Alexandre Riabko in Nijinsky, 2016. Photo: Jeff Busby

Nijinsky. The Australian Ballet

7 September 2016, State Theatre, Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne

Alexandre Riabko, guesting with the Australian Ballet in the lead role on the opening night performance of John Neumeier’s Nijinsky, has been dancing that role since at least 2003 when Hamburg Ballet guested in Paris. He may well have danced it even earlier. At the work’s world premiere in Hamburg in 2000 he took the role of the dancer Nijinsky as Harlequin in Le Carnaval and the Spirit of the Rose in Le Spectre de la rose. Thus the ballet Nijinsky, and the role of Vaslav Nijinsky, have been part of his dancing life for more than fifteen years. And so it was not surprising, but nevertheless thrilling, that his performance throughout the ballet was exceptional. It was exceptional from his first commanding entrance and walk down the steps leading to the space where he was to dance, through to his dramatic finale, performed in the same space, albeit now an arena that contained signs of destruction, as indeed did Nijinsky’s state of mind. Riabko held the work together. It was a tour de force by a dancer who communicated with every inch of his body.

Those with whom Riabko shared the stage—characters representing Nijinsky’s family, especially his wife Romola; characters that Nijinsky danced during his career; dancers from Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe, including Tamara Karsavina and Leonide Massine; Diaghilev himself; soldiers and others representing war, against which Nijinsky was so opposed—had mixed success.

Leanne Stojmenov was a standout as Nijinsky’s sister, Bronislava Nijinska, especially in the Rite of Spring scene (of which sadly there seem to be no media images available, but see below for Stojmenov as the Young Woman in Jeux).

Leanne Stojmenov and Alexandre Riabko in Nijinsky. The Australian Ballet, 2016. Photo: © Jeff Busby

In the Rite of Spring scene, where Stojmenov played the Chosen Virgin, she danced as if there was no tomorrow, tossing her body into Neumeier’s demanding positions, flinging herself from side to side, hair in disarray. In fact this scene, with Riabko/Nijinsky standing on a chair shouting out instructions to the performers, is one of the most exciting of the evening. (To the Australian Ballet: oh please get access to the Pina Bausch Rite of Spring and put Stojmenov in the lead. She would be stunning).

I also thought that François-Eloi Lavignac was outstanding as Stanislav, Nijinsky’s brother. His small, compact but very flexible body perfectly suited Neumeier’s writhing movements. Stanislav’s death was a compelling scene.

Along with Lavignac and Stojmenov, I was also impressed by Cristano Martino as the dancer Nijinsky as the Faun in L’après-midi d’un faune, and the Golden Slave in Schéhérazade. His Golden Slave was slinky and strongly sexual. His Faun was beautifully controlled and conveyed an innate power.

Cristiano Martino as the Faun on 'Nijinsky'. The Australian Ballet, 2016. Photo: Jeff Busby — Cristiano Martino as the Faun in *Nijinsky*. The Australian Ballet, 2016. Photo: © Jeff Busby

As ever, however, I longed for so many of the others in the cast to have more artistry in their performance and, for the first time in my various encounters with this ballet, I felt as though Neumeier’s Nijinsky was too long and too slow in parts. I still get the feeling that the dancers of the Australian Ballet focus on steps, and Neumeier’s Nijinsky is not about steps. I was disappointed, for example, with Adam Bull’s portrayal of Diaghilev. Bull is an excellent dancer but I think of Diaghilev as an eccentric character and there was nothing eccentric about Bull’s interpretation. For me he was a ballet dancer pretending to be Diaghilev. Similarly with Amy Harris as Romola. I got no feeling for what kind of person she might have been.

I did enjoy the sets and costumes (concept by Neumeier) more in this viewing than previously, when I guess I was more focused on what was happening and who was who. Neumeier’s use of ‘attributes’ rather than detailed costuming to distinguish characters was aesthetically pleasing and the circles of light that occasionally appeared as part of a particular setting recalled Nijinsky’s fascinating circular drawings, some of which are part of Neumeier’s personal collection of Nijinsky memorabilia.

Alexandre Riabko in 'Nijinsky'. The Australian Ballet 2016. Photo: Jeff Busby — Alexandre Riabko in *Nijinsky*. The Australian Ballet, 2016. Photo: © Jeff Busby

Nijinsky is a thrilling work and I bow to Neumeier’s concept. But I hope that throughout the Australian Ballet season, as it continues in Melbourne, and then goes to Adelaide and Sydney, that stronger characterisations might emerge from more of the dancers.

Michelle Potter, 9 September 2016

Featured image: Alexandre Riabko in Nijinsky. The Australian Ballet 2016. Photo: © Jeff Busby

My review of Nijinsky with Hamburg Ballet in Brisbane in 2012 is at this link.

The diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky. Paul Cox’s ‘cinematic poem’.

The death earlier in June of film maker Paul Cox sent me in search of a DVD copy of his film The diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky. The backstory is that Cox heard actor Paul Schofield on British radio reading from Nijinsky’s diaries (cahiers), which were first released in 1936 after having been rearranged and edited dramatically by Nijinsky’s wife, Romola.1 From that moment Cox was smitten and wanted to make a film based on the diaries. The making was a drawn-out experience (it took three years),2 but the film was eventually completed in 2001 and released in 2002. Cox has referred to it as a ‘cinematic poem’: it is certainly far from a documentary in the commonly understood meaning of the term.

Nijinsky began writing down his thoughts as a kind of diary on the morning of his last public performance, which he gave at the Suvretta Hotel in St Moritz on 19 January 1919. He wrote his last entry on 4 March that same year, the day he was to go to Zurich to see the psychiatrist, Eugen Bleuler, who would decide that he was suffering from incurable schizophrenia and who would advise, among other things, that he be admitted to a sanatorium. There are three exercise books of writing and drawing, with the first two books containing sections of Nijinsky’s own form of dance notation. The fourth notebook contains several letters to family, friends and others. The three diary books are held by the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. The fourth book of letters is held in Paris by the Department of Music, Bibliothèque nationale.

I found Cox’s film (which I must admit I had never seen before) absolutely mesmerising. It is in many respects a collage of images that flash past us, some of which return hauntingly throughout the film. Sometimes they are photographs of Nijinsky in his well-known roles for the Ballets Russes, such as the image at the top if this post, which shows Nijinsky as Petrushka. Sometimes they are images from nature, with flowing water and birds, in particular a crane, appearing frequently. Cox also plays with light and shade and there are many fleeting, emotive moments where shadows flicker over walls, water, and natural features of the landscape. The images reflect Nijinsky’s words as they are written in the diaries and are spoken as a voice over by Derek Jacobi.

The film begins with a funeral procession, Nijinsky’s funeral. As the coffin and the mourning party move down a pathway we see ‘ghosts’ of Nijinsky hovering in the background and sometimes merging with the funeral procession. They are characters Nijinsky played in the ballets that made him the famous male dancer that he was—the Spirit of the Rose from Le spectre de la rose, the Golden Slave from Scheherazade, the Faune from L’Après-midi d’un faune, and so on. These characters appear, disappear and reappear throughout the film, slipping between the other images, always reminding us of Nijinsky’s remarkable dancing career.

The dancing components, like the characters who hover around the funeral procession, are interspersed seemingly randomly between the flow of non-dancing imagery. David McAllister and Vicki Attard appear as the two characters in Le Spectre de la rose, while dancers from Leigh Warren and Dancers take on most of the other dancing roles. I admired Aidan Kane Munn’s ‘War Dance’, which he choreographed as a tormented, quivering solo and danced blank-faced. This was the item Nijinsky chose to dance at Suvretta House: ‘Now I will dance you the war … the war which you did not prevent.’ It is described by Joan Acocella (following Romola Nijinsky’s description) as ‘a violent solo, presumably improvised’ and analysed by Ramsay Burt in relation to Nijinsky’s thoughts on war and peace.3 I also especially admired Csaba Buday’s performance as the Faune in a version of L’Après-midi d’un faune choreographed by Alida Chase and set outdoors in a clearing surrounded by trees and bushes. There was an animal-like awareness to Munn’s reactions as the Nymphs passed by, and his closing scene with the veil was gentle yet blatantly sexual.

There is a kind of narrative component to anchor the imagery and dancing. We meet Romola and her parents and the various doctors who examined Nijinsky, for example. But we never hear them speak, although their body language and facial expressions give us clues as to how the story and their thoughts about Nijinsky are unfolding. Their presence forces us to face the reality that is behind the film.

The diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky is a truly beautiful, painterly film. Like John Neumeier’s Nijinsky, which Hamburg Ballet performed in Australia in 2012, it is absolutely compelling and arouses so many thoughts about the nature of Nijinsky—the man and the dancer. But, in contrast to the Neumeier work, the Cox film is almost serene in its overall mood, despite some confronting and bloody images relating to Nijinsky’s vegetarianism, and the challenging words and ideas spoken forcefully by Jacobi. That I find the mood serene is is not to suggest, however, that Cox has not presented the drama and the confusion of thought that permeated Nijinsky’s life. It is just felt in a different manner. The film and the dance work complement each other in a very unusual way and, having at last seen the film, I look forward immensely to seeing the Neumeier work again when it is performed by the Australian Ballet later this year.

Michelle Potter, 25 June 2016

Featured image: Vaslav Nijinsky as Petrushka. Photographer and source unknown

1. Joan Acocella, in her introduction to the unexpurgated edition of the diaries, published in English in 1999 as The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky, explains in detail how Romola altered the diaries in that first publishing endeavour of 1936. In particular Acocella notes that around 40% of the contents of the diaries was omitted. Acocella’s introduction is, as is all her writing, lucid and informed: Joan Acocella (ed.), The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1999).

2. Philip Tyndall describes the development of the film saying that Cox ‘did much of the cinematography himself in addition to the writing, directing, co-producing and editing.’ Philip Tyndall, ‘The diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky. The culmination of a career.’ In Sense of Cinema. Issue 20, May 2002. Accessed 25 June 2016.

3. Ramsay Burt, ‘Alone in the world. Reflections on solos from 1919 by Vaslav Nijinsky and Mary Wigman’. In On Stage Alone. Soloists and the modern dance canon, eds Claudia Gitelman and Barbara Palfy (Gainesville FL: University of Florida Press, 2012).

Artist of the Australian Ballet in costume for 'Coppelia'. Photo: Justin Ridler

The Australian Ballet in 2016

Benedicte Bemet, 2015. Photo: Justin Ridler — Benedicte Bemet (left), Cristiano Martino (centre), and Jade Wood (right), 2015. Photos: © Justin Ridler

Cristiano Martino, 2015. Photo: Justin Ridler — Benedicte Bemet (left), Cristiano Martino (centre), and Jade Wood (right), 2015. Photos: © Justin Ridler

Mixed in with old faithfuls like Swan Lake and Coppélia, the Australian Ballet’s program for 2016 contains one or two works that we can anticipate with a bit of excitement. One of them is John Neumeier’s Nijinsky, which will be seen in Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney, although we will have to wait until the last few months of the year.

Nijinsky was created in 2000 for Neumeier’s Hamburg Ballet and was seen recently in Australia when Hamburg Ballet performed it in Brisbane in 2012. On that occasion it received a standing ovation on its opening night—and I mean a real standing ovation where the theatre rose as one. No stragglers, no people leaving to catch the subway before the rush, no one standing up because they couldn’t see what was happening because the person in the row in front was blocking their view. A proper standing ovation. Neumeier calls Nijinsky ‘a biography of the soul, of feelings, emotions, and of states of mind’. It needs wonderful dancing, and fabulous acting. My fingers are crossed. Here is what I wrote about it from Brisbane.

Another program that fills me with anticipation is a triple bill called Vitesse presenting works by Christopher Wheeldon (DGV: Danse à grande vitesse), Jiri Kylian (Forgotten Land) and William Forsythe (In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated). It is scheduled for the early part of the year and will be seen in Melbourne and Sydney.

Forgotten Land and In the Middle are not new to the Australian Ballet repertoire having been introduced during Maina Gielgud’s artistic directorship. I remember watching people leave the auditorium after the opening sounds of Thom Willems score for In the Middle (it was 20 years ago), but it showed off certain dancers of that era absolutely brilliantly. But the Wheeldon is new to Australia. It is a work for 26 dancers with four pairs of dancers at the heart of the work. It shows in particular Wheeldon’s skill at creating pas de deux. In the Royal Ballet program notes from its showing in 2011, Roslyn Sulcas writes of Wheeldon that ‘[He]—like his ballets—is both traditional and innovative, able to inhabit an older world while moving firmly forward towards the new.’ Here is what I wrote after seeing it, on a very different mixed bill program, in London in 2011.

Then I await Stanton Welch’s Romeo and Juliet, exclusive to Melbourne in June and July, with anticipation mixed with trepidation. I was not a fan of his Bayadère, although I have loved some of his shorter works. But the word is that his R & J is ‘quite good’. Fingers crossed again.

Dancers of Houston Ballet in Stanton Welch's 'Romeo and Juliet'. Photo Amitava Sarkar — Dancers of Houston Ballet in Stanton Welch’s *Romeo and Juliet*. Photo: © Sarkar

As for the rest of the year, Brisbane will get Ratmansky’s Cinderella in February; Stephen Baynes’ Swan Lake returns with seasons in Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne; a program called Symphony in C will run concurrently in Sydney with the Vitesse program, although it is not exactly clear as yet of what the Symphony in C program will consist; and Coppélia will be in Sydney and Melbourne towards the end of the year. I think this is the Peggy van Praagh/George Ogilvie production from 1979, but the media release is a little confusing. ‘Having first revisited Coppélia in 1979, the great choreographer re-invigorated it thirty years later with this joyful and sumptuous production.’ Who is that great choreographer? Not PVP who was not really the choreographer and who died anyway in 1990.

And for my Canberra readers, we won’t be seeing the Australian Ballet in 2016 in the national capital where we too pay taxes.

Michelle Potter, 23 September 2015

Featured image: Dancer of the Australian Ballet in costume for Coppélia, 2015 (detail). Photo: © Justin Ridler

Full details of the 2016 season are on the Australian Ballet’s website.

Scene from iTMOi, © Jean-Louis Fernandez 2013

iTMOi [in the mind of Igor]. Akram Khan Company

30 August, Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House

I went to the theatre to see this show with a somewhat petulant review from a well-known English critic in my mind. ‘Impertinent’ he wrote (amongst other things), referring in this case to the use of Igor Stravinsky’s first name in the expanded title. Well I found iTMOi, despite its odd title, a fascinating show. Did I understand what was going on? Not completely. But then that was part of the show’s appeal. It generated a conversation with my companion, which went on for some time. Was it an example of that dreaded concept, postmodern? Did it relate to French literary theory? And so on.

The work, choreographed by Akram Khan and danced by his company, is in celebration of Igor Stravinsky and the centenary of his ground breaking composition, The Rite of Spring. Khan sets out, somewhat ambitiously, to investigate Stravinsky’s transformative approach to musical composition. But iTMOi also had, at least in my mind, more than one reference to the Nijinsky ballet created to the Stravinsky score. One dancer, small and vulnerable, is ‘chosen’ to bear the torment of the other dancers when a woman in a crinoline with a top that exposes her breasts throws white dust in her hair.

The work opens with the sonorous sound of a bell ringing over and over and a preacher of sorts shouting, or perhaps ranting is a better word, about the biblical story of Abraham, Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac, and the intervention by which Abraham’s god provides a ram in a bush as a replacement sacrificial body. ‘And the angel of the Lord came down’, the preacher shouts. (It took me a while to work out, I have to admit, that the dancer dressed as a horned beast who dragged himself across the stage at various intervals was probably the ram in the bush). From there we were bombarded with a score that went from sounding at times like a gramophone needle stuck in the groove of a vinyl record to being a variation on the religious prayer, kyrie eleison, not to mention the inclusion of what seemed like the ‘beep’ of a truck reversing. The score is the work of three composers, Nitin Sawhney, Jocelyn Pook and Ben Frost.

The dancing by Khan’s company was stupendous. Sometimes they looked like whirling dervishes. Sometimes they were totally idiosyncratic, as was the case with a male dancer wearing a hooped skirt who turned variations on a cart-wheel and balanced on his hands while transforming his feet into an expressive instrument. But the dancers were always powerful movers as they stamped, twisted, turned and threw themselves around the stage. The show was visually mesmerising as well with its strong lighting design and frequent use of shadow play.

Michel Foucault once wrote: ‘One day, perhaps, we will no longer know what madness was…All that we experience today as limits, or strangeness, or the intolerable, will have joined the serenity of the positive.’ And was that Foucault’s pendulum (the other Foucault that is) swinging back and forth as the work closed? Dance doesn’t usually offer the opportunity to wonder and ponder to the extent that was offered by iTMOi. I’m glad that all dance is not like iTMOi, but it was an exceptional experience to have seen it.

Michelle Potter, 5 September 2013

Featured image: Scene from iTMOi. Photo: © Jean-Louis Fernandez 2013

Sacre—The Rite of Spring. Raimund Hoghe

5 January 2013, Carriageworks, Eveleigh (Sydney), Sydney Festival 2013

The year 2013 is the centenary of the first performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, which Vaslav Nijinsky choreographed for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and which received a riotous reception on its opening night. The story of that night has passed into legend and, as Raimund Hoghe’s Sacre began, a voice-over recounted that tale. We were not told whose words they were but I have assumed they were those of Stravinsky recalling the evening.

But Hoghe’s production is about as far removed from what we have come to know as Sacre as you could imagine, and since 1913 countless choreographers have tried their hand at making their own version. First, the music for Hoghe’s production was a two piano score, played live. While this was pleasurable to listen to, it was an odd experience because orchestral colour is a large part of what makes those other danced versions of Sacre that audiences have seen over the years so powerful, so full of tension, so theatrical, so dramatic—the Joffrey reconstruction, the Pina Bausch version, Maurice Béjart’s production as danced by Tokyo Ballet, Stephen Page’s Rites and Meryl Tankard’s Oracle are the ones I have seen onstage.

Secondly, the work was choreographically extremely limited. Danced by Hoghe, who is small, middle-aged and has a deformed spine, and the much younger, athletic Lorenzo De Brabandere, it consisted of the two dancers balancing against each other, running (De Brabandere sometimes full pelt, Hoghe usually with jerky, stilted movements reflecting his disability), facing each other and looking hard into each other’s eyes, and performing similarly uncomplicated, often repeated movements. No drama or tension there either.

Raimund Hoghe and Lorenzo de Brabandere in *Sacre. The Rite of Spring*, Sydney 2013. Photo: © Rosa-Frank.com

Perhaps the clue to this work comes in the final moment when the voice-over returns (and this time we were told the words are those of Stravinsky). Stravinsky recalls that when writing the work he was not constrained by any theory and he further recalls that a neighbour remembered that while he, Stravinsky, was writing a young boy used to stand outside, listening. The boy kept saying ‘That’s wrong’. Stravinsky’s answer was ‘Wrong for him’.

It is Hoghe’s right to produce a Sacre that has nothing of what we have come to expect. No-one expected Nijinsky’s choreography either. But what I found most interesting as I sat watching this show was Hoghe’s body in performance. It was intriguing to see how his disability affected his centre of balance, or how he compensated physically for the lack of a centred spine as he performed the moves he did. But this is not why I go to the theatre. I longed for a moment of drama, a bit of tension, even some choreography, no matter how simple, that reflected something of the rhythms of the music, which were of course still obvious in the two piano score. There was one moment that jolted me out of a soporific state and that was when, after leaning over a dish of water, De Brabandere suddenly splashed water into Hoghe’s face. But one splash wasn’t enough to compensate.

Michelle Potter, 6 January 2013

Nijinsky. Hamburg Ballet

26 August 2012, Playhouse, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane

John Neumeier’s Nijinsky is an unusual work and defies easy categorisation. It is neither an abstract nor a narrative work. It’s more like a series of pictures that unfold throughout the work, building to a huge climax in the second part. Those pictures represent random events in the life of Vaslav Nijinsky and are really a series of flashbacks presented to reflect his diagnosed schizophrenic condition. They begin as he prepares to give his final dance performance—a Red Cross benefit show at the Hotel Suvretta in Saint-Moritz, Switzerland.* Neumeier uses this flashback technique to explore many different facets of Nijinsky’s life. We encounter him as a brother and a son, a dancer, a lover, a choreographer, a husband, and we are given impressions of the emotional states that accompany those roles in his life. Not only are these flashbacks random pictures, they also push us headlong into a maelstrom as they combine together, out of historical and any logical sequence and in a surreal fashion. Neumeier calls it a ‘biography of the soul’.

Alexandre Riabko, Anna Polikarpova and Otto Bubenicek in Nijinsky, Hamburg Ballet. Photo: © Holger Badekow

There are some thrilling moments of dancing. The trio between Nijinsky’s wife, Romola (Anna Polikarpova), Nijinsky (Alexandre Riabko) and Nijinsky as the seductive Faun (Otto Bubenicek), in which Neumeier explores facets of love and desire and life and art, is one such moment. The trio between Diaghilev, Nijinsky and another young dancer, where we see the destructive power of Diaghilev, is another. But for me the most powerful moments come in the second part of the work, when Nijinsky feels attacked from all sides—his schizophrenia is a reality, the Great War begins, his brother Stanislaw dies, Massine takes his place in Diaghilev’s life and activities and Romola has a liaison with his doctor. The pressure is relentless and we can feel it in so many ways. We see it when Nijinsky stands on a chair shouting out counts, as history tells us he did when his dancers struggled with Stravinsky’s music for Rite of Spring. We see it in the figure of Petrouchka (Lloyd Riggins), pale, wan and squashed emotionally as the drama continues around him. There is a remarkable performance from Aleix Martinez as Stanislaw, the brother, who dies as figures in military dress throw themselves about the stage. And how horrifying are those raucous moments when the dancers, still dressed as figures at war, humiliate Nijinsky as he struggles to cope with his world.

I wonder, however, how easy it was for the audience to understand on occasions who was who and what was happening. It does make a difference to one’s perception of the overall work to know something of Nijinsky’s choreography, and that of his sister Bronislava. There were many times when poses (albeit very well-known poses), from Jeux and Les noces for example, set the work in a particular context. Similarly costumes and props often gave significant clues. Nijinsky is clearly one of those ‘giving’ works that means more each time one sees it; but then not everyone has those opportunities. Neumeier knows his subject well and in fact has a large personal collection of Nijinsky memorabilia and other documentation.** But does he expect the audience to have the same in depth knowledge? Does it matter that not everyone has the same understanding of Nijinsky’s world?

Nijinsky had the audience on its feet at the end of its first performance in Brisbane. It is rare, I believe, for an Australian audience to rise as one and give a standing ovation and I can remember only one other occasion in Australia when I have thought that I was witnessing, and was part of, a ‘real’ standing ovation rather than one that’s a bit like a reverse fall of dominoes—if you want to see the curtain calls you have to stand up because the person in front is blocking your view. Nijinsky is sometimes hard to follow. I was confused at times and it wasn’t my first viewing.*** But the quality of the production, especially its visual strength, some fine performances, and the absolutely compelling manner in which the work surges forward and then concludes by returning to its beginnings in the Hotel Suvretta, generates in the audience an equally compelling desire to stand up and cheer. I did.

Michelle Potter, 28 August 2012

NOTES

*Ramsay Burt has an interesting essay ‘Alone into the world: reflections on solos from 1919 by Vaslav Nijinsky and Mary Wigman’ in the recent publication On stage alone, which I reviewed earlier this month. Burt looks, amongst other things, at the Suvretta performance in the context of Nijinsky’s philosophical opposition to war.

**John Neumeier has an extended essay on his collection and his fascination with Nijinsky in the catalogue that accompanied the major exhibition Nijinsky (1889–1950) at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris in 2000–2001. The catalogue also contains images and information about many of the Nijinsky items owned by Neumeier. See Martine Kahane, Nijinsky 1889–1950 (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 2000).

***Nijinsky had its premiere in Hamburg in 2000. I was lucky enough to catch it in 2002 when Hamburg Ballet was guesting in Paris. Looking back at that 2002 program it was interesting to see that some roles were, in 2012, still being danced by those who performed them in 2002.

On stage alone. Claudia Gitelman and Barbara Palfy (eds)

I clearly remember the first live performance I saw when the concept of ‘solo dancer’ made a strong impact on me. In the 1980s some time Susanne Linke made a tour of Australia. I remember two works in particular: one, whose name I don’t recall, involved Linke moving slowly and agonisingly across the stage following a strip of bright, white light on the floor. The other was the well-known Im Bade wannen in which Linke danced with, in and around a bath tub. The show was a revelation.

A recent book, On stage alone: soloists and the modern dance canon, recalled my Linke experience and reminded me of the many other solo dancers whose work I have encountered since. After reading the book I was also reminded of the many solo performers whose work I haven’t yet encountered!On stage alone: soloists and the modern dance canon is a collection of essays in which the solo dancer, male and female, is considered for the role he or she may play in shaping culture. Even though there are many acclaimed solo performers who do not appear in the book, to its credit On stage alone is broad in its scope. As Claudia Gitelman notes in her introduction, the book ‘presents an international roster of male and female soloists who worked from the late nineteenth century into the twenty first, and who offer arguments about what it means to be modern’.

We encounter some of the better-known, older exponents of the form. Julie Malnig gives an account of Maud Allan’s exploits, for example, and concludes that ‘In an age of clashing, if not confused, visions of women, Allan’s solo performances marked her as an icon of a newly expressive mode of female sexuality’. And with his usual strong theoretical insight, Ramsay Burt expounds on Vaslav Nijinsky and Mary Wigman and considers the challenging and uncomfortable nature of solo performances given by these two dancers in 1919. ‘Their solos enacted a modernist critique of dominant ideologies of freedom and individuality and, by so doing, stressed a fracture in the symbolic order’, he writes.

But there are also a number of chapters on more recent dancers whose main form of expression is the solo: a chapter on Daniel Nagrin by Deborah Jowitt, for example. Jowitt’s writing has an immediacy that is missing from some of the other essays. She has such a practised eye when it comes to analysing performance and she enables the reader to visualise Nagrin’s dancerly qualities: ‘…his lightest steps were precise in the way they struck the floor, brushed it, or skittered over it. He managed his strength like a tiger, able to move from stillness into an explosion of energy’. Jowitt also strategically places Nagrin within the wider context of modern dance in America, especially within the context of society’s attitudes to the male dancer.

I enjoyed Janice Ross’ essay on Ann Carlson, whose dances with animals I have never seen. Ross made me hanker to do so. Carlson’s performances with a cow or a kitten or a goldfish in a bowl, generate a range of gender and identity issues and contain a wealth of ‘hidden narratives’. Ross examines four works in detail and concludes that Carlson’s solos with animals ‘are tender but compelling reminders of how the act of performing fractures but also reunites us, affording the solitary dancer the possibility of never really dancing alone’.

Other solo performers whose work is highlighted in On stage alone include the Japanese-American Michio Ito, the Brazilian Eros Volúsia and a number of solo artists working in Central Europe in the early part of the twentieth century, including Mata Hari, Olga Desmond and Niddy Impekoven.

The authors address a range of theoretical issues, to which Gitelman alludes briefly in her introduction: gender identity, the notion of the modern body, national and racial differences and others and the book groups essays according to the overarching theoretical and research approach of each. But what I missed in the book was a chapter on the art of solo performance itself, if such an analysis is possible in one chapter. Gitelman’s introduction sums up the content of the book, but it is not an analysis of the form. Nevertheless, On stage alone is a welcome addition to dance literature and opens up the field for further investigation.

Michelle Potter, 3 August 2012

Claudia Gitelman and Barbara Palfy (eds), On stage alone: soloists and the modern dance canon (Gainseville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2012)
Hardback, 213 pp. ISBN 978-0-8130-4025-7

RRP: USD 39.95. Available through many online sites.

Anatomy of an Afternoon. Martin del Amo

14 January 2012, Playhouse, Sydney Opera House, Sydney Festival 2012

The one certainty that emerges from Martin del Amo’s latest work, Anatomy of an Afternoon, is that Paul White, the solo performer in the piece, is a very versatile dancer. Some aspects of his dancing remain constant no matter what the choreography―his muscular strength, his control over every small or large movement and the seamless fluidity with which he links steps, for example. They were clearly on show in this Sydney Festival production.

Anatomy of an Afternoon, however, required that White behave like an animal, or various animals to be exact, and to achieve the best outcome he apparently spent some time at the zoo observing animal behaviour. Well a variety of animal characteristics were certainly in evidence. From the point of view of White’s movement capabilities, mesmerising were those sections when his movements resembled those of a monkey. At one stage, with his back to the audience, his body over folded over, his head twisted to look out at the audience and the palms of his hands on the floor he appeared to be jointless as he loped from side to side in this seemingly impossible position on all fours.

But to tell the truth if I want to see a monkey I’d rather go to the zoo. And I certainly could have done without the moment when White exposed his buttocks to the audience, spread the cheeks apart and put one hand into the crevice that was thus revealed, drew the hand out and moved it towards his nose. Again, if I have burning desire to see such actions, the zoo is a better proposition. White is capable of more than this and deserves, in my opinion, superior choreography (even though he is jointly credited with the choreography on this occasion).

Anatomy of an Afternoon is explained in program notes as an investigation of ‘how the practical exploration of an extant choreography would affect [del Amo] as a choreographer creating original work’. Del Amo chose Vaslav Nijinsky’s 1912 creation Afternoon of a Faun as his ‘extant choreography’. However, attempts to draw parallels between the two works are futile I think. In fact all that Anatomy of an Afternoon does, to its own detriment, is show just what a coherent work Afternoon of a Faun was. The outrage of Parisian audiences and critics when Faun made its first appearance in Paris and when, in the closing moments, its interpreter, Nijinsky, sank onto a scarf in a moment of erotic pleasure, was I think more to do with the morals of the time than anything else. But despite the outrage and shock, Nijinsky’s erotic act was actually the culmination of the Faun’s previous flirtatious activities with the seven nymphs who completed the cast of characters in Faun. The Faun had taken the scarf from the nymph to whom he was most attracted. The erotic culmination to the work was not a gratuitous action.

Unlike the audiences of Paris in the 1920s, today’s audiences are pretty much unshockable and a different set of freedoms is in play. But I believe that today’s most watchable dance works have a certain coherence which, in its randomness of action and its various gratuitous events, Anatomy of an Afternoon lacked. I did, however, enjoy the original score by Mark Bradshaw. It had the languid quality of a summer’s day.

Michelle Potter, 15 January 2012

Vicki Attard. A new role

It was a real pleasure catching up, if only by email, with Vicki Attard, former and much admired principal of the Australian Ballet during the 1990s. Vicki was in Canberra over the past weekend to give master classes at the Canberra Dance Development Centre.

Below is the text of a Canberra Times article I wrote, which was published on 9 November. It was accompanied by a great image, shot by Canberra-based photographer Ross Gould, of Vicki in what became a signature role, that of Cio Cio San in Stanton Welch’s Madame Butterfly, which can be accessed on the National Library’s website.

Vicki Attard was one of Australia’s favourite ballerinas during the 1990s. As a principal artist with the Australia Ballet throughout that decade she danced leading roles in all the best known classics as well as creating roles in contemporary works. She travelled widely with the company and counts amongst the highlights of her performing career dancing the leading role of Kitri in Don Quixote on the opening night of an Australian Ballet season in Washington DC and the title role in Manon in Tokyo, also on opening night.

Fans of the film maker Paul Cox may remember her in Cox’s film The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky. Attard was the girl returning from a ball who dances with the spirit of a rose in the short work entitled Le Spectre de la rose. Spectre was first performed in 1911 with Vaslav Nijinsky dancing the Rose. Attard, who was partnered by David McAllister in the film, cannot speak highly enough of Cox.’Paul Cox was so easy to work with’, she says. ‘He has an incredible respect for artists and he is a remarkable one himself.’

Attard also spent a year performing with Sydney Dance Company in 1989. Memorably she danced the role of Chloe in Graeme Muphy’s Daphnis and Chloe. She seemed especially suited to Murphy’s choreography and later, on rejoining the Australian Ballet, danced the leading role of Clara the Ballerina in Nutcracker, again partnered by McAllister, with whom she enjoyed an exceptional artistic partnership throughout her career.

But Attard may well be best known for her performances as Cio Cio San in Stanton Welch’s production of Madame Butterfly, a role she created with the Australian Ballet in 1995. The delicacy of her performance left a lasting impression on those who saw her in this role. Attard has since staged Butterfly around the world for Welch, including in Canada for the National Ballet of Canada, in Atlanta for Atlanta Ballet, in Boston for Boston Ballet and in even in Houston for Houston Ballet where Welch is currently artistic director. Most recently she assisted Welch in reviving the work for the Australian Ballet in 2010.

After she retired from performing Attard gained a graduate diploma in dance instruction and has been teaching in a freelance capacity since then. She now heads up a special program at Academy Ballet in Sydney for students aiming for a professional career.

‘It is s small group of just eight students’, she says. ‘It’s very personal and I love working in this way. The young dancers respond beautifully to this way of working.’

Attard will be in Canberra on November 13 to conduct master classes for the Canberra Dance Development Centre. It is the final session in the school’s master class series, a program master-minded by the school’s principal, Jackie Hallahan. Attard knows that it is not so easy for east coast students in centres outside Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to have access to the kinds of experiences available in larger centres.

‘I love the idea of sharing the knowledge that took me so many years to accumulate—the hard way’, she says. ‘I very much enjoy teaching in centres where students don’t have access to all that students in bigger cities might have. I grew up in a small town called Mackay in North Queensland, so I remember what it was like.’

Attard will bring her exceptional professional experience to Canberra for this workshop series. Not only does she have sound dance knowledge and her own incomparable artistry to share, she has recently launched a program called My Pointe. She realised that it was not always possible for dance teachers to spend as much time as was needed on the specialised teaching of pointe work for girls and so began to develop a series of tutorial exercises for this very purpose. After 10 years of fine tuning My Pointe was released on DVD with an introductory section by Attard and demonstrations of the exercises by two students.

Attard has two young sons, George aged eight and Nick almost six, who keep her busy.

‘I used to think that a dance life was hard,’ she says, ‘but motherhood, plus working almost full time, rivals it.’ But despite the claims of motherhood, Attard has carved a new niche for herself in the Australian dance world and she is more than delighted to be sharing her knowledge with the Canberra community.

Michelle Potter, 14 November 2011

Dance diary. September 2011

Publication news

In September The Canberra Times published my preview of the Australian Ballet’s 2012 season, a review of the recent book The Ballets Russes in Australia and Beyond under the title ‘Dancing round a few home truths’, and my review of Graeme Murphy’s new take on Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet has certainly sparked some discussion and the amount of traffic that the extended review has generated over this website has been quite astonishing. It has more than quadrupled the previous record of visits to any one post. The suggestion that this Romeo and Juliet is just not a profound work has been made, not only in published comments but also in other communications to me. But whatever we think, it appears to be selling remarkably well and it will be interesting to see what Sydney audiences make of it when it opens there in December.

Editing and design began in September on an article of mine to be published in the December issue of The National Library Magazine. This article looks at the ballet designs of Arthur Boyd for Robert Helpmann’s Elektra, and those of Sidney Nolan for Kenneth MacMillan’s Rite of Spring. Both ballets were given their premieres by the Royal Ballet in London in the early 1960s. We’ve never seen the MacMillan Rite of Spring here in Australia, but Elektra was staged by the Australian Ballet in 1966 when there were some interesting changes to Boyd’s designs, which in fact had already undergone changes before they even made it to the Covent Garden stage.

joseph-janusaitis — Joseph Janusaitis in make-up for *Elektra*, the Australian Ballet, 1966. Photo by Walter Stringer. National Library of Australia

Nijinsky’s costume for Le Dieu bleu

While the Romeo and Juliet post has attracted instant interest, the post from late last year on Nijinsky’s costume for the Blue God quietly continues to generate visits. I was recently contacted by author Denise Heywood, whose book Cambodian dance: celebration of the gods was published in 2008 in Bangkok by River Books. The book is an interesting examination of the history of Cambodian dance and reproduces some remarkable photographs from across many decades. Denise suggests in her recent communication with me that it is not just the costume has links to the Khmer culture, as I suggested in the post, but the choreography for the ballet Le Dieu bleu must surely also have been influenced by Khmer dance, especially the ‘slow, statuesque movements’.

The Royal New Zealand Ballet

The Royal New Zealand Ballet has just announced its 2012 season, its first full year under the directorship of Ethan Stiefel. Stiefel will begin the year in February with a very American program entitled NYC, ‘New Young Classic’ (although the other meaning of that acronym is in there too). NYC will feature works by Larry Keigwin, Benjamin Millepied and George Balanchine. Keigwin has a big following in New York and he will create a new work on the dancers of RNZB. Millepied is now probably best known for his contribution to The Black Swan, but he has been making dances for several years for a range of high profile companies including New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre and the Paris Opera Ballet. RNZB will dance Millepied’s 28 Variations on a Theme by Paganini (2005). The program will also include Who Cares?, Balanchine’s popular and beautifully polished work set to songs by George Gershwin.

Later in the year RNZB will restage its production of Christopher Hampson’s Cinderella and in November Gillian Murphy will take the lead role in a new staging of Giselle to be co-produced by Stiefel and that exceptional interpreter of the role of Albrecht, Johann Kobborg.

tonia-looker-2012-giselle-h-photo-ross-brown1 — Tonia Looker in a study for *Giselle* 2012. Photo: © Ross Brown. Courtesy Royal New Zealand Ballet

Memory lane

Canberra is currently in the middle of Floriade, its annual celebration of spring (although the weather is decidedly cold). I have never forgotten a remarkable Floriade, the only one I have ever attended I have to admit, back in 1990. The Meryl Tankard Company was then Canberra’s resident dance company and Tankard staged Court of Flora outdoors against the backdrop of Commonwealth Gardens.

Inspired by the engravings in J. J. Grandville’s book, Les Fleurs animées first published in 1847, Court of Flora was given eleven performances in October 1990. Its spectacular costumes, designed by Sydney-based couturier Anthony Phillips, drew sighs of delight from audiences. So too did the ability of Tankard’s dancers to pose decoratively behind bushes and around trees while at the same time investing the flowers that they represented with clearly discernible human qualities, as indeed Grandville had done with his illustrations. In particular, an impish Paige Gordon as Thistle and an elegant Carmela Care as Rose still remain in the mind’s eye.

The Little Mermaid

I continue to be confounded by Rex Reid’s Little Mermaid, the version he made for Laurel Martyn’s Victorian Ballet Company in 1967. All sources seem to indicate that it opened as part of a mixed bill on 1 September 1967, but reviews seem to have appeared in Melbourne papers on the same day, 1 September. There is probably a simple explanation—perhaps there was a preview before 1 September to which reviewers were invited? But if anyone was there and can assure me that it did open on 1 September, despite reviews appearing on the same day, I would be thrilled to hear.

Site news

Traffic across the site during September increased by over 20% compared with August, due largely to the exceptional interest in Romeo and Juliet. The review attracted a large number of visits, more than any other post in the two year history of the site. Not surprisingly visits from Melbourne topped the list. Other Australian cities generating significant numbers of visits during September were, in order, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane and Adelaide.

Some small updates will be made to the site in the next few weeks. On the home page I am having a link to the full tag cloud inserted under the list of top 20 tags. This will facilitate searching from the home page.

I am also having two new sub-pages added to the Resource page. One will be for National Library of Australia articles and will allow me to separate articles written for National Library of Australia News/The National Library Magazine from other online publications. The second will be for articles written for theatre programs.

Michelle Potter, 1 October 2011