Tag: theatre

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoplea

Royal New Zealand Ballet

Winter Season

Aotea Centre

July 23 – 25.

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples.

The Royal New Zealand Ballet’s Winter Season featured a triple bill featuring and two contemporary ballets, and the premiere of Sir Frederick Ashton’s more classical, Birthday Offering.

Ashton was the principal architect of the “English style” of classical ballet and choreographed Birthday Offering in 1956 for The Royal Ballet’s 25th anniversary, Birthday Offering. The ballet was originally a tribute to fourteen of its premiere dancers which included New Zealand ballet legend Dame Rowena Jackson along with Dame Margot Fonteyn.

Danced to Alexander Glazunov’s waltzing music the work demands perfection and precision and that is what the dancers delivered.

The seven female dancers each danced sequences which displayed their various talents and took inspiration from the Glazunov score. One of the dancers performed like a clockwork Coppelia, another gave a display of gentle, relaxed limbs while another presented a more romantic approach.

The seven dancers handled all the intricacies of the dance with a calm serenity, all using their body, arms and legs expressively.

Their displays presented what amounted to a primer of modern classical dance which they performed with technical virtuosity and panache.

When the female dancers partnered with their male partners both dancers became more animated and expressive but there was not the engaging emotionalism one might have seen later– not the sort of dancing seen between Fonteyn and Nureyev

There were some stylish vignettes, there was elegance and beauty, but it was too formal with a lack of heart.

This was simple ballet staged cleanly and stylishly in colourful mid-length gowns (Kenneth Rowell) that bounced along to the spritely footwork.

Sarah Foster-Sproull’s Ultra Folly opened with the dancers appearing to communicate with each other using their own form of semaphore in a homage to the choreographer Crystal Pite. Then, dancing to La Folie, music from the seventeenth century but played by Jordi Savilo and Hyperion XXI, they displayed a range of engaging dance routines with sharp moves and gesturers, mirroring the music and exploring the notion of communication.

Their dancing took inspiration from a range of sources varying from the courtly dance of the seventieth century to Highland dance while at other times their dancing evolved from the chance encounter on the street to the meeting of two lovers.

Then there were the more elaborate group interactions, the dancers appearing create hieroglyphics or an elaborate signing system and they became bound up in their intricate dance movements.

The almost tactile music was reflected in the dance at times as it morphed from the mechanical to the sensual.

South African Andrea Schermoly’s Stand to Reason which was the more political of the three works took inspiration from the pamphlet “Ten Reasons Why A Woman Should Vote” written by Kate Shephard in 1888 in which women had to clearly convince, explain and justify their right to political participation.

The text of the pamphlet was projected onto a screen behind the all-female dance ensemble who were dressed in black tunics which referenced the women of Sparta, or the Amazons as well as a nod to the various black clad New Zealand sports teams.

The notion of the strong woman was also highlighted in the way that the dancers confronted the audience often fixed their gaze on us.

The dancers performed the roles of support and impetus normally taken by male dancers and while much of their movements had an aggressive quality with great physicality this was tempered by more subtle gestures.

In the final sequence of the work danced to the music of Beethoven the intensity of the dancing increased as the volume of the music increased with raw energy, breast beating and frenetic dancing. The dancers seemed to be struggling against unseen forces as they broke the bonds restraining them just as the sound system seemed close to imploding.

While the music by Johann Paul von Westhoff, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Marin Marais, drove the work, the choice of male composers seemed at odds with the feminist nature of the work.

In two of the works the lighting played a significant part with the surreal lighting of Daniel Wilson in Ultra Folly and the minimalist approach by Andrew Lees in Stand to Reason.

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Black Grace: Celebrating 30 years

Civic Theatre, Auckland

November 21

Then Isaac Theatre Royal, Christchurch

November 25 & 26

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

For their thirtieth anniversary finale Black Grace presented two works, one a new piece by Neil Ieremia and a work by the legendary American choreographer Paul Taylor, created in 1975.

Of the first work on the programme “If there ever was a time” Ieremia notes, “I was raised in the church, carried along by its stories, its hymns, its promises. I have been losing my religion for the last forty years. This work is my response to what I see as the weaponisation of faith”.

The work takes an ambivalent approach to his dilemma with the music he uses to propel the dancers a mixture of traditional Pacific music – Samoa Sila Sila and contemporary music including “Voodoo in my Blood” from Massive Attack & Young Fathers and “Monolith” featuring DJ Krush with their anti-capitalist rages.

The set featured a large image of the moon which slowly moved across the rear of the stag while above the stage was cloud form of wispy fabric which ultimately collapses, a metaphor for the failure of the old order and religion.

The music was a mixture of traditional Pacific music – Samoa Sila Sila and contemporary music including “Voodoo in my Blood” from Massive Attack & Young Fathers and “Monolith” featuring DJ Krush.

The work is like a series of rituals with repeated movements and sequences of action and reaction where the physical exertion of the dancers reflect idea about passion and emotion.

Like a lot of contemporary dance, the work owes much to the Stravinsky / Nijinsky ballet “The Rite of Spring” with its rituals and confrontations.

“If there ever was a time” used some of these ideas in addressing issues around religion, colonialism and Ieremia’s ambivalence about religio and its effects on the Pacic Island communities.

The dancers’ gestures and movements are those which have often been used by the company for many years – signalling with the hand, arm and leg displays which are strongly angular and abrupt. Some of the movements are close to rap moves with sharp slides, leaps and pivots, the agitated movements mirroring the frantic sounds of the music.

At one point group of dancers form an elaborate multi-faceted form – a parasite or insect which inches across the stage menacing the sole dancer who skips relentlessly.

The image of this confrontation evokes the imagery of Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” where an individual struggles to find identity and break from conformity.

In another sequence two figures – a betrothed couple, one holding a wedding bouquet enter from either side of the stage, their heads wrapped in cloth, restrained by straining figures. Their anonymity and desperation seem to have been taken from the Magritte painting “The Lovers” where two figures, their heads wrapped in cloth attempt to kiss, suggesting the complexities of love and intimacy.

The choreography was endlessly original and interesting where simple dance steps evolve into unusual and unsettling movements and as the music changes the forms, dynamics and energy evolve.

The second work on the programme was Paul Taylor’s 1975 work “Esplanade”, a piece Ieremia had been wanting to present for many years. It was inspired by the sight of a young woman running to catch a bus. This notion of using everyday movement and elevating it to dance has been a central concept of Black Grace dance since its inception.

The work links ballet, court dance and contemporary movement danced to Bach violin concertos providing a mix of elegance and simplicity.

Much of the time the dancers walk, run, slide, and whirl around the stage seeming to follow some predetermined paths in fluid and orderly formations. Elizabethan court dance refashioned in a modern form.

There were elements of energy and drama when the women took giant leaps into the male dancers’ arms as they rotated around the stage. These bolds moves contrasted with the more tender sequences which emphasised weightlessness and where the dancers met casually, touched lightly, bracing and gesturing in languid movements.

While much of the dancing was at frenetic pace there were also times when the dancers seemed to slow their movements to become more like stop motion sequences highlighting the nature of movement

While the work is based on the movement of the street there is a vibrancy and energy to the work with its combination of rushing and motionless dancers giving the work a visual and emotional power.

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