Dance
Offenbach in the Underworld (Scottish Ballet, New Victoria Theatre, Woking)
Underworld delight
Giannandre a Poesio
The contagious buoyancy and the catchy immediacy of Jacques Offenbach's music has appealed to and tempted many choreographers. Yet not many have been able to see beyond the irresistible dance- ability of his tunes and explore in full the complexity of his scores. Only a select num- ber of dance-makers, such as Leonide Mas- sine, Ninette de Valois, Antony Tudor, Maurice Mart and Peter Darrell, have managed to create, in different epochs, outstanding works that had none of the vul- garity and the predictability which inform most of the numerous `Offenbachiana' ballets.
Fortunately, as soon as I saw Offenbach's head peering out from the centre of a sumptuous theatre curtain, while his hands and feet appeared at the four corners of the same curtain as a caricature of a disem- bodied gigantic Vitruvian man, I knew I was in for a treat. Robert North's Offen- bach in the Underworld — a title that repro- duces, whether intentionally or not, that of an illustrious predecessor, Tudor's Offen- bach in the Underworld (1954-55) — is an ingeniously entertaining and entertainingly ingenious ballet that relies on a mixture of innovative choreography and a light-heart- edly simple, but effective dramatic pretext Having reached the end of his earthly life, the composer ends up in the same underworld he had once celebrated in his most famous opera-comique. His muse, however, grants him the chance to return to earth to see what has become of Paris, the city where he was known as 'the little Mozart of the Champs Elysees', at the beginning of the 20th century.
There, Offenbach meets Rodin, Stravin- sky, Diaghilev, Cocteau, Picasso and Les Six, has a sort of artistic quarrel with the representatives of both new culture and music and ends his little venture into the future discovering that, in spite of the high art of the Diaghilevians, his jolly music, symbolised by the famous can-can tune, will always remain synonymous with the freewheeling life of the vine lumiere.
The dance is, therefore, packed with all sorts of choreographic, musical, literary and visual references. The protagonist's muse, for example, has a lot in common with the supernatural being that promises fame and posterity to the drunken Hof- mann at the end of Offenbach's 1881 opera The Tales of Hoffmann. Similarly, the arrival of Jean Cocteau — cleverly por- trayed as an androgynous figure on pointe shoes — is accompanied by the sudden appearance from each wing by chandelier- bearing naked arms seen in Cocteau's film La Belle et le Bete. Whether this game of specialist quotations impinges on the appreciation of the work is difficult to say. Indeed, the live equivalent of Picasso's scantily dressed minotaur left several mem- bers of the audience puzzled, and when six dancers appeared with 'Les Six' written on their backs, the woman sitting next to me asked her teenage niece what lessix' meant.
Yet the feeling of general enjoyment remained throughout the performance, thus showing that the choreographic inven- tiveness which underscores the work and finds its peak in both the duet focusing on Rodin's 'The Kiss' and the final can-can, counteracts beautifully with the alleged pedantry of the various references. The success of the evening should also be ascribed to the fine dancing and artistry of each member of the Scottish Ballet, a com- pany that seldom lets its audiences down.
Previous page
