It would be hard to create a more varied mixed programme than the National Ballet of Canada staged this week, while still keeping exclusively to work created in the last century!
The overall theme of the programme was billed as "Physical Thinking", and there were definitely three widely divergent views of human physicality on display. Two of the works I found very rewarding in completely different ways. The third one...? Well, let's just say that you can't experiment without creating some duds just as you can't make an omelette without breaking the eggs. As a writer, I can only say, "Don't I know it?"
The first work on the programme was Le Spectre de la Rose. Now, don't jump on me just yet -- hang on a minute! I know perfectly well that Le Spectre was a Romantic warhorse created by the famous choreographer Michel Fokine for the Ballets Russes of Diaghilev in Paris. It used the music of Weber -- his Invitation to the Dance (as orchestrated by Berlioz) -- and was primarily a showpiece for Vaclav Nijinsky, ending with the infamous grand jete exit through the girl's bedroom window.
I saw that ballet years ago, before the National moved out of the Hummingbird Centre, and even then could tell that it was dated almost beyond redemption. The passive female figure, who simply watches in mute admiration while the male soloist executes his spectacular solo, is so out of tune with today's concepts of art that the piece becomes almost laughable.
I was curious, then, to see what choreographer Marco Goecke brought to this tale in his work, originally created in 2009. From advance comments I had read, I was expecting some sort of more "advanced" version of the familiar Fokine concept. But what we got was nowhere even close to that.
Goecke's choreographic language is nothing if not unique. For long stretches of time, perhaps even for over 50% of the total duration of the work, the dancers stand stock-still with their feet pressed together like soldiers on a parade ground. The dancers' major effort lies in the arms (and, to a lesser extent, the faces). The classic port de bras, the manner in which the arms are held, is twisted through a thousand bizarre variations, and these variations succeed one another at lightning speed, rather like a slide projector gone crazy. Rarely, one of the dancers would "unstick" from the floor and move about, execute a modest leap or two, and then come back to anchor. I certainly admire the amount of physical energy and sheer verve that the National's amazing cast brought to this work -- particularly the two leads, Dylan Tedaldi and Chelsey Meiss -- but apart from that found little to recommend it.
To make matters worse, Goecke stuck with the original music, supplemented by Weber's concert overture Rubezahl ("The Ruler of the Spirits"). The Invitation to the Dance has become much less popular of late, and now seems almost as much a period piece as the original Fokine ballet. It's a 10-minute chain of waltz melodies, played without interruption, and ending with a reprise of the first melody -- a kind of rondo form. Surely this piece is at the head of the illustrious genealogical line that was to give birth to all the great concert waltzes of the Strauss family and their numerous followers and successors.
But think about this: a waltz is a dance in which the dancers, once started, continue revolving around and around each other ad infinitum until the music ends. It's graceful as all get out, when done well, and the music needs to be very much a moto perpetuo (and Weber's piece certainly is that!). In Goecke's work, the angular choreography necessitates starts and stops several times every second. Exhausting it undoubtedly is, but why on earth he felt it necessary to mismatch it to Weber's fading "Palm Court" waltz medley I can't even imagine. For my money, epic fail!
Enough said about that one. The second work on the programme was also the most "classical" in spirit, if not always in movement. Opus 19/The Dreamer was created in 1979 for Mikhail Baryshnikov by Jerome Robbins. The music is the Op. 19 of Sergei Prokofiev, his Violin Concerto # 1 in D Major. This is one of the composer's most lyrical inspirations, and was beautifully executed by soloist Alexandre Da Costa and the orchestra under David Briskin.
What was most striking about this work (especially in contrast to the preceding one) was the care with which Robbins chose choreographic details that so perfectly fitted the details of the music at every point throughout the ballet. Without doubt, this was absolutely the most musically aware choreography of the afternoon. The two leading dancers (Sonia Rodriguez and Naoya Ebe) are set off by a group of male and female dancers who might best be called a choeur de ballet, since their role in the piece often seems to me like the commentary role of the Chorus in a Greek drama. The stage pictures here were all very beautiful, and gave a definite feeling that his was a work you were meant to feel and experience somewhere well below your normal conscious level of thought. Robbins' choices of movements were fascinating: some echoed the classic gestures of the Romantic ballet, some seemed to be cribbed from his famous work for West Side Story. But some of the movements seemed to be as unique, as inevitable and timeless as the music itself.
And finally: the second detail, choreographed by William Forsythe to an original synthesized score by Thom Willems. This work was originally created by Forsythe on the National Ballet in 1990, and has been restaged several times since then. The language of the dance here is like a kaleidoscope of dance movement in the twentieth century. You quickly sense the existence of patterns of movement among the various dancers on stage, and then those patterns quickly shift and dissolve into other and quite different patterns. This was the most monochromatic ballet, as all the dancers wore plain grey leotards and danced in front of a plain white backdrop and side drops, with a row of grey utility steel stacking chairs set up across the back. Dancers moved to and from the chairs frequently. Sometimes the seated dancers executed complex patterns with their legs, arms, and upper bodies without standing. The effect was like a balletic amplification of the traditional "seated step dancing" of Acadia. Movement was in the main more fluid than in some modern work, and yet there was no shortage of startling, sudden action to follow. This was a ballet which really challenged you to give your full attention because all parts of the stage were bristling with action at all times.
A note about the music: one of my favourite bugbears of modern music is the kind of music too frequently written today, where sounds succeed one another without pattern and just sit there for a while with no sense of movement. I always fear something like that when I see a ballet with a contemporary score coming up, but it sure wasn't an issue here. Willems' score was chock-a-block with rhythm, carefully controlled by clicking percussion sounds, and carried a strong rhythmic pulse from start to finish. No wonder the dance seemed to fit into its environment so naturally!
The final verdict? Two excellent ballets and one... well, if we have to call it a "clanger", at least we can still admire the skill and energy with which the National's wonderful artists executed all three works!
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