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'Giselle' and 'Antigone'
Pointe, Counterpointe
Philadelphia audiences may still suffer in some Manhattan minds from a sullied reputation as a Broadway try-out town. In fact, today’s Philadelphia audiences seem to love classical theater and dance. One of this winter’s two sold-out performances at the Annenberg Center was the brilliant Globe production of Shakespeare's Measure For Measure. The other was this March's tramp steamer production of Giselle by that rag-tag troupe of escapees from the Bolshoi and Kirov Soviet ballet systems now known as the Russian National Ballet.
The company was formed in 1989, just as the Communist bloc was falling apart, by Sergei Radchenko, the Bolshoi star and former partner of the legendary Maya Plisetskaya. Today this troupe of 50 dancers is touring again with Don Quixote and Sleeping Beauty. In the process it landed here, with Giselle in miniature, on the Annenberg stage, where there's barely wing space for a dozen dancers. I must say from the outset that I got caught up in this petrified warhorse of a ballet, even if the production was uneven and performance erratic.
Giselle is a simpleton story of a peasant girl in love with Count Albrecht, who is already engaged, so he masks his identity by posing as a peasant boy. Eventually the deception, if not the highland minuets and foxhunts, leads to tragedy. Without ballet superstars (like Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn) in the leads to spice things up, there is little to rescue the dusty ballet aesthetic except exceptional dancing.
The choreography, which spans a century of changes from 1780 to 1881, predates Fokine, so there is a lot of pointe-shoe posing and ethereal looks. Also working against the dancers is the pre-recorded version of the ballet's score by the romantic composer Adolphe Adam.
The dimensionless sound quality sets up studied, dance-by-numbers phrasing by the dancers. The romantic 1841 symphonic score has little pulse to drive the dancers, so pacing by a live orchestra is essential for an in-the-moment performance.
Unstable arabesques
On the plus side, this company handles the character and pantomime dancing admirably, and for balletomanes, this makes it worth the admission price. But all those decorations couldn't hide the unstable arabesques and disjointedness that made the town group scenes look like villagers dancing amok. No wonder Giselle stabs herself at the end of Act I.
Fortunately, all of the exposition leads to more classical dancing in Act II at Giselle's gravesite, where the dead girl's ghost is summoned along with the Willis, otherwise known as a throng of ethereal ballerinas.
The beginner's ballet vocabulary ensues with pirouette runs, grand jêtés, sweeping chassés, tours en l'air for the men and tons of tulle traversing across the moor. It was bumper-to- bumper on this stage. The dancers climax in one of the most famous stage pictures in all of classical ballet, with 24 Willis each perched on one pointe shoe, but at this performance something moved and these ladies were aloft and awobble.
As for the performers, they were all over the Russian map. Alexander Daev (Hilarion the Forester) executed well-paced turns and jumps that were "floated" but seemed totally unconnected to the rest of the production.
Dmitry Dmitriev (Count Albrecht) achieved terrific height for a tall dancer, but had no velocity in his turns and dropped out of them in flop sweat. Olga Grigorieva (Giselle) phoned in the first act but seemed more earnest in the second act. In fact, she threw at least one penchée (tilted forward) arabesque on pointe that was right out of ballet heaven.
Rebecca Davis does Sophocles
Classics are adaptable, and dancer-choreographer Rebecca Davis begins her ambitious dance-theater piece Antigone, with a dancer dramatically undulating and sculpting dramatic poses on and off pointe, in a sexy gold velvet wraparound mini in the prologue to the Greek tragedy by Sophocles. This is not your daddy's Greek tragedy (or maybe it is).
Davis is a Temple student from Vancouver, Canada, who studied in Russia and launched her own cultural exchange network, so she makes a dramatic entrée into Philadelphia's dance community. Although Davis has only one production under her dance belt, her dance exchange with professional dancers from Canada and Russia, as well as her use of very young dancers in assembling a cast of 23, is an achievement in itself.
Antigone is the story of a family divided by war. Brothers Eteocles (Bafana Matea) and Polynices (Sandili Mbili) lead opposing armies and both die in battle. When Antigone (Astghig Ohannessian) seeks proper burials for both, she must face the wrath of King Creon (Marat Shemiunov). In seeking to make Sophoclean tragedy relevant dance for contemporary audiences, Davis throws in everything but a marble cistern:
I'd like to see this work with those segments removed, so I can observe Davis's work unadorned. It's not so bad, but when flashdancing descends into what looks like outtakes from movies like Showgirls and Stayin' Alive, ouch.
Dramatic pop-up pictures
Nonetheless, Davis created dramatic pictures on the Perelman Theater stage with minimal but effective columns and curtains utilizing the tall proscenium. Some of the fetishista costuming worked well. Those blue and green feather Afros and blue organza breastplates look great flying around in the fight scenes. But the Matrix leatherette topcoats with mesh stocking made me think I was in hell with the Solid Gold Dancers.
The court act was fun, especially with the kids earnestly doing barre work, but the choreography was so stylistically different here that it was jarring, scattering the focus, and too elemental to be divertissement.
Most lacking is Davis's ability as a choreographer to compose transitional movement, which is so crucial in a story ballet. All of those dramatic pictures she creates are reduced to mere pop-ups, so there's no narrative flow and the story gets lost.
LEWIS WHITTINGTON
Philadelphia audiences may still suffer in some Manhattan minds from a sullied reputation as a Broadway try-out town. In fact, today’s Philadelphia audiences seem to love classical theater and dance. One of this winter’s two sold-out performances at the Annenberg Center was the brilliant Globe production of Shakespeare's Measure For Measure. The other was this March's tramp steamer production of Giselle by that rag-tag troupe of escapees from the Bolshoi and Kirov Soviet ballet systems now known as the Russian National Ballet.
The company was formed in 1989, just as the Communist bloc was falling apart, by Sergei Radchenko, the Bolshoi star and former partner of the legendary Maya Plisetskaya. Today this troupe of 50 dancers is touring again with Don Quixote and Sleeping Beauty. In the process it landed here, with Giselle in miniature, on the Annenberg stage, where there's barely wing space for a dozen dancers. I must say from the outset that I got caught up in this petrified warhorse of a ballet, even if the production was uneven and performance erratic.
Giselle is a simpleton story of a peasant girl in love with Count Albrecht, who is already engaged, so he masks his identity by posing as a peasant boy. Eventually the deception, if not the highland minuets and foxhunts, leads to tragedy. Without ballet superstars (like Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn) in the leads to spice things up, there is little to rescue the dusty ballet aesthetic except exceptional dancing.
The choreography, which spans a century of changes from 1780 to 1881, predates Fokine, so there is a lot of pointe-shoe posing and ethereal looks. Also working against the dancers is the pre-recorded version of the ballet's score by the romantic composer Adolphe Adam.
The dimensionless sound quality sets up studied, dance-by-numbers phrasing by the dancers. The romantic 1841 symphonic score has little pulse to drive the dancers, so pacing by a live orchestra is essential for an in-the-moment performance.
Unstable arabesques
On the plus side, this company handles the character and pantomime dancing admirably, and for balletomanes, this makes it worth the admission price. But all those decorations couldn't hide the unstable arabesques and disjointedness that made the town group scenes look like villagers dancing amok. No wonder Giselle stabs herself at the end of Act I.
Fortunately, all of the exposition leads to more classical dancing in Act II at Giselle's gravesite, where the dead girl's ghost is summoned along with the Willis, otherwise known as a throng of ethereal ballerinas.
The beginner's ballet vocabulary ensues with pirouette runs, grand jêtés, sweeping chassés, tours en l'air for the men and tons of tulle traversing across the moor. It was bumper-to- bumper on this stage. The dancers climax in one of the most famous stage pictures in all of classical ballet, with 24 Willis each perched on one pointe shoe, but at this performance something moved and these ladies were aloft and awobble.
As for the performers, they were all over the Russian map. Alexander Daev (Hilarion the Forester) executed well-paced turns and jumps that were "floated" but seemed totally unconnected to the rest of the production.
Dmitry Dmitriev (Count Albrecht) achieved terrific height for a tall dancer, but had no velocity in his turns and dropped out of them in flop sweat. Olga Grigorieva (Giselle) phoned in the first act but seemed more earnest in the second act. In fact, she threw at least one penchée (tilted forward) arabesque on pointe that was right out of ballet heaven.
Rebecca Davis does Sophocles
Classics are adaptable, and dancer-choreographer Rebecca Davis begins her ambitious dance-theater piece Antigone, with a dancer dramatically undulating and sculpting dramatic poses on and off pointe, in a sexy gold velvet wraparound mini in the prologue to the Greek tragedy by Sophocles. This is not your daddy's Greek tragedy (or maybe it is).
Davis is a Temple student from Vancouver, Canada, who studied in Russia and launched her own cultural exchange network, so she makes a dramatic entrée into Philadelphia's dance community. Although Davis has only one production under her dance belt, her dance exchange with professional dancers from Canada and Russia, as well as her use of very young dancers in assembling a cast of 23, is an achievement in itself.
Antigone is the story of a family divided by war. Brothers Eteocles (Bafana Matea) and Polynices (Sandili Mbili) lead opposing armies and both die in battle. When Antigone (Astghig Ohannessian) seeks proper burials for both, she must face the wrath of King Creon (Marat Shemiunov). In seeking to make Sophoclean tragedy relevant dance for contemporary audiences, Davis throws in everything but a marble cistern:
- The original score by Russian composer Timofey Buzina is a patchwork of symphonic surges and ambient sound fields--some cinematic, some Vegas strip.
- The duet between the sisters Ismene (Irina Perren) and Antigone, costumed in opposite patterned red-and-white dance gowns, shows Davis's strengths— particularly variation dancing on pointe, her pantomine dancing and soulful solos under narrative exposition.
- The pivotal fight between Elecocies and Polynices recalled a similar showdown in the Russian company’s ballet of Spartacus, and it was no surprise to read that Davis had a consultant from that country.
- At various times Davis consciously or unconsciously mimicked the styles of various choreographers, especially Martha Graham (spider leg pliés) and Isadora Duncan (god-in-sight gazes, outstretched arms).
I'd like to see this work with those segments removed, so I can observe Davis's work unadorned. It's not so bad, but when flashdancing descends into what looks like outtakes from movies like Showgirls and Stayin' Alive, ouch.
Dramatic pop-up pictures
Nonetheless, Davis created dramatic pictures on the Perelman Theater stage with minimal but effective columns and curtains utilizing the tall proscenium. Some of the fetishista costuming worked well. Those blue and green feather Afros and blue organza breastplates look great flying around in the fight scenes. But the Matrix leatherette topcoats with mesh stocking made me think I was in hell with the Solid Gold Dancers.
The court act was fun, especially with the kids earnestly doing barre work, but the choreography was so stylistically different here that it was jarring, scattering the focus, and too elemental to be divertissement.
Most lacking is Davis's ability as a choreographer to compose transitional movement, which is so crucial in a story ballet. All of those dramatic pictures she creates are reduced to mere pop-ups, so there's no narrative flow and the story gets lost.
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