicato chords.  Throughout the movement, the folk-dance inspiration of the composer was clearly present.

The finale opened quietly but soon built to bigger tone, with the violin cleanly capturing the odd off-beat rhythm of the main theme.  Balance, too, remained clear at all times as the piano part reached the weightiest keyboard writing heard yet in this recital.  Well-judged doses of rubato and dynamic gradations helped to avoid monotony in a movement which depends, to a dangerous extent, on two simple melodic figures.  The concluding pages, a prestissimo coda (that means "played at breakneck speed") built up to a rousing, powerful finish.

Overall, and with no regard to family relationships, a rewarding performance of an unusual yet always intriguing programme of violin music.

A Modern Quartet

Wow -- it's been almost three whole months since I last sat down to attend and review a live arts performance -- how did I ever survive that long?

With this week's presentation, which I attended twice, at Place des Arts in Montreal, a new artistic company enters my list of subjects.  Gauthier Dance is a modern dance company with its home base in the Theaterhaus in Stuttgart, Germany, under the leadership of the Canadian artistic director, Eric Gauthier.  One of the sixteen dancers in the group just "happens" to have a prior connection to me and a prior presence in this blog.

Conflict of Interest Alert:  Robert Stephen is my nephew.

So now everyone can understand why I just "happened" to travel down to Montreal to see a European modern dance company in performance!  My regular readers will recall that Robert left the National Ballet of Canada (after 14 years) at the end of the last season to pursue this new and challenging artistic track.

The programme presented in Montreal was a unique, eclectic collection of four very different dance works from five very different choreographers.  The range of stylistic and artistic approaches challenged the dancers of the company in unexpected and diverse ways, all the while providing an intriguing experience for the near capacity and enthusiastic audience.

The first item of the evening, Beating, choreographed by Montreal-born Virginie Brunelle, was an intriguing fusion of lyrical, almost balletic movement and tableaux, with edgier, high-speed, angular movements.

The title, by the way, refers to the beating of human hearts, and particularly to those moments when two human hearts begin to beat together as one.  Brunelle has found a very broad range of ways to visually capture the approaches, the retreats, the coming together and the breaking apart, of human relationships.

Much of the energy of this dance arose from the rapid shifting and changing of roles among the eight dancers.  A pair would briefly form a couple, interact for a few moments, and then as quickly race apart and into other configurations with other dancers.

In a sense, the multi-section work became almost like a "dance symphony" with each "movement" having its own discrete tempo, rhythm, and style.  Especially remarkable was the middle section in which dancers formed a half-circle, standing still, and snapping their shoulders forward and backward to create a striking visual counterpart of the heartbeat-like rhythm of the score.  Two by two, the dancers would dash into the centre for a time of interaction, then dash out to be replaced by the next couple.

The brief coda of this symphony of movement was the stillness of the final tableau as the crowd dispersed, leaving a sole couple coming slowly together into an embrace as the lights faded out.

The second work on the programme was definitely "out there" by comparison with the others.  We Like Horses is an example of the highly-charged, socially and politically conscious Tanztheater which has grown and developed in Germany in recent decades.  German choreographer Helena Waldmann chooses to present strongly political works which merge dance and theatre, and which she describes as "political choreographies."  We Love Horses is her first work for this company, and is intended as a strong commentary on the written and unwritten laws which we willingly allow to hedge us in on all sides in our societies.

In this work, one member of the company stands tall on "shoes" which effectively mimic the configuration and length of a horse's lower legs.  The other five wear outsized buttock falsies, clearly visible on the outsides of their costumes, and tall nodding plumes which suggest horse's headdress.  The tall-shod woman, dressed in a black costume which strongly suggests a dominatrix, cracks a long whip and the other five, kneeling facing her, all begin madly twerking in time with the rhythmically charged electronic score composed by jayrope.  Each time the whip cracks, the dancers fling themselves into more frenzied efforts.  As the piece proceeds, the whip holder retreats upstage and simply watches, while the five dancers begin to enforce behaviour upon each other.    

At first blush, this almost sounds too kinky for words, but that wasn't the impact for me at all.  In fact, I found myself thinking of this more general reality: examine a bully closely, and you'll usually find a person who was bullied.  The behaviour of the dancers towards each other followed that principle closely, as well as clearly showing how we in society enforce behavioural norms on each other almost as much as we let the laws do it for us.  I definitely admired the sheer amount of energy which the five "horses" expended throughout the work, and the skill with which the chief whip balanced on those tall stilt-shoes.

If Waldmann's piece had a weakness, it was the difficulty of wrapping it up.  I guessed, rightly, that a final whipcrack would be followed by a swift blackout.  But once the woman with the whip had retired upstage, there seemed no particular reason why the turning point in the action -- the sudden snap with which one of the "horses" rebelled -- should come when it did.  It could just as easily have been two minutes earlier (some people were probably hoping) or five minutes later.  The motivation for the timing of that final vignette of civil disobedience and violence was not clear.

Another strong contrast followed with the third work, Infant Spirit, created by Marco Goecke with a score drawn from the American music group, Antony and the Johnsons.  Goecke's work is a solo, inspired by his formative years growing up in Wuppertal, Germany, and particularly by the key role of the famous choreographer Pina Bausch, a key founder of the Tanztheater style, in inspiring his development as a dancer and choreographer.

Rosario Guerra gave a powerful performance of this energetic solo number, bringing ample amounts of edgy drive to the choreography.  One key aspect of Goecke's style here is the focus on the hands, which often move a great deal, and very quickly at that, while the rest of the body remains largely still for varying amounts of time.  Another signature of his style is the strong contrast between the sadly lyrical singing on the soundtrack and the movement of the dancer which becomes vehement almost to the point of violence.

I was intrigued to see that, at later stops in the tour, this solo was to be danced by Sandra Bourdais.  I definitely would have welcomed an opportunity to see a different dancer bring her own stamp to the role, since I have never had the experience of seeing any role pass from a dancer of one gender to a dancer of another gender.  

The final work on the programme was a tribute to another great leader in the world of modern dance: Louise Lecavalier, famed for the explosive energy she brought to her decades of work with the Montreal troupe, La La La Human Steps.

And explosive energy was exactly what we got with Electric Life, co-choreographed by Eric Gauthier and Andonis Foniadakis.  This piece displayed as much speed and wild abandonment as the other three works put together.  The energy of the dance was underscored by a series of light bars, standing vertically or carried in any position, which glowed brilliantly in different colours or strobed rapidly.

On the first night I saw the piece, I was sitting in the front half of the theatre and I found those flashing lights were a bit hard to take -- enough so that I periodically had to close my eyes.  On the second occasion, I sat almost at the back of the house and the lights were less obtrusive, being farther away as well as below my eye level.  It's by no means the first time in a live performance where I felt that the technical foobaz were interfering with, rather than supporting and helping, the performers.

The signature of this work, and its most memorable aspect, were the sudden bursts of motion, including numerous leaps -- both horizontal and vertical -- which appeared to defy the laws of gravity.  Another memorable moment came when the dancers turned the light bars towards themselves, giving an intriguing new twist to the stroboscopic stop-motion effect.

Overall, I felt that this last work was the one which came closest to being a disconnected series of effects -- and I think the lights played a role in making it seem so.

The teamwork of the members of Gauthier Dance throughout the evening was truly remarkable.  Unanimity was expressed through fearless leaps and throws, rapid stops and turns, dancers (apparently) slamming against each other as they halted in mid-step, and more.  The sheer fiery energy which this company brought to its work made this programme memorable indeed.