The TOWER Season of RED Review
Red, with the Royal NZ Ballet at Aotea Centre
WHAT : The TOWER Season of RED
WHERE : Aotea Centre at THE EDGE, Auckland
WHEN : Thursday 14 February, 2008
REVIEWED BY : Bernadette Rae, NZ Herald
The Royal New Zealand Ballet is a perennially young company. Situated on the far side of the world, it is inevitable that many of its keenest and brightest will set off for international experience.
They have to - and they are encouraged to. And the ranks are bravely restored with the next batch of bright young things.
And because we are on the far side of the world, it has also been an important focus of the company, at least since the days of Matz Skoog's artistic direction, to source a constant flow of great guest teachers, colourful choreographers, vibrantly varied works and the broadest of possible dance experiences to the company and its audience. Even though dancers come and dancers go, the company's ethos and its repertoire has been well-steeped in a pretty sophisticated dance brew.
Their stunning achievement with the challenging and gorgeous Jorma Elo piece, Plan to A, in this new triple-bill programme, is patent proof of the success of this energetic outreach.
Elo has taken the international scene by storm with his highly original choreographic work. It is intense and intensely musical, funny, touching, quirky. Seven dancers - Clytie Campbell, Antonia Hewitt, Lucy Balfour, Paul Mathews, Eliot Rudolph, Michael Braun and Andrew Simmons - took the Aotea Centre by storm on opening night, with their riveting performance in this most riveting of choreographies.
Closely clad in fiery red, fuelled by the surging medieval violins of Heinrich Biber, they moved their bodies and our astonished souls in ways most of us had never previously experienced. Peak performance, for sure.
Paquita, legendary Russian choreographer Marius Petipa's tutu spectacular, was dished up for starters, newly garnished in bouncy scarlet tutus and a modicum of bling. If the initial lines were a little ragged, the corps de ballet warmed up smartly to the task in hand and Yu Takayama was her usual breathtakingly beautiful self. Abigail Boyle took the honours for lyricism, and Michael Braun and Jacob Chown fired up the male roles splendidly.
The strength of the male dancers also shone through in Adrian Burnett's Abhisheka, a hypnotic study of ancient rituals of purification with a slightly menacing shadow side, and set to the compelling composition of John Psathas.
Far outshines previous work
WHAT : The TOWER Season of RED
WHERE : Aotea Centre at THE EDGE, Auckland
WHEN : Thursday 14 February - Sunday 17 February, 2008
REVIEWED BY : Felicity Molloy, Theatreview
Three distinct choreographies ran a gamut of classical danced possibilities. Opening with Paquita, choreographed by Marius Petipa (dance composer, Ludwig Minkus) as a debut work at St Petersburg Imperial Theatre in 1847, this work had delicious Spanish-isms both musically and gesturally. Petipa's last port of call had been in Spain. He escaped from a duel engendered by an illicit liaison with a marquess.
As social commentary it is almost dry, but somehow the dancers moved beyond the choreography and the historical story was still there embedded in their expressivity and lines. In terms of structure it is obvious that Paquita had been choreographed to showcase pets and baby stars of the Imperial Ballet.
Pets and baby stars of this company for this dance included some very nice detailed work by Jacob Chown, Adriana Harper and Catherine Eddy with the precision of Yu Takayama one again to the fore. A dancer to watch is Tonia Looker. Although a dance personality slightly at odds with the more experienced dancers, her exuberance and dynamic line is noticeable amongst the ranks.
The second work, Abhisheka, choreographed by Adrian Burnett, was aesthetically far removed from the previous work, and came almost as a shock. I had just seen a preview of another dance work prior to my arrival at The Edge and had been at imagination play installing some of those bodily shapes and contemporary dance movements onto the floor of Paquita's dance.
The opening glimpse of a familiar contemporary image of falling sparkly light/ dust on a single dancer body heaved me back into the more obvious intention of last night's programme. New Zealand ballet is of age.
Although the dance has a tentative choreographic start, the clear elegance and artistry of the work became easily exhibited by the dancers moving bodies. In the next sections, the prolonged use of duets exposed the strength and grace of the company as well as their style. Although the female costumes in this work seemed somewhat at odds with the bare and leggy nature of the movement, other design details of music (John Psathas), lighting (John Rayment) and set (Tracey Grant Lord), captured a refined, intelligent purpose.
Although Plan to A, choreographed by Jorma Elo, is described in the programme as abstract, I would describe it as kinaesthetically vibrant and quite specific. There were many clear images in the dancers' bodies and in their movements; gymnastic, circus, relational.
This is not so much abstraction as intention for us as audience to piece together a response. In the exploration of rapid arm movement, which seems to have taken hold of much of contemporary dance vocabularies, these dancers seem to strike an offer. Like us or beat it.
The Royal New Zealand Ballet Company's TOWER season of Red brought forth some excellent moments of theatre. This programme far outshines previous work and delivers to its market, audiences of New Zealand and beyond a very interesting product.
Still capturing the traditionally bound social parameters of ballet, Red at the same time offers us glimpses of a singular global culture, which the art form has always held.