Rambert
Dance Company &
Dance on DVD
S&H
Dance Special live and on DVD (PGW & MB 2001)
Rambert
Dance Company
75th Anniversary Autumn Programme 1, Sadler's Wells, London, November
2001 (PGW)
Approached from
a musical standpoint, Rambert impresses by its eclectic breadth
of sources tapped, without pigeonholing any preferences. In its
current 75th anniversary celebrations, each programme features the
live music making of its Associate Orchestra London Musici, directed
by Paul Hoskins, but there is always taped music too, reproduced
on state of the art equipment, loud but distortion-free. For Hurricane
a single dancer, Simon Cooper, represented in commedia dell'Arte
guise the complexities of Bob Dylan's storytelling song of that
name, with which everyone there seemed familiar, about a black boxer
framed for triple murder,. From the programme note we gathered that
he was cleared of all charges but only after twenty years; surtitles
would have helped some of us oldbeards!
It is always
inspiriting to emerge from the 'new music ghetto' and experience
challenging music, in a variety of genres, in the lively company
of the young audiences who fill Sadler's Wells for dance events
and don't want to hear only what they know they like, which has
to be taken into account by classical music promoters. They know
the dancers, support them with whistling and screaming, but surely
take in the idioms of Stravinsky and Scelsi at the same time as
they renew acquaintance with Bob Dylan and his confreres.
This is one
strand in musical life that holds out great hope for the future
- surely there will not be such a time lag for acceptance of early
C. 21 music as there was for that of the first quarter of the C.
20?
Tracks by 'Aphex
Twin' (presumably a composing pair?), the final one from Ambient
Works Vol II, served to accompany the only premiere of the evening,
Twin Suite 2, a goodly up-to-date noise, but in truth rather monotonous.
London Musici came into its own for The Celebrated Soubrette, playing
Michael Daugherty's Le Tombeau de Liberace of 1996, which provided
energetic, efficiently orchestrated accompaniments for 'a tawdry
journey through the glitz and grime of Las Vagas', but was not music
I would seek out to hear again.
Far more memorable
a musical experience was Stuart Dempster's Underground Overlays,
used by the veteran Merce Cunningham for his compelling Ground Level
Overlays, a computerised, abstract creation - yes, dance too can
now be generated by computer programmes, just as music has been
for Xenakis and Lindberg. Cunningham choreographed Ground Level
Overlays by processing 'movement phrases' into LifeForms, the dance
computer he utilises, continuing 'my interest in dancers as people
dealing with movement complexities'. The dancing was at ground level,
but Dempster's music had been recorded by ten trombonists near Seattle,
14 feet down in an acoustically unique, huge underground cistern,
'with an incredible 45 second reverberation period, any sound reverberated
with nearly perfect evenness of tone quality and dynamic range'.
Cunningham's partner John Cage, to whose memory Ground Level Overlays
is dedicated, had been deeply moved by a CD Deep Listening (1988),
recorded in that old water tank, known locally as 'The Cistern Chapel'.
I found the
Rambert dancing accomplished, indeed expert, and always watchable
and interesting to see, but it is a foreign language and, all the
music this time being new to me, I would not venture to trespass
on the territory of the dance critics, who were all enthusiastic,
especially about Rambert's acquisition of Merce Cunningham's work.
Ground Level Overlays had been premiered in New York, 1995, 'one
of the loveliest works in his company's repertoire - - Cunningham's
gift of consolation: Rambert joyously does it justice' (Jann Parry
in The Observer). In London, the multi-tracked taped score was supplemented
by live trombonists of London Musici, the whole reverberating around
Sadler's Wells to wondrous effect.
Dance
on DVD
Carmen
(Bizet/Schtschredrin)
Arthaus DVD 100 182
Sleeping Beauty (Tchaikovsky) National Philharmonic Orchestra/Richard
Bonynge
Arthaus DVD 100 054
Cinderella (Prokofiev & Schwarz) Lyon National Opera
Orchestra/Jacob Kreisberg
Arthaus DVD 100 234
Coppelia (Delibes) Lyon National Opera Orchestra/Kent Nagano.
Arthaus DVD 100 337
The Nutcracker (Tchaikovsky) Orchestre Collonne/Edmon Colomer
with Yvette Horner (accordion)
TDK DV-BLBNC (PGW)
All discs region coded 2 & 5.
I can warmly
recommend to unprejudiced S&H readers several excellent Arthaus
DVDs plus one from TDK, all distributed by Select Music. All of
them are updated in different ways and have provided food for thought,
alongside pure enjoyment and admiration for unfettered imaginations.
Whereas opera has moments of visual repose when music takes over,
dance keeps the eyes continually engaged and makes for absorbing
home viewing.
The maverick
Mats Ek's Carmen takes the Soviet composer
Schredrin's popular suite made from Bizet's music, and weaves a
dance work of astonishing emotional intensity, its searing feeling
driving away questions of literal interpretation of the familiar
tale or thought of the opera. Mats Ek's version of Sleeping Beauty,
with Tchaikovsky's score faithfully recorded by Richard Bonynge
and the NPO, eschews prettiness and has a strange version of the
story with male swans. Of a different ilk is Maguy Marin's Cinderella,
strictly based upon the original story, but seen through child eyes,
with all the characters masked living dolls with real human feelings,
reflecting how children identify with their toys. A wonderful DVD
for the whole family to enjoy during the Christmas festivities.
Maguy Marin's
Coppelia is utterly different. Her version takes
the story, about the breakup of a real relationship because of infatuation
with a mechanical doll - representing an unattainable and imaginary
ideal woman as fed to us by the media - into our own time.
The archetypal
theme of the image taking over from reality (Golem, Frankenstein
etc) is given in a modern, inner city setting, with some violence.
The first act of this Coppelia is set outside a drab block of flats,
with concerted dances that remind one of the build up of tensions
in West Side Story - abbreviated here by omission of Delibes' folk
dances, which interrupt the story telling in the original ballet.
Afterwards, paradoxically, the imagination expands in Coppelius'
small flat and the dance aspect improves in an indoor fantasy with
a bevy of scarlet dolls - a memorable image of fantasy overwhelming
reality; disturbing, very imaginative and brilliantly filmed. The
Delibes score is played excellently by Kent Nagano with the Lyon
National Opera Orchestra, and as well recorded.
Maurice Bejart's
The Nutcracker is, in its way, equally different from
the perennial Christmas show seen revived year after year at South
Bank. It is lavish, gorgeous to look at and innovative in its treatment,
even though the dancing does not stray far from classical ballet,
with the Pas de Deux is given in Petipa's original version. Bejart
draws upon his own early life, interpolating spoken reminiscences
in his ballet's live presentation at The Theatre Musical de Chatelet
- Paris, especially in centring his new scenario upon an 8-yr old
boy who adores his dead mother, is unable to regain her and becomes
a dancer, incorporating also Mephisto from Goethe's Faust. A circus
setting provides new opportunities for the second act divertissements,
in which popular French music is introduced by the accordionist,
who even towards the end descants with the orchestra in Tchaikovsky's
music, charmingly done and sure not to cause offence. A bright and
colourful show; with expert and personable young dancers and the
famous score well played and recorded, this is another desirable
DVD for the holiday season, and beyond.
Peter Grahame
Woolf
Marc Bridle reviews Prokofievs Romeo & Juliet
Lyon National Opera Ballet & Lyon National Opera Orchestra Kent
Nagano, conductor
Arthaus DVD 100 246, region code 2 & 5.
This is the third version of Prokofievs great ballet I have
now seen on DVD and immeasurably the best, even if it is
sliced and cut to less than half its usual length. Warner have already
issued the Nureyev production, classical and conservative in style
and design, and suffering from the most lugubrious account of the
music I have yet heard. It reminds one of wading through treacle.
A horrendously cheap DVD release on Video Land Klassik (with just
four chapters supporting more than two-and-a-half hours of music)
purportedly dates from 1938 yet is in such splendid colour
(and sound) that this simply cannot be the case. It is, however,
beautifully conducted, coming nearest to Nagano in setting almost
ideal tempi for this work.
Watching this Arthaus release after either of those DVD performances
is likely to prove both rewarding and shocking. Rewarding, because
Naganos approach to the score is incendiary, with palpable
electricity lighting up the inherent darkness of the production
at every turn. Shocking, because this is the darkest imaginable
vision of a great love story stripped naked and then weighed down
by a post-war, almost apocalyptic, view of a Europe torn apart by
hatred and ethnic cleansing. The Montagues and Capulets are more
akin to the warring factions of Bernsteins West Side Story
than Shakespeares warring European nobility, and there is
more than a suggestion of fascist thuggery operating very close
to the surface of this gut-wrenching production.
Angelin Preljocaj agreed to create this production for Lyons Opera
on the condition that he could use a considerably foreshortened
score, a decision principally taken so the music would sit more
comfortably with a ballet told as a political and emotional parable.
However, in achieving this the scenes have been moved around in
a bizarre fashion: in Scene 3, for example, No.35 (Romeo decides
to avenge Mercutios death) appears before No.34 (Mercutio
Dies). In the Third Act we have No 31 (incorrectly identified in
the booklet as No 32) Tybalt meets Mercutio misplaced
when what we really have is Juliet with the ghosts of both (in otherwords,
No 44).
This complexity does not diminish the sheer audacity of the production
values, however, evidently coloured by the backgrounds of both the
designer and the choreographer. Those designs, by Enki Bilal, a
former Yugoslavian comic book illustrator, are principally drawn
in a bleak Berlinesque landscape of inescapable walls. They mimic
in many ways the eclectic design that Fritz Lang brought to his
1920s film Metropolis, and there is also in this production an emphasis
on the futuristic particularly illustrated by the pseudo
robotic nurses who hive around Juliet. With monochrome colouring,
a pervasive illusion of darkness, and a threnody of extraneous sound
(such as helicopter rotor blades) this is both everyones nightmare
and someones depiction of a police state in action.
In choreographic terms this production is a millennium away from
the staid artistry of Nureyev and Kasatkina/Vasilov. This is, of
course, very classical ballet and in all three productions
it is difficult to separate the movements used in both Juliets
Funeral and the Death of Juliet, so similarly are the dancers matched
in movement between the different productions. However, when you
look at how Preljocaj has choreographed the Dance of the Knights
for once aggressive, and not at all like the chessboard movements
we always seem to see you can feel the abstraction which
this choreographer brings to modern dance. Entire bodies become
balletic, even if the movements are predominantly minimalist. Rather
than an all-embracing fluency of movement the division of labour
is stark: Romeo and Juliet have a swallow-like freedom, whereas
the guards and nurses have an automaton, almost mechanical presence.
Generally this is a superbly danced performance Pascale
Doye and Nicolas Dufloux tangible and emotive as the lovers. Nagano
grips the score with a vice, and the playing is both lithe and exciting.
Controversially, and given the passion of the playing, it is almost
sacrilegious that Juliets death should occur after the music
has finished. It is my only real point of contention in what is
otherwise a superb production.
Marc Bridle
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