Saturday, May 11

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Two reviews of the Royal Ballet in "The Winter's Tale."

Jenny Gilbert for The Arts Desk.

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The Winter’s Tale, originally a “romance” in five acts, is widely regarded as a problem play, not only because of its lack of poetic blank verse or cheerful rhymed couplets, but because of its lurching narrative tone, the first three acts filled with bleak  psychological drama, the last two comic and frothy. And then there are those challenging stage directions: a statue that mysteriously comes to life, a breathless chase across land and sea, and the notorious “Exit pursued by bear”. The strength – and, frankly, miracle – of Christopher Wheeldon’s adaptation for the Royal Ballet is that he turns every one of the play’s difficulties into an asset.

Rupert Christiansen in The Spectator.

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Neither Ashton nor MacMillan seems to get as much exposure as the prolific Wheeldon, who can be relied upon to put on a good show and bring out the best in dancers even when his choreography sinks to the competently mundane. Bouncing off Joby Talbot’s brash Bernsteinish score, The Winter’s Tale is more ambitious than that, and boasts passages of considerable eloquence, most of them in an imaginatively conceived first act exploring Leontes’s irrational jealousy and Hermione’s adamant innocence. A second act in a bucolic Technicolored Bohemia is overstuffed with protracted bursts of cod-Balkan-peasant merry-making; the final scenes of reconciliation are merely a bit anti-climactic. The excision of 15 minutes would tauten the drama overall, and I think Wheeldon needs to be less literal in his story-telling.

 

[dirac]

Miami City Ballet holds a union election next Tuesday.

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“A union gives dancers the strength to have a voice in a line of work that often teaches us to be silent,” said one Miami City Ballet dancer, who requested anonymity due to potential retaliation for union-related organizing, in an email to Truthout. “I want to be part of a union because I think it’s important for dancers to have a say in the contract that determines many of our working conditions and pay, and it’s equally important for leadership to be held accountable to following the contract in place.”

 

[dirac]

 A review of the Ballet of the State Theater Nuremberg in “Maillot/León & Lightfoot” by Ilona Landgraf in her blog, "Landgraf on Dance."

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Except for Kunstkamer, a witty co-choreography by León, Lightfoot, Crystal Pite, and Marco Goecke, I found León and Lightfoot’s pieces drab and cheerless. Stop-Motion is no exception. In an interview, Lightfoot compared it with a “cathedral for the art” and called it their signature piece. I’m sorry to say, but the art of dance certainly isn’t manifest in Stop-Motion. As much as León and Lightfoot explained the political background of the piece—the atmosphere of vulnerability that accompanied its creation, how their daughter’s coming of age influenced the production, and the extent to which it depicts the self-emancipation of women—hardly any of it is conveyed on stage. Unlike in Pina Bausch’s dance theater, most of the scenes that León and Lightfoot invented lack substance and meaning, and it doesn’t help that León brands the choreography as a poem.

 

[dirac]

A review of Kansas City Ballet in "Jewels" by Hilary Stroh for Bachtrack.

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Cameron Thomas, the male lead in Rubies, brought fantastic energy. We enjoy watching that touch of exciting danger, that electrifying sense of stage presence and swift movement; and there was one moment of such impeccable comic timing at the end of a pose, that the audience laughed. He gives the impression of being a mature dancer, in command not just of his space but of his audience, able to play them too. Taryn Pachciarz brought her own precision and chutzpah to her part. In all, Rubies was a highlight for me.