Paris: Full capacity, and a Paris Opera Ballet world premiere - Vancouver Ballet Society
By Marisa C. Hayes
As theatres across France kicked off the new season at full audience capacity, I found myself wondering how our experience of the Coronavirus pandemic informs the way we appreciate dance. Are we viewing performances through a pandemic gaze? Just as individuals living under lockdown often took time to reassess their lives, artists and cultural institutions have also questioned their goals and working methods, whether voluntarily or by necessity.
These shifts are apparent in the French capital, where the Paris Opera Ballet opened its season in late September with a six-week run of Alexander Ekman’s Play. Commissioned for the company in 2017, the reprise of the two-act production is timely. With Play, the Swedish choreographer asks: How do we care for the imagination? What is the importance of play in relationship to well-being?
Play presents a series of non-narrative vignettes in which humans and objects interact. The stage is bathed in warm light and bedecked with modular white cubes that descend from the rafters. The corps de ballet (there are no étoiles in this ensemble piece) push the giant building blocks across the stage, clomping over them on pointe, tapping against them to create curious rhythms, and eventually lifting them back into the air where they dangle from metal cables. A group of chamber musicians, composed primarily of saxophonists and singer Calesta Day, is stationed atop another white set piece, a wall of doors.
The first act is focused on the joyful possibilities of unbridled play, followed by a lull in the second act that depicts the grinding repetition of a workplace devoid of any such freedom. The ballet’s most emblematic scene features a cascade of green plastic balls that rain from the ceiling, filling the empty orchestra pit. Dancers dive in, wading through waist-high plastic, their upper limbs free to swing and toss. Much to the public’s delight, spillage flies out in all directions, with balls sailing across the front rows of the theatre.
The ballet is a crowd-pleaser but doesn’t quite manage to make good on its premise. Its motifs and choreography (stag horns glued to bike helmets, bourrés executed in bland undergarments, inviting the crowd to clap along) all seem too contrived for an untapped imagination to flourish. Despite these shortcomings, Silvia Saint Martin was radiant in the “Boy and girl play” section; and Caroline Osmont was a memorable office manager, displaying a keen talent for dance theatre. Katherine Higgins’ expressive presence is one we ought to see more of.
Ostensibly, Le Rouge et le noir, a three-act ballet inspired by Stendhal’s 19th-century novel of the same name, is unrelated to the pandemic. Yet the buzz surrounding the POB’s production — its first new story ballet in over ten years — has escalated due to its delayed premiere. Additionally, Pierre Lacotte, the 89-year-old choreographer best known for his reconstruction of Philippe Taglioni’s La Sylphide, oversaw early rehearsals via Zoom while waiting for French theatres to reopen.
Le Rouge et le noir premiered on October 15 and follows the brief life of Julien Sorel, a young provincial whose social ambitions go horribly wrong. While anchored in 19th-century aesthetics, the choreography takes a few liberties, including two poignant same-sex pas de deux that underscore the friendship between Julien and his childhood vicar. The duos performed by Julien and his female lovers are equally stunning, drawing on the lightness of Romantic batterie, while infusing the steps with new directional shifts, including horizontal lifts and alternate placement, such as back-to-back partnering. The choreographer is also responsible for the ballet’s lush designs, including its 400 costumes and 35 backdrops, the latter masterfully crafted to emulate black and white engravings.
The ballet is beautifully performed by a large cast that excels at its sublime pas de deux. But the choreography becomes so burdened by illustrating different episodes in the novel’s plot that Stendhal’s psychological explorations of class are all but forgotten. Thank goodness the accomplished cast is there to ensure that we feel something, just not what the author might have imagined.
Questions of care, or lack of, resurface in Hofesh Shechter’s Double Murder presented by Théâtre de la Ville — an institution that invites the choreographer’s troupe annually — at Théâtre du Châtelet in October. Opening the double bill, Clowns (2016) is a dark cabaret that explores our desensitization to violence. Evocative of early phantasmagoric magic lantern shows, the curtain opens to vaporous shadows, the dancers’ black silhouettes visible through a haze of smoke. Rustic yellow lighting from the stage floor emits an eerie glow.
There’s no empathy to be found as an impish ring of clowns performs a macabre circus. Ten performers hunch their backs and contort to the relentless cycle of drumbeats (ominously evocative of automatic weapons) composed by the choreographer. Dancers thrust their torsos and slice through air with their arms in rhythmic phrasing, shifting rapidly from creepy smiles to brief balletic bursts, taunting us to applaud their every exploit. Against this backdrop, individuals are stabbed, shot, and gutted with theatrical aplomb. It’s a murderous spree bolder than anything Hollywood’s short attention span could produce, forcing us to confront our own riveted gaze.
According to program notes, Shechter’s 2021 work, The Fix, advocates for a gentler way of moving in a safe space. Compared to the oozing cynicism of Clowns, the new work is performed like one giant campfire sing-along (complete with guitar). Following the gorgeous dancing and the naïve hugging that transpires as performers circulate among the public for a few gentle embraces, we are left to wonder: How does this performance demonstrate a different way of working? Although masked audience members are asked if they agree to be hugged, the close contact is still risky during an ongoing pandemic. Movement-wise, Shechter’s trademark spasms of group synchronicity and individual divergence are all present. Are a few unsolicited hugs and kumbayas really evocative of change? Or can we accept that some transitions simply remain invisible? Perhaps that’s the point. We’re all returning to the theatre dramatically different, whether conscious of it or not.
