MuzArts Triple Bill of Clug, Cherkaoui and McGregor at The London Coliseum

MuzArts Triple Bill of Edward Clug, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Wayne McGregor, The London Coliseum, December 7

The second London program from MuzArts is a triple bill comprising the choreographic work of Edward Clug, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Wayne McGregor. In terms of dancers it’s a mix and match program with principals of the Bolshoi and Mariinsky working alongside first soloist Katja Khaniukova from English National Ballet, principal Edward Watson of the Royal Ballet and five dancers from SNG Maribor Ballet. 

Radio & Juliet is Clug’s reimagining of Shakespeare’s tale in choreography and film to a selection of early songs from Radiohead; the play on words in the title points to the emotional core of the work and indicates its primary perspective. In this version, Juliet has not taken her own life but is slowly piecing together the emotional turmoil of the recent tragic events. Using three sections of film to contextualise and weave the narrative together, Clug begins with a hand-held sequence — accompanied appropriately by Radiohead’s Motion Picture Soundtrack — that enters a palatial apartment to find Juliet in a black bodice lying alone in a rumpled bed. There’s a flashback of an angry argument, perhaps with her father, before she sits in front of the window to contemplate. Her thoughts find form in Clug’s fast-paced and clinically precise stage choreography. A procession of six men dressed in dark suits with jackets open over bare chests introduces the cast of characters without identifying them, though Mariinsky principal Denis Matvienko’s muscular presence and technical proficiency signal him out as Romeo while the identities of the others are suggested through their subsequent actions. Khaniukova takes her place in this macho environment as Juliet herself might have done, her stage character portrayed in controlled, physical sensuality and in her headstrong determination to follow her heart. This is where Radiohead’s playlist gets under the skin of the entire production; Clug’s choreography, Tomaž Premzl’s lighting and Leo Kulaš’ costumes all combine to visualise the visceral forces of jealousy and hatred that tear relationships apart, while the music provides an emotional anchor inside Juliet’s head that holds them together. Towards the end the camera revisits Juliet’s apartment; still in her black corset she is lying in her bath with eyes closed, remembering Romeo’s final moments that she plays out briefly on stage. The camera remains for a last wistful look around the empty rooms before leaving by the way it had entered. 

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Faun features Bolshoi Ballet principals Anastasia Stashkevich and Vyacheslav Lopatin in this tale of sexual arousal that Vaslav Nijinsky first choreographed in 1912 to Claude Debussy’s score, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, after the poem by Stéphane Mallarmé. Cherkaoui uses the same score with additional musical inserts by Nitin Sawhney. As Lopatin’s appearance in the Zakharova program showed, he has a fine classical technique but in Faun he undresses the classicism for a more pliable, plastic form, providing a poignant reminder of Nijinsky’s own chameleon propensity. In the opening solo Lopatin’s body exudes the lecherous and lascivious passions of the faun in the narcissistic, introverted enjoyment of movement and space. When Stashkevich arrives on stage, as imagined in Hussein Chalayan’s pastoral tunic, she looks more chaste but the subsequent rapture of the choreographic language blends both bodies in a shared jouissance.

Wayne McGregor claims responsibility for choreography and direction in the world première of McGregor + Mugler, while Manfred Thierry Mugler takes on the art direction and costume design. It is the latter that predominantly occupies our eyes while McGregor’s choreography — never strong in classical content or partnering — succeeds in making Edward Watson and the Bolshoi’s prima ballerina Olga Smirnova look as if they are performing a pastiche of an under-rehearsed pas de deux to tracks by Holly Herndon and Nils Frahm. While Watson is clearly not at his best, Smirnova is at the height of her career but she has trouble emerging from McGregor and Mugler’s framework. Mugler’s design of the flesh-like bodysuits, face masks, top knots and various reflective helmets, breast pieces, cod pieces, shin pads and amulets, effectively hides the dancers, and by making the masks so indistinguishable from their faces — certainly from a viewpoint halfway back in the stalls — we see no difference when they ritually exchange them. Perhaps that’s the point. The sophistication of Lucy Carter’s lighting is caught up in the pretension of its context, contributing to a spectacle in which the dancers are unwitting appendages to the hubris of its creators. 

The Bolshoi Ballet 2019 Livestream of La Bayadère

The Bolshoi Ballet’s Livestream of La Bayadère, The Gate, January 20

Having seen the livestream of the Bolshoi’s Nutcracker and enjoyed the experience of seeing the production not only in the way it was choreographed but also in the way it was presented so clearly on film, the subsequent livestream of the Bolshoi’s La Bayadère is disappointing.

Considered the final masterpiece of choreographer Marius Petipa, the ballet was first presented at the Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre in St. Petersburg in 1877 and comprised four acts. The first three detailed a complex story of love, betrayal, power and jealousy in an exotic Indian Raj context; the third act, known as the Kingdom of the Shades, is a white, ethereal composition of extraordinary beauty that imagines the meeting of the two lovers, Nikya and Solor, in the afterworld, free from the intrigues of the Rajah’s court. It is this act that is often presented alone as La Bayadère but whenever the complete ballet is produced the original four acts are often condensed to three — as in Yuri Grigorovich’s current Bolshoi production — based on Vakhtang Chabukiani’s 1941 version for the Kirov/Maryinsky Ballet: the first act is the introduction of the principal characters and the exposition of the story with lots of mime; the second is the death of Nikiya by poisoning prior to the wedding of Solor and the Rajah’s daughter Gamzatti with all its divertissements, and the final act is the Kingdom of the Shades. 

There have been many versions and reconstructions since 1877, each of which appears further and further away not so much from Petipa’s choreography, but from the circumstances of La Bayadère’s creation for what was then the Imperial Russian Ballet. That its Tsarist association survived the 1917 Revolution is a story of tenacity and political sleight-of-hand described in Christina Ezrahi’s fascinating book, Swans of the Kremlin, but even as it has become one of today’s most recognizable classical ballets, it is hard to engage in the story. Presenter Katya Novikova suggested the subject of La Bayadère was inspired by Tsarevich Alexander’s recent visit to India; certainly the Indian iconography and music is presented entirely through a western sensibility. The interest in the ballet, beyond the Kingdom of the Shades, lies more with the interpretation of the roles and the quality of the dancing.

In the first two acts, which depend heavily on mime, the performances of Olga Smirnova as Nikiya, Olga Marchenkova as Gamzatti and Artemy Belyakov as Solor never seem to gel, either within themselves, with each other or with the story; the love, jealousy and betrayal are indicated but not fully embodied. In a narrative that is essentially a western orientalist concoction, the portrayal of human values with which we can empathise is vital. The closest Smirnova comes to this — and the closest Petipa came to an oriental inspiration — is in her sensual confession of love for Solor at the feet of Gamzatti in the second act. 

Throughout La Bayadère we are, of course, only present through the subjectivity of the camera lens directed by Isabelle Julien for Pathé Live, and what the camera can see is not necessarily what the audience can see; the intimacy of the closeup is intrusive in a way that a regular view from the audience can never achieve. Classical ballet has prescribed ways of moving and telling stories that belong within the proscenium setting; when select cinematic processes translate these narrative elements to the big screen, they can affect our perception of the art form. Although we will watch intently every move and gesture of a principal dancer during a solo, it is always within the context of the stage setting. Julien’s focus during La Bayadère tends to replace the ‘best seat in the house’ for a contrived point of view; from a purely balletic perspective, it is false. This is particularly noticeable in the famous entrance of the 32 dancers in the Kingdom of the Shades. The choreography forms a slow, painterly procession of arabesque poses that can only be fully appreciated on the scale of the proscenium stage. Julien instead makes a cinematic choice to show only a part of the composition, one that focuses on a narrowly defined vertical angle that removes the magic of the horizontal effect. It is an instance of the live stream inserting its own visual interpretation of the ballet rather than respecting the conventions of balletic perspective; instead of enhancing that perspective through the camera, Julien removes us further from what Petipa had imagined.