Silvia Saint-Martin and Simon Le Borgne in 'Speak for yourself'. Paris Opera Ballet. © 2019 Agathe Poupeney/OnP

VAN MANEN. Paris Opera Ballet

5 May 2019, Palais Garner, Paris

This short and sparse triple bill, consisting of two works from the team of Sol León and Paul Lightfoot, along with a single work from Dutch master Hans van Manen, showed more than anything the extreme physicality of the dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet. The men in particular displayed a muscularity that was not, for the most part, concealed by decorative costumes and all the dancers showed a strength of technique that was powerful and engaging.

The works of León and Lightfoot are not, however, the most comfortable to watch. It is not that ‘comfort’ is necessarily an important aspect of dance, but both of their works on this program, Sleight of hand and Speak for yourself, had features that seemed to me to be like stunts and gimmicks. Hans van Manen, on the other hand, had a different approach with his Trois gnossiennes, danced to Erik Satie’s piano score of the same name. Van Manen relied on the manipulation of his chosen movement vocabulary, basically that of classical ballet, to create effects. To that vocabulary he added upturned feet, tilted torsos that rarely, however, lost the straight line of the spine, expansive lifts, bodies pulled off centre, and other manipulative features that gave us a beautifully sculpted work. It was finely danced by Léonore Baulac and Florian Magnenet and for me it was the highlight of the program, despite being only eight minutes in length. The Satie score was played live by Elena Bonnay.

Léonore Baulac and Florian Magnenet in Trois gnossiennes .Paris Opera Ballet. © 2019 Agathe Poupeney/OnP — Léonore Baulac and Florian Magnenet in *Trois gnossiennes.* Paris Opera Ballet. © 2019 Agathe Poupeney/OnP

Of the other two works Speak for yourself was the more interesting in my mind. There was a kind of narrative or concrete idea behind the work, which related (the program notes tell me) to masculinity and femininity. These ideas were symbolised by the presence of smoke and water. Smoke represented speed and rapid action (masculinity) while water represented gentleness and calm (femininity). There was a contrast between the fast movement of the early part when one dancer had some kind of device attached to his body that pushed smoke into the surrounding space, and the slower movement of the final section when water poured down onto the stage as a kind of backdrop. But, quite honestly, I think this kind of representation of male and female differences is outmoded and I enjoyed the work mostly for the way in which the choreographers played with the human body in their movement vocabulary. Bodies curled in on themselves and stretched out beyond what one might expect, for example.

As for Sleight of hand, it was hard to comprehend what was behind it. As the work opens, two dancers, one male, one female, stand on obelisks (although we cannot see those structures as they are covered by the extension of the costumes). They tower above the rest of the cast. Who are they? They scarcely move at first but then do so only from the waist upwards. They gesticulate wildly. Other dancers come on stage and perform until at the end one dancer is left alone as the curtain falls. I love being asked to create my own interpretation of a work, but this one, despite its inherent theatricality, left me without anything to hang on to.

I have so much admiration for the dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet, but this program was not the most admirable one I have seen.

Michelle Potter, 8 May 2019

Romeo and Juliet. Sarah Lamb as Juliet, Vadim Muntagirov as Romeo. ©ROH, 2015. Photographed by Alice Pennefather

Romeo and Juliet. The Royal Ballet

4 May 2019 (matinee). Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London

It is always exceptional to see a work by a choreographer who is not the familiar one from one’s previous experiences of that work. Having seen John Cranko’s production of Romeo and Juliet countless times, as performed by the Australian Ballet, along with several versions by other choreographers, the Royal Ballet’s production of Kenneth MacMillan’s version of the Shakespearian tragedy was indeed an exceptional experience. I was lucky too, I think, to have seen Sarah Lamb and Vadim Muntagirov in the leading roles. While I thought Lamb’s interpretation was a little too child-like, I was fascinated by the changing emotions displayed by Muntagirov. In addition, the partnership between Lamb and Muntagirov was very secure technically and, as a result, MacMillan’s often swirling, curving, diving lifts were realised beautifully.

Sarah Lamb and Vadim Muntagirov in 'Romeo and Juliet'. The Royal Ballet. © 2015 ROH. Photographer Alice Pennefather — (Above and below) Sarah Lamb and Vadim Muntagirov in *Romeo and Juliet*. The Royal Ballet. © 2015 ROH. Photographer Alice Pennefather

The MacMillan version of Romeo and Juliet received its premiere in 1965. It is a gutsy production from the beginning when the market place of the opening scene buzzes with activity and is filled with people who seem so real (and was that a side of a dead cow being carried through the crowd on the way to the market?). The sense of the real continues through to the middle scenes when Mercutio and then Tybalt die from sword wounds and do so in such a dramatically convincing fashion, and on to the end where Romeo’s and Juliet’s death scenes leave us emotionally exhausted.

Then, Nicholas Georgiadis’ sets have little of the romantic to them. The Capulets live in a fortress, as we see when the guests arrive for the Capulet ball. And, as Jann Parry tells us in her program notes, the inclusion of a fortress looks back to the Franco Zeffirelli theatre production, made for the Old Vic in 1960-61, when Zeffirelli had the Capulets live in such a structure as protection from enemies and in order to preserve their family treasures. Then the crypt in which the Capulets place the apparently dead Juliet is spectacular with its huge stone sculptures and its flights of dark stairs of stone. The production has a kind of rawness to it and just speeds along.

Muntagirov danced superbly showing off his spectacularly light and seemingly effortless jumps; his wonderfully controlled turns, including some in attitude devant as well as attitude derrière, along with some great manèges with various showy steps. But what I especially admired about his Romeo was the way he made his emotions so visible. A highlight was when he watched a wedding parade enter the market place (to the accompaniment of mandolins) in the early moments of Act II. As he stood downstage, almost motionless, we could read that he was thinking that he and Juliet could and should follow that very example. Another was his undisguised anger at what Tybalt had done to Mercutio, and his determination to avenge the death of his friend.

Sarah Lamb is not my favourite Juliet I’m afraid. I know Juliet is a mere 13 or 14 years old but, within the MacMillan structure, I would have preferred a more feisty Juliet. But with her beautifully proportioned limbs and sound technique she danced superbly and was a joy to watch from that point of view

I enjoyed Thomas Whitehead’s commanding presence as Tybalt, especially in the scenes in the market place where his dislike of Romeo was constantly visible, and in the ball scene where his carriage of the upper body marked him as being a proud and aristocratic Capulet. And incidentally, the corps danced beautifully in the ball scene as they tilted their bodies slightly back from the waist upwards in a show of historical deportment. Other dancers to admire especially were Marcelino Sambé as a vibrant Mercutio, Téo Dubreuil as a constantly concerned Benvolio, and Christina Arestis as a very haughty Lady Montague who clearly could not bear the Capulet family.

This production was highly engaging and I love to ponder its character beside the others that I have seen—those of Cranko, Graeme Murphy, John Neumeier, Stanton Welch, and the two versions that take particular liberties for one reason or another—those of Sasha Waltz and Natalie Weir. (I have no review on this site of the Cranko production. It has been a while since the Australian Ballet showed it).

Michelle Potter, 7 May 2019

Featured image: Sarah Lamb as Juliet, Vadim Muntagirov as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. The Royal Ballet. © ROH, 2015. Photographed by Alice Pennefather

Scene from 'Sigan', New Zealand Dance Company, 2019. Photo: © John McDermott

Kiss the sky. New Zealand Dance Company

1 May 2019. Opera House, Wellington
Reviewed by Jennifer Shennan

New Zealand Dance Company’s Kiss the Sky is a highly energised and energising program of three works that appealed to an enthusiastic audience. Production values are always strong with this company, and the six dancers are all smart, sharp, sophisticated and cleanly co-ordinated movers who share singular commitment. While the three separate works have visual and aesthetic contrasts, each uses a similar casting, shape of choreographic structure, percussive accompaniment, and movement vocabulary that, taken together, also resonate as a triptych.

The opening work, Sigan, by Korean choreographer, KIM Jae Duk, has a cast of four dancers—Chrissy Kokiri, Katie Rudd, Carl Tolentino and Xin Ji. The contrasting qualities of thrust and parry, speed and stillness, light and shade of several Asian martial arts are evoked. When all four dancers are moving together, even if in canon, we have the fascinating chance to see individual differences within ‘sameness’. It is Xin Ji’s combination of strength and softness, not sequentially but simultaneously in different parts of his body, a felt not a taught quality, that always steals my eye.

The Fibonacci, by Victoria Columbus, is a premiere work dedicated to the memory of Sue Paterson, who was New Zealand’s leading dance and arts manager for decades, and is still and always will be deeply missed by many. This choreography, based on patterns in the Fibonacci series of numbers, would have thrilled Sue by the translation of mathematics to the stage. It starts with a contemplative illumination but soon becomes a river of intriguing movement. Lighting ideas (Jo Kilgour) and costume design (Elizabeth Whiting) are intrinsic to the work and contribute beautifully to the choreographic vision.

*The Fibonacci* New Zealand Dance Company, 2019. Photo © Claire Gordon

Stephanie Lake, whose own dance company is based in Melbourne, was invited to set If Never was Now on NZDC. It is a high-octane work with a similar mix of solo, duo and group dances in some eye-catching episodes. ‘Snow’ falls, scatters and is scattered across the stage, adding to the enigma within the choreography.

Scene from *If never was now*, New Zealand Dance Company, 2019. Photo: © John McDermott

In a contemporary dance program such as this, there is by choreographers’ choice no directly delivered reference to human experience or emotion, no conflict or drama to resolve, no consolation in lyricism, no primacy given to story, no levity in comedy (other than a brief duet of frenzied flirtation between two unidentified insect-like animals in the final work). Instead we see individuals’ staccato head movements, isolated gestures of limbs detached from lines or follow-through into the torso, a minimum of elevation, relatively little physical contact between dancers, an indirect relationship with the audience, a parallel rather than juxtaposed music accompaniment. All of this combines to suggest a grounded timelessness rather than the specifics of individual lives here and now. There is much high speed and there is sculptured stillness, but little of measured adagio in between. This creates effective references to a mix of robotic and mechanical moves in contrast with people’s states of being. It invites us to view our human condition and experiences against that perspective. Sequences of abstract movement vocabulary, danced at sometimes breathtaking speed, provide mesmerising visuals that we can take at face value of the physics and mathematics of life, or as metaphor if we choose.

Jennifer Shennan, 2 May 2019

Featured image: Scene from Sigan, New Zealand Dance Company, 2019. Photo: © John McDermott

Detail on a vase, Royal Apartments, Palazzo dei Normanni, Palermo

Dance diary. April 2019

Mirramu turns 30

When Elizabeth Dalman’s reign as founding artistic director of Australian Dance Theatre came dramatically to an end in 1975, she went to Italy where she spent the next decade. Not long after her return to Australia she moved to a new home on a property on Lake George, close to Canberra. There she created Mirramu Creative Arts Centre, which has just celebrated its 30th anniversary. See this link for a list of Dalman’s incredible range of activities over recent years, at Mirramu and elsewhere. Those activities stand as a testament to Dalman’s total commitment to dance.

Bodenwieser Dance Centre

Many in the Australian dance world will remember the Bodenwieser Dance Centre on City Road in Chippendale, Sydney. The building is up for sale and will go to auction on 3 May. This link takes you to a petition to save the building for future use by the dance community. Consider signing.

D H Lawrence on dance

It has been a long time since I read anything by D. H. Lawrence—it goes way back to English II at Sydney University. But in looking for something to read while on holidays, I bought Lawrence’s Twilight in Italy (first published in 1916). In the following extract he is describing a dance by locals from the area around Lake Garda in the northern part of Italy.

‘… It is a strange dance, strange and lilting, and changing as the music changed. But it had always a kind of leisurely dignity, a trailing kind of polka-waltz, intimate, passionate, yet never hurried, never violent in its passion, always becoming more intense. The women’s faces changed to a sort of transported wonder, they were in the very wonder of delight. From the soft bricks of the floor the red ochre rose in a thin cloud of dust, making hazy the shadowy dancers; the three musicians, in their black hats and their coats, sat obscurely in the corner, making a music that came quicker and quicker, making a dance that grew swifter and more intense, more subtle, the men seeming to fly and to implicate another strange inter-rhythmic dance into the women, the women drifting and palpitating as if their souls shook and resounded to a breeze …’

I have cut the quote above in mid-sentence, as that particular sentence is VERY long, probably too long. I must admit, however, that I enjoyed reading Lawrence’s thoughts and his mode of expression. But would we write like that about dance these days?

Link to articles and reviews published in The Canberra Times

I was somewhat shocked to discover that I can no longer make links to online versions of my articles and reviews published by The Canberra Times. At this stage pretty much every Canberra Times link on this website now goes to a page with the news of the current day. My predilection for providing online links via The Canberra Times’ (old) website goes back to May 2013 so it will be something of a task now to remove those links. Taking readers to the latest news of the day is useless for my purposes. Luckily I have kept a paper copy (what is paper you may ask?) of everything published. So, while a plug has been pulled, not everything has gone down the sink.

Press for April 2019

‘Farewell to a grand dame.’ Obituary for Dame Margaret Scott. Dance Australia, April/May 2019, pp. 13–14. PDF at this link.

‘Sydney Dance Company turns 50.’ The Canberra Times/Panorama, 20 April 2019, p. 7. Expanded version at this link.

Michelle Potter, 30 April 2019

Featured image: Detail on a vase, Royal Apartments, Palazzo dei Normanni, Palermo, Sicily. Photo: Neville Potter

Alessandra Ferri and Federico Bonelli in 'TUesday', 2019. Photo: © Marco Brescia and Rudy Amisano, Teatro alla Scala

Woolf Works. Teatro alla Scala

20 April 2019. Teatro alla Scala, Milan

Sitting in the so-called ‘first balcony’ of Teatro alla Scala in Milan gave me a view of Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works that I have never had before. In I now, I then, the first act based on Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, I saw more clearly the structural elements of the set, the darkness behind those structures, and the way the elements of the set impacted on the storyline. In the second act, Becomings, based on Orlando, I had a view of Lucy Carter’s spectacular lighting design that was quite different from what I saw in earlier performances. In act three, Tuesday, based on The Waves, I was able to see McGregor’s choreographic patterns more clearly than before.

Of course I missed what I had seen on previous occasions, especially some of the finely detailed moments of choreography, and some details of personal connections between the dancers. But, like much in Milan, tickets to the ballet are expensive and, in any case, as I looked down from my central position so close to the ceiling (the ‘first balcony’ is the fifth of six semi-circular galleries that are part of the theatre), I wondered how well one could see from the orchestra stalls anyway. Down there the floor of the auditorium seemed very flat, although no doubt the stage was raked.

This post discusses the impact the new, on-high perspective had on my thoughts about Woolf Works. My previous reviews of Woolf Works are at the following links: London 2017, Brisbane 2017.

For me, I now, I then has always had the strongest narrative element of the three acts. It follows various threads of Clarissa Dalloway’s life and loves, but does so through Clarissa’s memories. Having the view from the ‘first balcony’ of the three large wooden structures (they are like enormous picture frames) that make up the set in this act, seeing them move position, come together and separate repeatedly, gave extra strength to the notion that the story was moving through Clarissa’s life. Those who touched her life disappeared behind the frames occasionally only to reappear later, and the frames themselves seemed larger than I had previously noticed—life itself exists on a grand scale—and the figures smaller—we are are born to die while life, a greater force, continues.

I have always loved the final moments of act one where the five people who have especially touched Clarissa’s life dance together, change partners, come back to each other, then one by one disappear into the void of the darkened stage leaving Clarissa alone to contemplate her memories. The whole notion of the changing relationships that mark our lives was made clearer to me as I looked down on the action and on the visual elements that marked out the stage space.

The cast was led by Alessandra Ferri as Clarissa; Federico Bonelli as Peter, Clarissa’s early love interest; Catherina Bianchi as the young Clarissa; Agnese di Clementi as Jenny, Clarissa’s female friend; and Mick Zeni as Richard, Clarissa’s husband.

Federico Bonelli, Caterina Bianchi, Alessandra Ferri, Mick Zeni Agnese and Di Clemente in Woolf Works Act I, 2019. Photo: © Marco Brescia and Rudy Amisano, Teatro alla Scala — Federico Bonelli, Caterina Bianchi, Alessandra Ferri, Mick Zeni, and Agnese Di Clemente in *Woolf Works* Act I, 2019. Photo: © Marco Brescia and Rudy Amisano, Teatro alla Scala. This moment occurs towards the end of act one as Clariss (Alessandra Ferri) interacts with those who have shared her life.

A major characteristic of act two, Becomings, has always been Lucy Carter’s astonishing lighting design. Earlier I wrote that it ‘sometimes divides the stage space, other times it beams out into the space of the auditorium. It colours the space, and darkens it too, and laser beams occasionally shoot across the stage’. This time it seemed quite clear that many of the lighting effects indicated the multiple decades/years that are covered in Orlando. Throughout this act the dancers moved through some very clear geometrical patches of light as well as some cloudy, misty patches. And again the dancers seemed small, this time in relation to those clouds and shapes of light. Then as the act closes beams of light are projected into the auditorium. From a height they no longer blind the eyes but suggest clearly that we were now part of the ‘becoming’. Time has passed and reached ‘now’.

Nicoletta Manni and Timofej Andrijashenko in 'Becomings'. 2019. Photo: © Marco Brescia and Rudy Amisano, Teatro alla Scala — Nicoletta Manni and Timofej Andrijashenko in ‘Becomings’ from *Woolf Works*. 2019. Photo: © Marco Brescia and Rudy Amisano, Teatro alla Scala

Act 3, Tuesday, begins with a voice-over reading Virginia Woolf’s suicide note to her husband before she drowns herself in the River Ouse, her pockets filled with stones. The letter is dated Tuesday.

I have to admit that previously the choreography in this act seemed to me to be a little messy, apart from the very moving pas de deux that follows immediately after the voice-over. But, looking down on the movement patterns McGregor had created on the dancers, his intention with the choreography seemed clearer. I saw the many different variations that one might encounter in water—swirls, rips, eddies, gentle waves, tumultuous breakers, everything was there. There was no mess, just a myriad of watery patterns danced nicely by the corps de ballet of Teatro alla Scala with the participation of students from La Scala Academy.

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Not being familiar with the dancers of La Scala it is hard to make comments about specific dancers. But I recall Nicoletta Manni from her performances in Australia in 2018 and I enjoyed her dancing in act two. I was also impressed by Timofej Andrijashenko both in act one as Septimus, the World War I veteran who commits suicide, and in act 2 for some spectacular dancing. Ferri and Bonelli I have seen before in their roles as Clarissa and Peter and once again they gave exceptional performances.

In all, I loved seeing Woolf Works from a completely different position in the auditorium. It simply confirmed my opinion that Woolf Works is a ballet that I will never tire of seeing.

Michelle Potter, 23 April 2019

Featured image: Alessandra Ferri and Federico Bonelli in Tuesday from Woolf Works, 2019. Photo: © Marco Brescia and Rudy Amisano, Teatro alla Scala. This image is from the very moving pas de deux that opens the dancing in Tuesday