Wednesday 12 March 2014

A Thought-Provoking Dance Experience

Shamefully late in posting these thoughts about the National Ballet's winter mixed programme -- my apologies to everyone who has been waiting with bated breath!


Actually just two works this time, both previously in the National's repertoire, but as I had seen neither of them before I was awaiting this programme with considerable expectation.  The results exceeded even my fondest hopes, and a second trip into Toronto to see the programme again was absolutely needed!


Aszure Barton's Watch her was previously staged in 2009.  It's one of the most fascinating modern works I have ever seen the National perform, not least because Barton's own personal reticence to discuss her work in advance forces you to engage your mind at full stretch as you watch -- and I'm sure that is exactly her intention.  It's noteworthy, too, that the programme explicitly states that the piece was choreographed by Aszure Barton and "created in collaboration with the Artists of the Ballet".  The music was a remarkable composition by Lera Auerbach, Dialogues on Stabat Mater (after Giovanni Battista Pergolesi) which takes the well-known work of the Italian Baroque composer and creates a series of variations based on just a few melodies from his 35-minute cantata. 


Barton's work offers a peculiar line-up of elements -- a stone-walled interior with a window in the rear, a series of doors on the sides that open and close, a single leafless tree in the rear corner and a fourth wall with another window which covers the front of the stage as the ballet begins and lowers into place again at the conclusion.  The company are divided into three loose "groups" -- three women with major solo roles, two men who are outsiders or "watchers", and the remaining 32, a mixed group of women and men.  Costumes are sober in dark blues and charcoal grays and very formal -- the men in three piece suits with ties, the women in dresses.  One of the three solo women stands out from this group by virtue of her red-maroon dress and her distinctive walk as she moves -- prowls -- around the stage.


The two outside men: one wears a more casual outfit with a watch cap, the other is in a dishevelled white shirt covered with stains and moves with difficulty, as if suffering from a leg injury.  These men move through the action, while remaining separate from it (for the most part).  I'm sure every person who engaged with this work drew different meanings from the walls, the tree, the solo women (especially the one in red), and the two watchers.  For me the piece spoke of the way we are locked in by social conventions of all kinds, and the way that we are either fascinated by or we shun those who live outside those conventions.  Given the title, I'm not sure whether that was what Barton would have wanted me to take away, but that was where I ended up.  The ending fascinated me, as the company's heads appeared above the back wall, now the watchers, while the dishevelled man was left alone on the stage front as the fourth wall descended again -- permanently outside of whatever that stone-walled room offered.


The other piece was Sir Frederick Ashton's late masterpiece, A Month in the Country, based on the play by Ivan Turgenev and accompanied by music of Chopin.  Part of the fascination here was the economical presentation of the narrative.  As a reviewer for the Daily Telegraph in London described it:  "A Month in the Country is a masterly haiku which compresses all the emotion of a long, wordy play into 40 minutes of glorious dance."  Couldn't have said it better myself!


It's a complex piece with some pretty fiendish combinations of steps (Ashton was famous for this) and a true dance drama.  Little is conveyed through mime, and much through movement.  From the very opening where Vera is playing the piano in an upstage alcove, I was captivated -- not least because the young lady appeared to be actually playing, a pretence that usually doesn't work on stage.  Plainly, the choreographer demanded absolute realism here! 


The drama revolves around Natalia Petrovna, a middle-aged woman married to a staid gentleman.  Plainly her husband does not care much what she does, as she has an admirer (Rakitin) living right in the house with them.  Their placid bourgeois life is interrupted by the arrival of an attractive young man, Beliaev, as tutor to Natalia's son Kolia.  First Vera, Natalia's ward, declares her love for him, and then he in turn declares his love for Natalia.  Rakitin resolves everything by convincing Beliaev that both of them must leave the family.  Oh, my -- soap opera supreme.


What lifts this tale above soap opera is the incredible diversity of the choreography, and the ability of the National's phenomenal dancers to invest these coolly superficial people with life and warmth.  My special privilege, in seeing the show twice, was to see both casts in this work.


Natalia was danced by Greta Hodgkinson and Xiao Nan Yu.  Hodgkinson is renowned for her portrayal of the Swan Queen in Swan Lake and the same tragic sadness infused her portrayal of Natalia.  Indeed, she actually succeeded in making me feel sorry for a woman who, at bottom, is trapped in a loveless marriage and behaves as if she were no more than a fickle flirt.


With Xiao Nan Yu, it was the playful side of the character that came more to the fore so that her declaration of love looked more like a first-class flirtation than a serious emotion.  In the end, with this dancer, I felt that Natalia got what she deserved. 


Which interpretation is better?  Does that really matter?  Perhaps the true stature of A Month in the Country lies precisely in the fact that such varying interpretations can stand within the framework of the piece very successfully.


As Beliaev, the tutor, we got Guillaume Cote (partnering Hodgkinson) and Aleksandr Antonievic (with Yu).  Both dug deep into a character who is young enough to be pulled this way and that by emotions that he can't fully control.  Difference in approach was not so noticeable here as with their female co-stars, but both men fully encompassed the range in emotion of a young man who enjoys dancing playfully with the youngsters, and then finds (and loses) love, perhaps for the first time.  The final moments, when he sneaked back into the room to kiss Natalia's ribbon train, and toss on the floor the rose she had given him, were heartbreaking.


Incidental point about those ribbons: in Ashton's popular comic ballet, La Fille Mal Gardee, ribbons are used as a symbol of love found and joined together.  Here, towards the end of the choreographer's long life, they become a poignant, haunting symbol of love lost and broken forever.


As Kolia, both Skylar Campbell and Francesco Gabriele Frola completely convinced us that a grown man really was a young, kite-flying boy.


Vera, Natalia's ward, has to go through a transformation from the demure, piano-playing girl of the opening through her passionate declaration of love to the raging fury of the denunciation scene when she catches Natalia and Beliaev embracing.  Her movements in that moment become hard-edged, jerky, actually modern as an expression of her rage.  Jillian Vanstone captured that angry quality with special strength, while I found Elena Lobsanova most convincing as she declared her love to Beliaev.


Only two companies outside of the Royal Ballet in London have ever been allowed to perform this wonderful piece, and we should certainly be thankful that the National Ballet of Canada is one of them!  Coupled with Aszure Barton's powerful Watch her, this became a memorable evening of dance indeed.

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