Beyond Bach
Music
Johann
Sebastian Bach
Choreography
Stephen Baynes
Sets
Andrew Carter
Costumes
Anna French
Lighting
Kenneth Rayner
Dancers
Darcey Bussell
Jonathan Cope
Marianela Nunez
Inaki Urlezaga
others
The Leaves
Are Fading
Music
Antonin Dvorak
Choreography
Antony Tudor
Sets
Ming Cho Lee
Costumes
Patricia Zipprodt
Lighting
Jennifer Tipton
Dancers
Genesia Rosato
Tamara Rojo
Samantha Raine
Marianela Nunez
Chloe Davies
Mara Galeazzi
Gillian Revie
Laura Morera
Leanne Benjamin
Martin Harvey
Ricardo Cervera
Nathan Coppen
Johan Persson
Johannes Stepanek
Alina Cojocaru
Johan Kobborg
Marguerite
and Armand
Music
Franz Liszt
Choreography
Frederick Ashton
Designs
Cecil Beaton
Lighting
John B. Read
Dancers
Sylvie Guillem
Nicolas Le Riche
others
|
Memories
Royal Opera House
Covent Garden
26 Jan - 9 Feb 2002
When Ross Stretton was appointed director of the Royal Ballet he had a reputation for encouraging young choreographers in his native Australia, and it was hoped that he would also promote new work in London. Now, after presenting several old-fashioned story ballets in the last six months, his company begins a new program with "Beyond Bach," a 1995 work by the Australian choreographer Stephen Baynes.
The ballet is the first piece of a mixed bill called Memories. Try to forget that title, which represents an attempt to impose thematic or intellectual unity on three very different works. Beyond Bach comes with its own well-thought-out premise, though; as the program explains, Baynes wants to connect the musical forms Bach used with courtly dances out of which classical ballet began, thus showing how structure allows "freedom and expression." This is, of course, one of ballet's great, timeless, lessons, and with the "Beyond" of his title, along with his stage set (a columned hall leading to an otherworldly expanse), Baynes suggests that formalism's gifts are spiritual as well as liberating. Yet the still, overtly meaningful moments of Beyond Bach, in which dancers turn toward a source of light, their arms open, or look upward, seem empty and inert rather than free or mystical. Perhaps this is because the choreography never goes "beyond" anything: it stays squarely, safely, and fairly repetitively within the basic structures Baynes mentions. A ballet like Balanchine's Concerto Barocco, also set to Bach but without Beyond's sense of history or spiritualism, shows that balletic formalism can respond to music with unexpected emphases and syncopations, making respectful but clever conversation rather than operating in cautious mimicry. Baynes's choreography seems too unsure to tease and test what simple steps might become. Even when moving quickly, Beyond Bach gives its dancers too little to do.
The Leaves Are Fading, however, gives its dancers almost too much. The revival of this Antony Tudor ballet is the real cause for celebration on the Royal's current program. Tudor taught audiences that a ballet could be compelling drama even without a specific plot, and in 1975 he choreographed Leaves for Gelsey Kirkland and American Ballet Theatre. Set to Dvorak's chamber music, the ballet is built around four pas de deux, each of which explore a different kind of romantic love. With no more obvious scheme than that, Tudor stages convincing dance evocations of just about every emotion lovers might have. His long phrases blend one combination to another with an almost imperceptible sense of momentum, so that each pause or climax, large or small, has its own distinctive, unobtrusive meaning. His lifts are characteristically inventive and often breathtaking – a woman floats up and backwards in a reversed leap; another moves, in the air, from a crouch to a legs-wide soar to an entwined embrace – but fit seamlessly into larger lyrical patterns. The Royal Ballet dancers fill every inch of this lush choreography; at moments, their fervor is almost excessive – but not quite, and it brings the thrill of risk rewarded. Leanne Benjamin and Johan Kobborg are especially excellent. But the center of The Leaves Are Fading is Alina Cojocaru, whose assured, voluptuous technique plumbs a greater depth of expression with every step. Cojocaru uses her amazingly pliant back, open shoulders, and long neck to discover and project emotion; her suspended extensions are never over-indulgent; and her confident off-and-on-balance pointe work reinforces the drama of alternating submission and independence in her pas de deux. It is wonderful to watch this choreography and this dancer discover each other.
Despite Cojocaru's triumph, the supposed vehicle of Memories is the program's last piece, Marguerite and Armand. After the exuberance and possibility of Leaves, this final work seems merely a curiosity. Frederick Ashton created it for the partnership of Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn, already legendary by Marguerite's first performance in 1963. Set to Liszt, the ballet shows episodes in the romance of La dame aux camélias and her lover, ending with her early death. Ashton's choreography avoided the problem of Fonteyn's aging, faltering technique by creating a role as much acted as danced. Marguerite and Armand is therefore necessarily melodramatic, and the current Marguerite, Sylvie Guillem, faces the difficulty of creating feeling in the role without becoming mannered or ridiculous. Guillem's acting is believable and consistent, and her technique needs no excuse, but the recreation of this ballet still feels anachronistic; it seems an exhibit rather than a work with fresh things to say. Memories shows that a ballet's sense of novelty does not depend on its age – whether nearly forty, like Marguerite and Armand, or barely seven, like Beyond Bach. It depends on the ever-fresh excitement of excellent dancers in choreography worthy of their talents – the excitement that The Leaves are Fading provides.
Siobhan Peiffer
|
