From London to Italy
Giannandrea Poesio
Blessed be the Seventies for having been so kitsch, so colourfully naive and outrageously silly. Created in 1975 by the great master of ephemeral. spectacle Lindsey Kemp, The Parades Gone By is a summary of the camp trends that underscored theatre and dance-making at that time, in the form of an old-movie romp which caricatures every stereotype from Hollywood's golden era. What you get, therefore, is a series of danced and mimed vignettes: a Rudolph Valentino character tangoing all over the place; a blonde bombshell who performs an unsexy ballet number to Marlene Dietrich's immortal ditty `Ich bin die fesche Lola'; a crippled Lillian Gish character who wanders about on crutches to the songs of Disney's Snow White and then duets happily with an improbably blond hero to the sounds of a Jeanette MacDonald number; the inevitable and ubiquitous Count Dracula; and, finally, a sort of Fred and Ginger number that then becomes a pale stage adaptation of Busby Berkley's Lullaby of Broadway, inclusive of the final scream with which the original film sequence rather grimly concludes.
Yet, despite all the possible déjà vu, Parades makes you laugh, sing along and clap happily at the end, thus justifying Rambert Dance Company's decision to revive it for the current season at Sadler's Wells. It also contrasts sharply with Mats Ek's She was black, a post-modern piece packed with social themes, gender issues and some excellent refined humour. I only wish it had been danced with more respect for Ek's theatrical, technical and aesthetic canons, particularly in the choral sections where the company did not seem to be totally au fait with the Ekian style.
Luckily, two days later I was to see the same work performed by the Cullberg Ballet, the company Ek has long been associated with. Although comparisons are never fair, I have to say that the Cullberg performance made me appreciate in full the subtle dramatic tension that underscores the work, something I did not experience with Rambert. The Cullberg programme, which also included the breathtakingly lyrical A sort of and the colourfully abrasive Solo for Two, was part of a tribute to Ek's genius which took place at the Teatro Romolo Valli in Reggio Emilia, arguably the most significant centre of dance culture in Italy today.
While there, I also had the chance to sneak into the rehearsals of the forthcoming new Stravinsky programme that Mauro Bigonzetti — following the recent success of his Vespro for New York City Ballet — is preparing for Aterballetto, the company he directs. Judging from the little I saw, Bigonzetti's new version of Les Noces relies on and elicits the powerful erotic drive embedded in Stravinslcy's score, offering the first-rate dancers of the company a unique blend of technical and interpretative demands. The danced action is captivatingly fast-paced and temperatureraising.
After such an explosion of hot-blooded choreographic material, it was quite a shock to be confronted, back in London, by the rather cold, somehow unappealing and slightly dated linearity of Christopher Wheeldon's new creation for the Royal Ballet, Tryst. Wheeldon has always remained faithful to stylistic modes that many have labelled as neo-classical, and Tryst is no exception, even though it contains solutions that seem to go far beyond the boundaries of balletic neo-classicism. The architectural symmetry of the work and the poised, often elegant feel of the choreographic flow are indeed in line with a well-established tradition of classical theatrical dancing, which finds its roots in the work of 20th-century choreographer George Balanchine. It is a pity, however, that unlike Balanchine's memorable inventions Wheeldon's visually pleasing solutions have little theatrical impact and merely complement James MacMillan's music. The presence of modern-ish elements, which have little or nothing to do with the classical vocabulary, do not help either, and make one wonder whether such tame unballetic touches have been introduced to confer a contemporary feel to the whole without upsetting too much those who go to the ballet to see pretty steps.
The programme at the Royal Opera House that kicked off with Tlyst also included Antony Tudor's sugary and tiresome The Leaves are Fading and Frederick Ashton's 1976 classic A Month in the Country, which seems to have become the ghost of what once was a perfect example of dance-drama.
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