Phoenix rising
Giannandrea Poesio
Stories in Red Phoenix Dance Theatre, Sadler’s Wells Theatre Romeo and Juliet Royal Ballet Phoenix Dance Theatre is ‘25 years young’, as a filmed documentary shown halfway through last Thursday’s performance reminded us. The notion of youth is a relative one, particularly in the performing-arts world, where a quarter of a century is often regarded as a respectable old age, synonymous with a well-established reputation, a sound history and, arguably, a string of successes. Indeed, 25 years down the line, Phoenix remains a vibrant dance company that thrives on the collaboration with cutting-edge performancemakers. I was not surprised, therefore, to attend a programme, intriguingly entitled Stories in Red, that encompassed a wide variety of styles, techniques and forms; after all, artistic eclecticism has long been one of the company’s distinctive traits.
The new programme, which is already on tour, kicks off with Arthur Pita’s Snow White in Black a theatre-dance work revolving around a post-modern reading of the old fairy tale. The influence of Matthew Bourne, with whom Pita has worked, is detectable in the intertextual approach to the storyline. In the opening sequence, the tormented relationship between the evil queen and the young princess is thus a parallel to that seen in the movie Mommie Dearest, which illustrated Joan Crawford’s somewhat distorted and disturbed understanding of what it means to be a mother. Yann Seabra, in his drag rendition of Faye Dunaway’s interpretation of Joan Crawford, immediately captivated the audience by moving neurotically to a number of lines taken from the movie. Despite being intentionally camp and over the top, his rendition of Crawford never slips into predictable or cheap antics; behind the humorous caricature of this impossible mother lurks an unsettling, dark archetype we all try to exorcise through laughter. Next to him Tia Ourila is a Snow White who suddenly grows into an equally unsettling giant female figure thanks to the clever use of sticks.
It is a pity that, after the powerful impact of the two opening sequences, the action drags fairly unimpressively to what could have been a climactic finale had it not been thwarted by the lack of inventiveness, both in choreographic and dramatic terms, that characterises the rest of the work.
Pita’s post-modern narrative contrasted well with a powerful and quintessentially modern solo in the second part of the programme, choreographed by Darshan Singh Bhuller, the company’s current artistic director. Solo dances confined within geometrical boundaries traced by special lighting are hardly a novelty. Yet Laal stands out for the build-up of dramatic tension generated by the breathtaking physical prowess and technical bravura that the solo male dancer, Kimball Wong, displays in this work. Its abstract essence created a well-balanced shading with the second item of the central section, Pave up Paradise. Created by Ben Duke and Raquel Meseguer, this is a vivaciously intense narrative duet that focuses on a thought-provoking rereading of the Adam and Eve story. Fluid and visually engaging choreographic passages alternate with spoken sections, in which Adam (Kevin Turner) eventually admits to Eve (Tanya Richam-Odoi) that original sin was all his fault. The programme concludes with Nopalitos, by Javier de Frutos. Allegedly inspired by a vision of a ‘New World Medea Climbing the Pyramid of the Sun’, the work consists of a series of dances set to South American music. As usual, with de Frutos, the movement vocabulary stands out for inventiveness and lack of predictability. There are also some stunning visual moments — particularly at the beginning and at the end of the work — in which the dancer conjures up images that elicit myriad different reactions. The sole problem is, in my view, the overall length of the dance, which goes on for a song or two too long.
On Friday night Royal Ballet stars Tamara Rojo and Carlos Acosta tackled for the first time the roles of Juliet and Romeo in Kenneth MacMillan’s unsinkable choreographic version of the Shakespearean drama. Rojo opted for a much interiorised reading, which worked perfectly and splendidly in the solo scenes, but failed to provoke the necessary sparkle in the various duets. Acosta stunned many, myself included, for the refreshing ‘daredevil’ and at the same time mature interpretation of Romeo, even though he, too, had problems making his love for Rojo totally credible. Next to them, Thiago Soares stood out for a splendid, unusually introverted Tybalt. The rest of the company, alas, looked slightly unrehearsed.
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