The works in Margaret Emsley new show “The Light Gets In” initially appear to be large scale photographs of slightly wilted plants. Closer inspection might suggest they are actually photographs of creations made of fabric or paper designed to look like withered blooms.
They are in fact drawing made with charcoal and pencil, rendering the flowers in realistic detail. Some are in the traditional botanical format of pencil line on white paper while others are more intriguingly on black paper. The works on the black paper make obvious the artist’s interest, suggested in the title of the show “The Light gets In” in the way in which light creates the volumes, shapes and subtlety of objects. It is light which is at the core of the way the artist depicts her objects.
She displays an exactitude of description replicating the photographic image, not only in the surface of the petals but also the areas where the photograph is out of fucus and these are rendered in an almost abstract manner.
She says of the process she uses that “the medium provides the ideal tool to explore the tension that is created between the opposing forces of light and darkness as well as the interior and external self.”
In many ways the works reference the Dutch still life artists of the seventeenth century where a single flower could represent reproduction or decay, purity or promiscuity, love or hardship.
Many of the works titles indicate a similar metaphorical approach with works such as “Optimism” ($400) or “Serenity” ($400). Others relate to particular events or activities as with “Flamenco” ($4000) or Shooting Star” ($2200).
The artist has attempted to capture something of the essence of change from full bloom through to withered final state and she notes that she is observing not just the beauty of the flower but also but also the transformation which “ through its brief lifespan reveals the inevitable, inescapable process of change”.
The petals of “Flamenco” spread out, reminiscent of the flaring skirts of a flamenco dancer, expressing the exoticism and energy of the dancer, the deep folds also hinting at mystery and allure.
While “Flamenco” references the skirt of the dancer “Bailaora” ($2200) (which is a Spanish term for a flamenco dancer) with its upright “posed” flower suggest a proud, erect dancer.
Margaret Elmsley, Shooting Star
“Shooting Star” which looks more like an exotic marine creature depicts a bloom which has been affected by the elements as well as looking like an erupting sun, the tendrils of the flower like solar flares.
Several of the works which the artist has depicted past their prime also look as though they are diseased, they become momenta mori, symbolic reminder impermanence of human life and the inevitability of death.
Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust has just opened Moana Waiwai, Moana Pāti, which brings together work by nine artists who produced work during the 2020-2021 Covid-19 lockdowns.
The works in the exhibitionare by Salvador Brown, Melissa Gilbert, Lyncia Müller, Tuāfale Tanoa’i AKA Linda T, Ashleigh Taupaki, Jasmine Tuiā, Christopher Ulutupu, Tyla Vaeau and Jaimie Waititi. They include film, digital image-making, painting, tatau, poetic prose, sonic landscapes and performance.
Curated by Nigel Borell, who produced the block buster contemporary Maori art show Toi Tu Toi Ora at the Auckland Art Gallery says the title of this exhibition Moana Waiwai, Moana Pāti, can be poetically translated as “from open seas to the shallow waters,” which Borell explains is a fitting metaphor for what has been an exceptional year worldwide.
Several of the works in the exhibition focus on the domestic and the intimate. These personal reflections mirror the anxieties and unease which have affected individuals and wider society alike.
Lyncia Müller’s video work “Promise Corners” features the artist performing dance exercises but within the confines of her own home rather than dance studio. Her movements are those of a dancer or gymnast preparing for a performance. We see her performing in the lounge, the hallway and the kitchen where the traditional ballet barre is replaced by the kitchen bench.
The work contrasts the distance between the normality of the practice session with proper equipment and other participants and the aberration of the individual performing alone. The piece also emphasises the power and splendour of the body being pushed to the extreme.
Salvador Brown’s poetic work DigiTa VaSa fuses the traditional sounds of the conch with electronic noise along with a tapping sound which could be the tattooist chisel or a tapping on a keyboard. These sounds are complemented by sweeping visuals of the sea meeting the sky and the images of birds, all linking to memory and transition.
Christopher Ulutupu’s slightly surreal videos draw on the tradition of the tableau paintings in which characters are arranged for picturesque or dramatic effect and appear absorbed and completely unaware of the existence of the viewer. “Horse” features a nervous hose tethered to a clapped-out trick with two impassive figures – a lounging Adonis and an oblivious female. There is a subtle narrative with the horse providing the emotional tension. In Saltworks where five people lounge around open saltwater baths is a celebration of the commonplace.
Christopher Ulutupu, Saltbaths
Both these works are like visual haiku, reflections on the beauty and insignificance of the everyday.
Exhibiting close by on a construction wall in East St are works by two other artists Ashleigh Taupaki’s and Jaimie Waititi
Ashleigh Taupaki’s “Paradise” links the ideas of paradise with Paradise Beach in Samoa, from with alternating panels bear text and images. The texts are like diary entries commenting on her grandmothers’ everyday interests and activities. These recalled events are slowly weathering from wind and sun and the words are fading as though her recollection are being lost. The work cleverly generally brings together oral traditions, mythologies and memories.
The artist has also made simple paintings of Samoan plants which her grandmother has described to her. These rudimentary botanical images are like childlike descriptions of the natural world capturing the essence if not the detail.
Jaimie Waititi’s “ReMoanafication: Time is a space” uses text and imagery as a call to action in understanding and reclaiming the history of Maori. The texts are like adverting or political slogans with a density of meaning which says more than the simple statements.
All artists exhibiting in Moana Waiwai, Moana Pāti participated in Tautai’s Fale-ship programme, an initiative born out of the Covid-19 lockdowns to support artists working across a range of artistic disciplines to develop and make work at home. It is the first of two group exhibitions showcasing Tautai’s Fale-ship artists.
Tautai Director Courtney Sina Meredith says, “During the Covid-19 lockdowns, our priority was to support our artistic community to make, create and connect. The unique circumstances of isolation have impacted creative work in a number of ways. This year, our focus as an organisation is to redress the isolation of those lockdowns and work to bring our community back together, into our gallery space, to share work, talanoa and celebrate all that is Pacific creativity.”
Bologne Symphony No.1 Gershwin Piano Concerto in F Farrenc Symphony No.3
Auckland Town Hall
June 17
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
The APO’s latest concert “Rediscovery” featured works by a couple of composers who are rarely included in classical music programmes. Joseph Bologne a black French composer of the late eighteenth century and Louise Farrenc of the mid nineteenth century.
Joseph Bologne, also known as the Chevalier de Saint-Georges was born on the French colony of Guadeloupe. He was of African heritage with his mother being a slave on his father’s plantation. As well as being a composer he was also a virtuoso violinist, a conductor of the leading symphony orchestra in Paris, and a renowned champion fencer. Before the French revolution he was even elevated to the minor aristocracy under the title “Gentilhomme ordinaire de la chambre du roi.”
During the Revolution he served as a colonel of the Légion St.-Georges, the first all-black regiment in Europe, fighting on the side of the Republic.
His three movement Symphony No 1 owes much to Scarlatti and C.P.E. Bach with its delicate themes while the second movement melodies, show why he was often referred to as “The Black Mozart.”
The final spirited movement has connections with Haydn, who later wrote his “Paris” symphonies for Bologne’s Paris based orchestra.
While the symphony was composed for a pre-revolutionary audience the work was performed many times after the revolution, an example of music able to cross political boundaries.
Where Bologne succeeded despite his African heritage Louise Farrenc despite being a woman also succeeded in the music world gaining fame as a performer and in 1842 she was appointed to the permanent position of Professor of Piano at the Paris Conservatoire , a position she held for thirty years.
Until the mid-nineteenth century most composers did little but imitate the Beethovenian symphonic form, but Farrenc and other began introducing new sounds.
Farrance as a teacher of piano technique and a soloist had an advanced knowledge of musical composition and the work displayed an understanding of musical chiaroscuro. Her ability to create contrasts of light and dark and the subtle nuances in between make it one of the important Romantic symphonies.
Her Symphony No 3 which was only ever performed once during her lifetime owes much to the legacy of Haydn and there ais something of a homage to Beethoven in the drumbeats of the second movement. The work has a confidence and drama which should dispel any notion of her composing “soft”: or “feminine “ music. The final movement in particular is filled with a remarkable tension, almost operatic in scale.
The other “rediscovered” work on the programme was George Gershwin’s Concerto in F of 1925, one of the most extended work for piano and orchestra at the time. It did however reach a wide public with a virtuoso performance by Oscar Levant’s in Gene Kelly film musical “An American in Paris”.
There is a feverish rush to the work filled with rhythmic energy and slick melodies. Gershwin managed to combine the classical tradition of Liszt and Tchaikovsky with the hints of jazz, show tunes and Scott Joplin.
Pianist Somi Kim brilliantly emphasized the lonely-blues quality of the opening piano theme with a languid approach and played the swelling romantic theme at the heart of the first movement’s heart, without being oversentimental.
At times she played with a tender leisureliness while at other she unleashed a dynamic and spirited assault, the orchestra providing a syncopated background to her effortless trills and attacks.
Conductor Holly Mathieson performed like a dynamic exotic butterfly, expertly guiding the orchestra with graceful movements along with the occasional flourish.
Future APO Concert
On the Danube
July 8
A concert of Viennese music from the nineteenth and twentieth century.
J. Strauss II On the Beautiful Blue Danube Korngold Violin Concerto Mahler Blumine Brahms Symphony No.3
Surrealist Art: Masterpieces from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Te Papa June 12 – October 31
Surrealist Art | He Toi Pohewa
By Els Hoek and Lizzie Bisley
Te Papa Press
RRP $35.00
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
A major show of Surrealist art has just opened at Te Papa and will be on show for the next four months. The works are all from the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam and includes sculpture, furniture, paintings, graphic design, prints, and photography.
Accompanying the exhibition is an excellent catalogue jointly produced by the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and Te Papa.
The 180 works in the show include major works by artists such as Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Leonora Carrington, René Magritte, and Marcel Duchamp.
Visitors will be able to see iconic Surrealist works such as Dalí’s Mae West Lips Sofa (1938), a playfully subversive couch shaped as a lush pair of red lips, and René Magritte’s La maison de verre (The glass house) (1939), an uncanny masterpiece in which a man’s face looks out from the back of his head.
In 1916, a group of poets and artists in Zurich turned against academism and all common beliefs about culture. Their ideas were picked up by others and it was therefore not long before the Dadaists began making “anti-art” such as noise concerts and nonsense poems. Their views formed the breeding ground from which surrealism originated in 1924. Many Dadaists later joined the Paris surrealists around André Breton.
In response to the atrocities caused by the First World War, the surrealists rejected the rational and everything that is traditional. Instead, they wanted to make art that was contrary, irrational and shocking. Andre Breton who wrote the first of his several Surrealist Manifestos in 1924 defined surrealism as “Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express—verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner—the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern”.
He also noted that surrealism could be applied to the other art forms such as poetry and literature stressing the importance of the dream as a reservoir of Surrealist inspiration.
Probably the most recognisable artist in the exhibition is Salvador Dalí. His works includes some iconic paintings quirky prints, playful sculptures and unsettling film.
Salvador Dali “Couple with their heads full of clouds”
In surrealism, everyday objects are used to create unusual situations and René Magritte is a master of this depicting mental images and creating works that transform reality and confuse the viewer. In true Surrealist form, alongside the likes of Dali, his paintings are never a mirror of the reality surrounding us, it is a mirror of the reality imagined by him..
Te Papa was able to obtain the exhibition which is the only venue in the Asia Pacific region because the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is currently undergoing large-scale renovation work so the museum has been able to make available art from their extensive collection.
The catalogue is richly illustrated with an extensive text. The various chapters provide an excellent introduction to surrealism and the artists at the centre of the various movements which contributed to it. The background to many of the works is often as interesting as the works themselves.
Rene Magritte “Not to be reproduced”
Magritte’s “Not to be Reproduced” was one of three works commissioned by poet and Magritte patron Edward James for the ballroom of James’s London home. The work depicts a man standing in front of a mirror (possibly James himself) but while the book on the mantelpiece is reflected correctly, the man’s reflection shows him from behind. The book itself adds another level to the mystery being a copy of Edger Alan Poe’s Les aventures d’Arthur Gordon Pym), a French translation of “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket”
There are several other large works by Magritte in the show including “The Living Mirror” of 1928, This work with word inscribed over clouds has connections with Colin McCahon Cloud and number works of the mid 1970’s.
As well as his famous “Mae Wes t Lips Sofa there are the half dozen major paintings by Salvador Dali including ”Couple with their heads full of Clouds” and “Impressions of Africa” which includes a self-portrait.
There are a couple of fine dreamy works by Paul Delvaux such as “The Red Tower” and there are several works by Marcel Duchamp including one of his exhibitions in a box containing 68 small works by the artist.
While Women have always played a role in the Surrealist movement, this was for the most part, as objects of masculine desire and fantasy as many male surrealist artists had a blind spot when it came to gender politics. For them, the female body became the ultimate Surrealist object, mystified and fetishized.
Leanora Carrington “Again the Gemini are in the Orchard”
The exhibition does feature half a dozen female artist who carved out careers including Eileen Agar’s “Seated Figure” which combines her interest in Cubism as well as Surrealism., Leanora Carrington’s Bosch inspired dreamscape “Again the Gemini are in the Orchard” and Unica Zurn’s hallucinatory works. There are also works by Rose Adler, Meret Oppenheim and Elsa Schiaparell,
There are a set of etchings by Salvador Dali produced to illustrate “The Songs of Maldoror”, a number of etchings by Max Ernst, several fetishist photographs by Hans Bellmer and a suite of works by Max Ernst.
The book also provides a history of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and its efforts to build a major collection which often involved negotiations with Edward James
Several surrealist films are in the show including L’Age d’Or (The Golden Age) (1930), by Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali and Entr’acte (Intermission) (1924), by Rene Clair
There will also be one screening of the Alfred Hitchcock film Spellbound (1945), for which Salvador Dali created some dream sequences.
Richard Ollarsaba (Figaro) and Jonna Foote (Susanna) Image – David Rowland
The Marriage of Figaro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte from a work by Beaumarchais
New Zealand Opera
Aotea Centre, Auckland
Until June 13
Then Opera House Wellington June 23 – 27 and Isaac Theatre Christchurch July 8 – 13
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
Napoleon once remarked that Beaumarchais’ original play The Marriage of Figaro which had been condemned and censored after its first production for anti-aristocratic ideas was an example of the revolution in action. Mozart’s version of the play which premiered in 1786 in Vienna was permitted only after Mozart and the librettist Da Ponte had assured the Emperor Joseph II that the political aspects of the play would be removed. While the more political aspects of the original were removed Mozart’s creation has an underlying anti-establishment theme.
Mozart like a number of the liberal thinkers of the late eighteenth century was a closet revolutionary who introduced his ideas about a new social order and personal responsibilities into his all his late operas. Despotic royals always get their just desserts with their frailties, deceptions and lack of morality exposed.
The opera tells the story of Figaro who is about to be married to Susanna. He is a servant in the court of Count Almaviva who sees himself as one of the great liberals of the time as he has repudiated the long established “droite de seigneur” at his court but even though that is the official line he is intent on bedding Susanna.
Most of the opera is concerned with thwarting the Count in his endeavours. But there are other parts to the convoluted tale such as the Countess who is aware of her husband’s dalliances and seeks to outwit him. Then there is Cherubino, a youth who is infatuated with the Countess and most of the other women. Another sub plot which adds to the complications. Marcellino, Dr Bartolli’s housekeeper has lent Figaro some money and demands that he marry her if he cannot repay her. The various plots create havoc by introducing deceits, disguises and secret letters.
John Moore (Count Almaviva) and Jonna Foote (Susanna) Image – David Rowland
Lindy Hume’s latest production of the work for NZ Opera is a dazzling piece of theatre with extraordinary voices and inspired acting .
Emma Pearson sang the role of the Countess with a silvery, opulent voice and with her Act 3 “I remember his love so tender” (“Dove sono”) she emanated a delicious warmth, bringing a strong feeling of sadness. Joanna Foote as Susanna created a multi layered character who exuded confidence as through she were born to the role. When she was on stage, she seemed to galvanize the rest of the cast, singing with a captivating freshens and liveliness.
Figaro sung by Richard Ollarsaba performed with a rich controlled voice, his every gesture finely tuned while John Moore gave a superb account as the dissolute Count Almaviva inhabiting the stage with a commanding presence.
Bianca Andrew’s frisky Cherubino was a natural comic actor with an equally mischievous voice.
Emma Pearson (Countess Almaviva) and Bianca Andrew (Cherubino) Image – David Rowland
The rest of the cast of Kristin Darragh (Marcellina), Andrew Collis (Don Bartolo), Andrew Grenon (Don Basilio), Imogen Thirlwall (Barbarina) and Joel Amosa (Antonio) were also superb, all displaying an intelligent approach to their parts with singing which conveyed character and emotion.
The set design by Tracy Grant Lord took a minimalist approach with a series of light filled boxes which were used to create a series of spaces – drawing room, bedroom and garden. Their translucent shapes highlighted the frequent reference to notes and legal documents which disrupt the narrative as well as the shower of paper which concludes the opera.
Another aspect of the design and costumes managed link the eighteenth century and the present with elegant furniture mixed with schoolroom seats while flowing white gowns and dapper clothes contrasting with twenty-first century suits.
Galvanizing the whole performance was the glorious music which was delivered by the Auckland Philharmonia under the baton of the enthusiastic Zoe Zeniodi.
The latest exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery “All That was Solid Melts” is one of the most challenging and stimulating shows the gallery has mounted for some time.
Curator of the show, Juliana Engberg, has created an exhibition which takes the current Covid climate as a starting point looking at the way that so much of what we regarded as normal about our day to day lives was disrupted, put on hold and questioned. We have seen that our lives and the lives of others can be completely altered not just by the Covid pandemic but also by events such as the Christchurch earthquakes, the White Island eruption and even the recent floods. These catastrophic physical changes mirror the local and international geopolitical changes and adaptations which are taking place.
The show examines how artists have responded to various crises in the past and how individuals and society deal with destruction, grief and the unknown. There is no obvious narrative through the show though the viewer goes on something of a picaresque journey, encountering individuals, events, and myths. The viewer will establish their own connections – personal, historical, political, spiritual and philosophical, mapping their way through the exhibition.
There are over hundred works in the show mainly sourced from the Auckland Art Gallery’s collections but there are a number of more recent works by both New Zealand and overseas artists including major video works by Pipilotti Rist and Pierre Huyghe.
Sophie Gengembre Anderson “After the Earthquake”
A number of works from the collection have probably not been seen for many years but are now on show as they expand on the concepts of the show. One such work is by the French-born British artist Sophie Gengembre Anderson’s “After the Earthquake” in which she depicts the aftermath of the earthquake which struck the island of Ischia in 1883 with a female figure slumped over a demolished dwelling.
Providing a New Zealand link to seismic activity is a set of minimalist works by Julia Morison which combine the grey sandy silt of liquification which invaded her studio and a variety of liqueurs which were also destroyed. “Liquerfaction I – IX” are like nine concrete building slabs, the results of the catastrophe repurposed, the artist bringing order to the chaos of the event.
The title of the show is a misquote from Marx’s Communist Manifesto where he notes that “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
With that misquote Engberg says she wanted to “create a fragment as though it had fallen of the bigger edifice and now I have stuck it back together but didn’t get it quite right and I made it new with a different inflexion so it refers to now. We find ourselves in a time when we do think the ground has shifted and we do think things have changed and we are concerned about what will be happening in the future.”
“So, this show is about encountering those things especially through the metaphors that are rallied by artists to help us negotiate and navigate some of those ideas so we can learn from some of these errors and make it better. We sometimes think we have learned the lessons, we congratulate ourselves and then we return to the same dilemmas. So we see the repetition of war ecological damage, cataclysms returning time and again.”
In many wasy the show is remarkably dense and multi layered, filled with ideas and concepts Engberg has endeavoured to provide a number of ways of encountering the show. “I’ve worked hard on the aesthetic journey, thematic journeys as well as sub themes such as materiality. It’s quite episodic and odyssey-like as well. I would like people to travel through time and accumulate memories.”
There are also themes which people will pick up on. “Solitude, anxiety, grief, ruin, ecological, and geographical disaster. There is also regeneration, fragility, political unrest, new nature and self-healing” If I was a conventional curator, I would have put words like that up on the gallery walls but that reduces the looking which I would like to encourage. I want people to really look and be tantalised by the images. I want them to feel they are on a visual journey and they are compelled to look at things and take the time .” She also notes that the show “travels along an emotional trajectory, resting on moments of metaphor and symbols of regrowth and release.”
She gives as an example the works of artist and theorist Piranesi who was fascinated by the ancient architecture of Rome, imbuing the crumbling structures with vitality and romance, referencing the collapse of the ancient Roman civilization.
This reference to Ancient Rome is also seen in the photographs of Helene Binet documenting Hadrian’s Villa where the crumbling structures are like the bleached bones of an animal.
New Zealand content and New Zealand imagery is threaded through the show, something that Engberg made a conscious decision about “ “This has been made for a New Zealand audience, it is not going anywhere else. It’s important that people see their own things and to see the works which have been responding to events for a long time. I went down to Christchurch to talk to artists who had been through the experience of the earthquake.”
An underlying theme in many of the works is religion and the way it has been used as a form of comfort or relief to understand or cope with disasters. Engberg says “There are aspects of this in the earlier part of the show but not the latter part. Within the whole show I wanted there to be journey from darkness to lightness., from the faith-based understanding of the work to a more empirical and scientific understanding.” She sees “a spiritualism in the Bill Viola work “Observance” and there is a certain religiosity in Franz Sturtzkopf’s “The Hermit”.
The inclusion of Juan de Juanes’s “St Sebastian” is a reference to the Black Beath of the fourteenth century when he was seen as the patron saint of plague survival with his body pierced by many arrows. This reliance on the spiritual as a means of denying or coping with disater is also seen in Douglas Gordon’s “Private Passion” where a devotional candle provides both pain and relief to the supplicant hand.
Gustav Dore “The New Zealander”
There are several interesting works such as Gustav Dore’s “The New Zealander” an imagining by the artist of London based on the text by Thomas Macaulay, who wrote prophesying a time in which a lone wanderer – a New Zealander – might sit on the broken arch of London Bridge and sketch the ruins of St Paul’s Cathedral.
Then there is Katie Paterson’s “Fossil Necklace” consisting of 170 beads from various geological eras spanning 3.2 billion years providing a necklace which tells the history of the world
For Engberg there are a few seminal pieces including works by Bill Viola, Douglas Gordon Pierre Huyghe, Tacita Dean and Pipilotti Rist with the gallery’s collection provided a depth of both contemporary and historical works which allows for insightful intermixing and cross pollinating.
Accompanying the exhibition is a newspaper style catalogue with information about the artworks. Each of the galleries has a set of QR codes to access information on individual works as well.
Laurynas Vejalis (Albrecht and Mayu Tanigaito (Giselle) Image – Stephen A’Court
The Royal New Zealand Ballet
Giselle
Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre
May 26
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
The Royal New Zealand Ballet have again showed they are capable of bringing us magnificent productions of the great classical works with a Giselle full of splendid dancing.
Giselle is a tale of blighted love which begins with intense romantic love and ends in tragedy. In the first act we encounter exuberant love while in the second act we see melancholic and heart-rending passion.
It is crucial for a great performance that these two contrasting and conflicting aspects need to be given emotional and physical authenticity through the dancing, the music, sets and costumes. With this production the creative team has ensured that these have all been brought together to create a remarkably powerful narrative which is both close to human experience and at the core of the romantic myth.
Ethan Steifel and Johan Kobborg who had originally developed this production have fine0-tuned the work and it feels to be a much tighter and compelling this time. As Steifel says in the programme notes they wanted to “inject some new pace into the story- telling and add further dimensions and meaning to all the characters”
Mayu Tanigaito was stunning as Giselle, displaying all the emotions needed for the role from demure youthful love, the despair which comes with rejection, through to the regret and despair she displays beyond the grave.
Hers was a performance which displayed through acting and dance an understanding of the complex emotions of the character.
Her descent into madness at the end of Act I was a superb piece of tragic acting. In addition to her distraught appearance, she conveyed that distress in dance. She repeats the same dainty steps she used at the start of the act but they become sombre, slow movements at variance with the music, creating a disturbing discordance.
As Albrecht, Laurynas Vejalis perfectly played a man madly in love but filled with conflicting duties and desires, throwing himself desperately at Giselle’s lifeless body at the end of Act 1 and wracked with remorse in Act 2.
Hilarion (Paul Mathews) the jilted suitor of Giselle is brilliant in his macho dance-off against Albrecht and electrifying in his dance to the death before the avenging Wilis.
The sets were cleverly juxtaposed. The first act set was bright and colourful, providing a cute little gingerbread house along with jolly peasants, and a romantic vista. The second act set was dark and mysterious, merging the bleak world of the graveyard and the mythical world of the Willis.
The Wilis Image – Stephen A’Court
The Wilis are female spiritual avengers – women who have died because they have been rejected and who now take their revenge on wayward males. This aspect of their supernatural power is a romantic concept of a parallel world reflecting the dual nature of the human condition. The tightly disciplined corps de ballet adorned in their wedding veils gave a chilling, visceral performance. As Moyna, Queen of the Wilis Ana Gallardo Lobaina was animated and imposing in her command of her realm.
As with many of the great classical ballets there is wonderful music and the Auckland Philharmonia under the direction of Hamish McKeich ensured that the glorious music of Adolphe Adam flowed through the whole production adding to the drama and emotion of the work.
The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s latest concert “Fantastique” featured Berlioz’s epic work, Symphonie fantastique. Through its five movements, it tells the story of an artist’s self-destructive passion for a beautiful woman. The work describes his obsession and dreams, moments of anguished and tenderness along with visions of suicide and murder, ecstasy, and despair.
Berlioz was obsessed with the Irish actress Harriet Smithson, and the symphony was his mating call to the actress. The music attempts to render the story of his own life intertwined with that of The Artist, musically and emotionally.
The piece begins with a description of The Artist and the object of his love with an elusive theme which recurs through the work. Then we encounter him at a ball, trying to gain the attention of his love and then in a pastoral setting possibly seeing his beloved with another suitor. A fourth movement is a narcotic dream sequence where he sees himself led to the scaffold in the belief that his love has been rejected.
The final movement is another dreamscape, this time a vision of hell where The Artist is carried into the underworld watched over by the object of his craving.
Under the direction of an agile Holly Mathieson the NZSO provided an energetic performance of the work ensuring the drama and intensity of the work was expertly delivered. There were the thrilling violins and flutes which conjured up the image of The Artist’s beloved through the two harps leading the delicate ballroom scene to the military band escorting the prisoner to the scaffold and onto the final ominous bassoons and tubas roaring out the funeral chant of the Dies Irae.
Frightening outbursts alternated with moments of the greatest tenderness. Massive onslaughts by the percussion and timpani contrasted with the delicacy and melancholia of the ballroom and pastoral scenes.
The first half of the programme featured two dream works one by Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu’s “Dreamtime” (Yume no toki) and “The Third Dream” by New Zealander Dorothy Ker.
Takemitsu’s “Dreamtime” references the aboriginal approach to storytelling which employs, symbols, myth and visions to explain the known world and its connection to the past and the spirit world of guiding forces.
The work was intended as music for a dance work by choreographer Jiri Kylian and the sweeping sequences of the work convey the notions of bodies in motion. These moments of swelling drama connect also with the composers view that they are like the surge of the giant wave in Hokusai’s “The Great Wave”. These lyrical balletic sequences also contrasted with some unsettling suspense film style music.
Overall, the work had a cinematic feel with shifting layers of sound morphing into another as in a dream where one intense vision is replaced by another often with shocks at the changing perspectives. This shifting from the ethereal to the earthly from the lyric to the discordant was emphasised by the instrumentation which emphasized contrasts of texture, volume and invention leading up to the final moments where the music evaporates into silence and light.
Where “Dreamtime” was full of light Dorothy Ker’s “The Third Dream” was full of lightning, with sharp bolts of sounds resounding through the work. From the drama of the Wagnerian opening to the final blasting tubas this was a work which verged on the nightmare.
A lot of the time the instruments were played in unconventional ways pushing the instruments and the players to the limit. The timpani were stroked by hand and the strings players employed different bowing techniques along with plucking strings and slapping their instruments.
Future NZSO Concerts
NZSO & ALIEN WEAPONRY: TŪ TAPATAHI – STRONGER TOGETHER
Holly Mathieson Conductor Alien Weaponry Band
The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra joins Aotearoa New Zealand metal band Alien Weaponry described by by Revolver Magazine in the USA as “one of the most exciting young metal bands in the world right now”. The three-piece from Waipu deliver emotionally and politically charged stories of conflict and grief with a warriorlike attitude.
Hamilton May 22
Christchurch May 29
PICK-A-PATH IN CONCERT
Holly Mathieson Conductor Kevin Keys Narrator
An interactive family concert, with narrator Kevin Keys presenting popular classics including music from Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite”, Dukas’ “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and the theme from “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” by John Williams’.
This year is the tenth Walters Prize exhibition showing a range of contemporary art practices with work by Fiona Amundsen, Sonya Lacey, the Mata Aho Collective and Sriwhana Spong,
All the works are tell multi-facetted stories, myths and histories linked to investigations by the artists, so they become a mixture of autobiographical and biographical.
Fiona Amundsen’s “A Body that Lives” employs film and photography focusing on several aspects of the Pacific War, bringing together declassified archival footage, witness testimonies and documentary footage shot in various locations.
The work focuses on the both the Japanese and American experience of the war. The images of destruction – a map of the devastation of Tokyo, planes strafing installations and on bombing raids, American forces using flame throwers are contrasted with the peaceful Cowra Japanese Memorial Gardens in regional New South Wales,
While there are images of the horror of the war the exhibition provides little history condensing it down to the memories of four personal experience including an American war veteran, a Japanese anti-war activist and memories of the 1945 Battle of Okinawa.
Dominating the exhibition is an interview with Mr Teruo Murakami, a survivor of the 1944 ‘Cowra Breakout’, when one thousand Japanese prisoners of war attempted to escape from the Cowra prisoner of war camp.
His head moves in and out of the closely cropped frame as he remembers the event, his disjointed memories echoed by the fragmented images of the war on the various screens .
Sonia Lacey’s “Weekend” uses collage, video, film and sculptural forms to animate her research into the history and social aspirations of the St Bride Foundation in London which was established in the late nineteenth century to provide leisure facilities including an indoor pool to better the lives of newspaper workers of nearby Fleet St. Some of the works conflates ideas around newspapers and the notions of memory contained in newspapers.
The space she creates is intended to provide the dimensions of the pool and its structure with the bath’s steps providing a viewing platform for the major element of the exhibition which features a slowly evolving site of abstract images referencing the murky waters of the baths.
This mesmerizing cinematic panorama of images seems more like satellite images of Earth with continually unfolding landscapes and the changing textures of the land – rural areas, the course of rivers, the ridges of hills, as well as the occasional scudding cloud.
The Mata Aho Collective’s work “Atapō” was co-created with Maureen Lander and originally included in Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Maori Art.
As with many mythologies, death and the afterlife are the realms of gods who are often in conflict or have ambivalent roles. Mata Aho have developed their work around the story of Hine-Titama, the incestuous daughter of Tane who journeyed to the Underworld to become Hine-nui-te-po , the Goddess of Death and Darkness.
The ideas around death, transformation and new life are paralleled in various other mythologies and notions such as the Greek myth of human lives being woven by The Fates. In a sense the members of the collective have become latter day versions of these Fates.
Mata Aho Collective, Atapo
The large Hine-nui-te-po consists of multiple layers of fabric as through on a giant weaving loom with small inserts of colour woven into the fabric marking out the passage of time.
With the brighter Hine-Titama seen through the dark folds of Hine-nui-te-po there is a link between the two works and they become a metaphor for the transition between life and death, between myth and reality, between dream and illusion.
Sriwhana Spong’s “The Painter-Tailer” centres around the home of her paternal Balinese grandfather who was also an artist. This makes the work both biographical and autobiographical combining both the artist’s world and that of her grandfather. As well as visual art elements there are many musical and audio components linking East and West The installation includes the artists own work, video of her grandfather’s art along with Spong’s several sculptural instruments inspired by the Indonesian gamelan. There is a further musical reference in the fabric works made by the artist which uses the coat tails of a conductor’s formal suit.
There will be a performance in the Sriwhana Spong space utilising her personal orchestra each month with the first confirmed performance date on Saturday, 19 June.
The Walters Prize will be judged later this year by Kate Fowle, director of Moma PS1 in New York with the winning artist announced at the Walters Prize award dinner to be held in the Gallery on Saturday 7 August.
THE LIFE OF GALILEO by Bertolt Brecht Auckland Theatre Company ASB Waterfront Theatre
22 June – 10 July
Bertolt Brecht’s “Life of Galileo” is one of the great pieces of political theatre of the twentieth century but has rarely been performed in New Zealand. Now Auckland Theatre Company will be presenting the work with Michael Hurst in the title role stars along with Rima Te Wiata and an ensemble cast directed by ATC Creative Director Colin McColl
The play links Galileo’s Italy of the 1600s with Brecht’s post war Europe. In Galileo’s time, new scientific ideas were emerging that challenged centuries of religious understanding of the world while in Brecht’s time, new political systems were coming to power in the form of fascism and communism.
New scientific knowledge in Galileo’s time as well as the political changes in Brecht’s day were met with extreme resistance with Galileo facing the religious police in the form of The Inquisition,
Many of the issues around the play relate to the Aristotelian view of the universe where the Sun and all other heavenly bodies revolved around the Earth a world view the Church accepted and promoted. Others, such as Copernicus, had promoted the heliocentric model (of the Earth revolving around the Sun) that challenged Aristotle. In the eyes of the church this was heresy.
A 2019 New York production of the work noted that “Central to the German playwright’s philosophy of theatre-making was a Marxian horror — a real, urgent social distress over the failure of society — and an unshakeable accountability for its mending. The Brechtian aesthetic, present in all his work, is thus an identification of what needs to be changed — some alienated world — and an understanding of how theatre might represent the changing of that world. He gives us a theory of our reality and a theory of art, theatre as an autonomous understanding of that reality.”
An Australian production of the work also in 2019 said in relation to the contemporary themes in the play that “Brecht could not have foreseen the obvious parallels between the church and contemporary climate science deniers, but he shrewdly foresaw that science would always be shovelling aside the comforting sludge of ignorance. The resultant play’s fascination lies in its almost homely insights into Galileo’s genius and into his abjuring his revolutionary astronomical discoveries before the Inquisition.”
