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.
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.
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