Although it was only a day after I'd returned home from a lengthy overseas trip, I simply couldn't miss the performance of the National Ballet's newest full-length work: Wayne McGregor's MADDADDAM, inspired by and based on the trilogy of novels by renowned novelist Margaret Atwood.
This performance was all the more important to me, in that I had already missed the season-opening mixed programme which officially launched Hope Muir's tenure as Artistic Director of the company. In it, Muir had introduced new choreographers whose work had not previously been staged by the National, and that was a particular reason I was sorry to miss it.
MADDADDAM, on the other hand, comes from the hand of Wayne McGregor, a choreographer whose work I already know and admire (think Chroma and Genus), and is actually a long-delayed holdover from what should have been the last season of Karen Kain's tenure at the head of the company.
It is also the third major full-length work staged jointly by the National Ballet of Canada and Britain's Royal Ballet, and the first of the three to receive its world premiere in Toronto (the first two were Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Winter's Tale, both choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon).
For all of these reasons, I approached the performance with considerable anticipation and excitement, and came away rather saddened that the work seemed to me to be a misfire in some (not all) ways.
I hasten to point out right away that the dancers of the company were absolutely on top form throughout the performance. Wayne McGregor's signature choreographic style has the dancers bending, turning, twisting, and flexing in ways which appear to be impossible -- and yet they aren't because you just saw some of them do it. The National's remarkable company rose to the occasion, bringing all their passion, energy, and skill to bear on McGregor's choreographic challenges. I have only the strongest of compliments for their performances across the board.
That also applies to the National Ballet's house orchestra, which appeared as a pared-down live pit ensemble working successfully in conjunction with extensive pre-taped music, always a situation fraught with possibilities for things to go wrong.
Despite the best efforts of these dedicated performing artists, MADDADDAM comes across as a rather confusing, obscure, elliptical piece of work.
The problems begin, I think, with the source material. Right at the outset, I have to wonder if there is really any feasible way to present, in a single 95-minute performance, the contents of a richly layered and detailed trilogy of novels. My sense, for what it's worth, is that this was an impossible assignment at the outset. The finished work, as far as I could tell, got around the difficulty by presenting a series of choreographic impressions rooted in the books, rather than attempting a narrative.
The way in which the work was presented to the audience caused problems for most of the people I have discussed this work with, and with many other members of the audience -- to judge by the comments I heard around me at the theatre.
Atwood's novels have certainly not been read by everyone, and a short synopsis of the contents of the books would have been enormously helpful. What we got, instead, were a few isolated comments scattered through the three preview videos, and a few more elliptical statements in the extensive, scholarly, but curiously uninformative programme notes. All of this material was presented to the audience from a perspective that we were expected to be familiar with the novels already -- and this was a huge mistake.
Among other things, we had no guidance at all as to the meaning or significance of a number of named characters, who or what they might be, or what their function or purpose might be.
It didn't help matters at all that the programme notes' references to the second act seemed to bear no relation at all to what we saw on stage. Certainly, I couldn't make the connection.
Problems within the actual performance come down mainly to two key areas.
The first is the extensive use of video and moving objects in the set designs. Difficulties began right at the outset with the moving projections of huge, ominous figures on a scrim as the dancers were beginning their choreography. Sadly, the dancers came off second-best as the enormous projections kept yanking our attention away from the on-stage movement -- a classic example of what's known in theatrical parlance as "pulling focus." Those projections forcefully commanded our focus and I truly sympathized with the dancers in their losing battle against their own stage set.
Matters were compounded when the huge "orb" on the stage began rotating slowly during a later part of the first act. Again, attention was diverted to the orb as we waited to see what it would do or what it would show as it turned. These mobile set effects did the the dancers an enormous disservice.
The other key problem, for me, was the original score by Max Richter. I had fondly hoped that the tedious "minimalist" movement in music was at an end, but here it came again, full force. When a short, simple rhythmic or melodic fragment is repeated several times, it can (and certainly does) help to establish a mood or emotion, and that is a useful function. When it keeps repeating for another five or even ten minutes (as it seemed at times), mood or emotion is succeeded by boredom and then by aggravation which makes me want to scream, "Just play something different already!"
The only key to the music which we were given in an advance video was a quick fragment of a descending melody which would appear in the final minutes of each act. My relief was immense when I at last heard that melody beginning to emerge for the third time, and knew that the relentless musical tedium was finally coming to an end.
To sum up: MADDADDAM is certainly a brave attempt at making dance out of some very challenging source material, and on a choreographic level it is strikingly powerful. Sadly, the power is often dissipated by the tedious music, the hyper-competitive videos and moving set elements, and above all by the lack of any programme notes which can give the audience an actual context to the impressions which are being danced on the stage.
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