One of the most extraordinary books ever published is a brief illustrated novella, a bewitching fable that stands astride the artificial division between adult and child literature, without precisely falling into either category. Poetic, allusive, allegorical, mystical, Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Le Petit Prince is all of these and more besides. Some people don't get it at all; at the opposite end of the scale, some people all but marry the book.
Nothing sums up the impact of Le Petit Prince quite so much as the laconic statistic that the book (first published in 1943) has sold over 140 million copies, and continues to sell in excess of 2 million copies every year to this day.
For such an iconic and widely admired and loved work, then, it's no surprise that numerous adaptations of the novella have been made. It's been turned into stage plays and stage musicals, into films and filmed musicals, into TV shows, into operas, into ballets.
It's not a unique or ground-breaking adventure, then, that the National Ballet has decided to stage a new version of this beloved tale. Nor is it surprising, given the advance publicity, that many of the performances were sold out except for standing room -- a very rare event! This newly-created work features choreography by Guillaume Coté and a score by Kevin Lau.
Coté has taken a unique and successful approach to re-visioning the story in terms of dance. There's no classical-style mime to illustrate events. Rather, the choreography reaches down into the various personalities of the tale and brings their characters to life on the stage.
Lau's score matches the updated classical language of much of Coté's choreography. He uses a large romantic orchestra with wordless soprano voices added in key passages. The musical language mirrors the dance language in moving along a spectrum from lush Wagnerian harmonies to the more tortured sounds of the early twentieth century.
The first sequence introduces the Aviator who narrates the book -- showing him folding and flying paper airplanes. His crash landing in the desert is symbolized by a gigantic paper airplane with a crumpled point descending through the ceiling.
Once this vanishes, the set for the remainder of the ballet is a series of solid black walls, covered with sparkles which automatically suggest a starry sky. A series of circular openings of all different sizes in the walls appear from time to time to suggest the different planets the prince visits during his travels. In Act II, these are replaced by a single outsize circle in the rear wall. Costumes deliberately avoid the look of the whimsical illustrations in the book. The Prince's flaring red coat, for instance, is nowhere to be seen. Instead, the Prince and Aviator are dressed in simple white, colours being reserved for the other characters.
In a nod to one of the more whimsical pictures in the book, a simple chair tilted so as to stand on only one leg appears in a circular cutout, rotating in obvious depiction of the Prince's little chair on his home planet. The Prince climbs onto the chair and stands atop it as it turns slowly around. Sitting on it at that angle would be a bit challenging!
Coté's radical innovation is in his development of a corps de ballet role. The flock of Wild Birds who draw the little prince from planet to planet here become a darker, more ambiguous, even threatening idee fixe throughout the work. Their costumes are black-with-sequins, matching the sparkling treatment of the walls. The sweeping black wings used in many sequences fill the stage with dark shadows and make the birds seem far bigger than the other characters. In other scenes they dispense with the wings but still participate in various capacities.
Speaking of threatening, Coté's golden King is a much more threatening presence than his counterpart in the book. The Vain Woman sequence is pure classical, with the Woman's tutu overlaid with dozens and dozens of fragments of mirrors, and a half dozen similarly-dressed dancers mirroring her every move. The Businessman is accompanied by a corps group of men in suits, in a sequence that moves in a more modern style.
The Lamplighter of the book becomes a pair of Lamplighters, a male-female couple dressed in costumes that are black (for night) on one side and yellow (for daylight) on the other side. Instead of having them turning an actual lantern on and off, the choreography here presents a snappy and entertaining pas de deux in which they take turns spinning each other alternately to their day and night sides -- a clever visual counterpart to the story.
The Geographer was the one serious weak link in visual terms, the ridiculous wig and hyperactive beard looking like something from a children's dress-up game where all other characters were taken seriously in their own terms.
In the second act, the story turns darker as the Prince arrives on earth and encounters the mysterious Snake. The lengthy first scene with the Snake illustrated the strength of Kevin Lau's score, as the music developed over that span of a number of minutes in a convincingly symphonic manner. The Snake's choreography, performed by Xiao Nan Yu, beautifully captured the multiple possibilities inherent in the character. Coté had her followed on her first appearance by a "tail" of black-clad dancers without wings. After that, her erect carriage and sweeping upper-body movements remained convincingly snake-like, the tail still seeming to be there behind her even when it wasn't.
The subsequent scene where the Prince meets and comes to know a Fox was one of the choreographic highlights. Coté made inventive use of movement to illustrate the concept of the Prince and Fox taming each other. It was the one sequence in the work which I wished had gone on for longer than it actually did.
The Snake's final scene with the Prince also uses very inventive choreography to illustrate how she bites him to send him home to his own planet. It was the emotional climax of the piece, as it needs to be, but staged in such a way that I felt no sadness, only fulfillment.
I've deliberately saved for the last the three key dancers in the work. Tanya Howard danced the role of the Prince's Rose. In the book, he lavishes care on his Rose but she is petulant, vain, and demanding in return. In their first pas de deux he uses many standard Romantic ballet moves with her, but she remains unresponsive, always looking out and away from him.
In the second act he encounters a garden full of roses. Here, Coté has staged a scene reminiscent of the vision of the Princess in Act 2 of Sleeping Beauty. The Prince's Rose also appears in the garden, but he cannot get to her because the other roses are constantly in the way. When the Rose finally realizes that she too needs the Prince, she goes through the same movements as in Act 1 but with a more responsive air and a more involved look on her face -- subtle and beautiful at the same time.
Harrison James danced the role of the Aviator. It's a tough assignment as he spends much time through the ballet watching, observing, and learning, rather than actively participating. James was particularly riveting in his pas de trois with the Snake and the Prince.
Dylan Tedaldi captured the questioning look and stance of the Prince throughout the ballet. He was ardent and puzzled all at once in his pas de deux with the Rose, and similarly displayed a blend of fascination and curiosity with the Snake. His scenes in the garden of roses and with the Fox brought out many more facets of his character.
I found myself wondering if the sell-out audiences enjoyed the piece as much as I did. If I had to sum it up, I would call it a set of choreographic inspirations loosely related to the book. Although it is a full length ballet, I'd hesitate to call it a "story" ballet. That's because Coté has deliberately chosen to explore the ideas and emotions underlying the story -- and that was clearly where author Antoine de Saint-Exupery placed his emphasis.
For me, this was a beautiful, involving work, thoughtful and entertaining in equal measures, and I do look forward to seeing it staged again at some future date.
Coté has taken a unique and successful approach to re-visioning the story in terms of dance. There's no classical-style mime to illustrate events. Rather, the choreography reaches down into the various personalities of the tale and brings their characters to life on the stage.
Lau's score matches the updated classical language of much of Coté's choreography. He uses a large romantic orchestra with wordless soprano voices added in key passages. The musical language mirrors the dance language in moving along a spectrum from lush Wagnerian harmonies to the more tortured sounds of the early twentieth century.
The first sequence introduces the Aviator who narrates the book -- showing him folding and flying paper airplanes. His crash landing in the desert is symbolized by a gigantic paper airplane with a crumpled point descending through the ceiling.
Once this vanishes, the set for the remainder of the ballet is a series of solid black walls, covered with sparkles which automatically suggest a starry sky. A series of circular openings of all different sizes in the walls appear from time to time to suggest the different planets the prince visits during his travels. In Act II, these are replaced by a single outsize circle in the rear wall. Costumes deliberately avoid the look of the whimsical illustrations in the book. The Prince's flaring red coat, for instance, is nowhere to be seen. Instead, the Prince and Aviator are dressed in simple white, colours being reserved for the other characters.
In a nod to one of the more whimsical pictures in the book, a simple chair tilted so as to stand on only one leg appears in a circular cutout, rotating in obvious depiction of the Prince's little chair on his home planet. The Prince climbs onto the chair and stands atop it as it turns slowly around. Sitting on it at that angle would be a bit challenging!
Coté's radical innovation is in his development of a corps de ballet role. The flock of Wild Birds who draw the little prince from planet to planet here become a darker, more ambiguous, even threatening idee fixe throughout the work. Their costumes are black-with-sequins, matching the sparkling treatment of the walls. The sweeping black wings used in many sequences fill the stage with dark shadows and make the birds seem far bigger than the other characters. In other scenes they dispense with the wings but still participate in various capacities.
Speaking of threatening, Coté's golden King is a much more threatening presence than his counterpart in the book. The Vain Woman sequence is pure classical, with the Woman's tutu overlaid with dozens and dozens of fragments of mirrors, and a half dozen similarly-dressed dancers mirroring her every move. The Businessman is accompanied by a corps group of men in suits, in a sequence that moves in a more modern style.
The Lamplighter of the book becomes a pair of Lamplighters, a male-female couple dressed in costumes that are black (for night) on one side and yellow (for daylight) on the other side. Instead of having them turning an actual lantern on and off, the choreography here presents a snappy and entertaining pas de deux in which they take turns spinning each other alternately to their day and night sides -- a clever visual counterpart to the story.
The Geographer was the one serious weak link in visual terms, the ridiculous wig and hyperactive beard looking like something from a children's dress-up game where all other characters were taken seriously in their own terms.
In the second act, the story turns darker as the Prince arrives on earth and encounters the mysterious Snake. The lengthy first scene with the Snake illustrated the strength of Kevin Lau's score, as the music developed over that span of a number of minutes in a convincingly symphonic manner. The Snake's choreography, performed by Xiao Nan Yu, beautifully captured the multiple possibilities inherent in the character. Coté had her followed on her first appearance by a "tail" of black-clad dancers without wings. After that, her erect carriage and sweeping upper-body movements remained convincingly snake-like, the tail still seeming to be there behind her even when it wasn't.
The subsequent scene where the Prince meets and comes to know a Fox was one of the choreographic highlights. Coté made inventive use of movement to illustrate the concept of the Prince and Fox taming each other. It was the one sequence in the work which I wished had gone on for longer than it actually did.
The Snake's final scene with the Prince also uses very inventive choreography to illustrate how she bites him to send him home to his own planet. It was the emotional climax of the piece, as it needs to be, but staged in such a way that I felt no sadness, only fulfillment.
I've deliberately saved for the last the three key dancers in the work. Tanya Howard danced the role of the Prince's Rose. In the book, he lavishes care on his Rose but she is petulant, vain, and demanding in return. In their first pas de deux he uses many standard Romantic ballet moves with her, but she remains unresponsive, always looking out and away from him.
In the second act he encounters a garden full of roses. Here, Coté has staged a scene reminiscent of the vision of the Princess in Act 2 of Sleeping Beauty. The Prince's Rose also appears in the garden, but he cannot get to her because the other roses are constantly in the way. When the Rose finally realizes that she too needs the Prince, she goes through the same movements as in Act 1 but with a more responsive air and a more involved look on her face -- subtle and beautiful at the same time.
Harrison James danced the role of the Aviator. It's a tough assignment as he spends much time through the ballet watching, observing, and learning, rather than actively participating. James was particularly riveting in his pas de trois with the Snake and the Prince.
Dylan Tedaldi captured the questioning look and stance of the Prince throughout the ballet. He was ardent and puzzled all at once in his pas de deux with the Rose, and similarly displayed a blend of fascination and curiosity with the Snake. His scenes in the garden of roses and with the Fox brought out many more facets of his character.
I found myself wondering if the sell-out audiences enjoyed the piece as much as I did. If I had to sum it up, I would call it a set of choreographic inspirations loosely related to the book. Although it is a full length ballet, I'd hesitate to call it a "story" ballet. That's because Coté has deliberately chosen to explore the ideas and emotions underlying the story -- and that was clearly where author Antoine de Saint-Exupery placed his emphasis.
For me, this was a beautiful, involving work, thoughtful and entertaining in equal measures, and I do look forward to seeing it staged again at some future date.
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