Dance
The Dream; Song of the Earth (Royal Ballet)
Unhappy pairing
Giannandrea Poem
Theoretically, both the artistic choices and the reasons for the creation of double, triple and mixed ballet bills should become clear by the time the evening is over. Alas, this is not always the case, as the new Royal Ballet double-feature programme demonstrated last Saturday. Despite being representative works of the two major British choreographic strands of the mid-1960s, Frederick Ashton's The Dream and Kenneth MacMillan's Song of the Earth are too stylistically and thematically different to be an ideal match. Nor do they create one of those striking juxtapositions that programme-makers resort to whenever they are short of ideas. The two ballets, therefore, end up looking as if they had been hastily thrown together with little or no consideration for the detrimental effects that the oddity of the combination has on each.
Not unlike La File Mal Gardee, created by Ashton in 1960, The Dream, premiered in 1964, is permeated with witty nostalgia. Derived and adapted from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the ballet highlights Ashton's unique narrative talent as well as his ability to create an outstandingly fluid choreographic text by mixing together disparate ingredients. Recognisable solutions from the Romantic ballet repertoire, visual references to both Victorian iconography and Victorian theatre, and characteristic popular dance movements from the 1960s mingle beautifully in a crescendo of parody, comedy and sheer lyricism. Thirtyseven years after its creation, the choreography of The Dream is still looking daringly innovative thanks to the chiaroscuro of the movement vocabulary, which highlights the contrast between the free supernatural beings and the intentionally stereotyped
mortals, depicted here as two-dimensional types.
Song of the Earth, on the other hand, is neither a narrative nor a text-bound dance work, even though it draws upon Mahler's celebrated song cycle. In line with the revolutionary formulae that informed the European dance scene in 1965, MacMillan's creation is a psychological/allegorical ballet that lends itself to myriad subjective readings. In this work, too, the movement vocabulary stands out for being a mixture of pure classical formulae and more pedestrian-like movements, similar to the ones frequently adopted by Maurice Bejart, the undisputed father of European 'modern' ballet. Still, the juxtaposition of the two movement genres has nothing to do with the Ashtonian combination of both orthodox and unorthodox balletic solutions. MacMillan's modernity stems from and relies on a vivid juxtaposition, whereas Ashton's innovations are more fluidly and less stridently amalgamated with the ballet text, thus looking more like choreographic twists than stylistically contrasting sections.
Needless to say, the wit of The Dream creates an uplifting, carefree atmosphere that does not tie in with the darker, more cerebral tones of the MacMillan work. Inevitably, the rather abrupt move from one mode to another undermines the appreciation of the second work, or thwarts, in retrospective, the enjoyment of the first. In each case, some action is required to readdress the balance, for I see no reason why two such masterworks should suffer from bad programming.
On the opening night the dancing needed a bit of polishing too, particularly in Song of the Earth. Apart from a lack of coordination in the various groups and some tension-related accidents, the performance revealed that not all the dancers had fully absorbed either the work's depths or its many allegorical layers, namely the two features that inform the correct technical execution of the ballet. Even excellent artists such as Tamara Rojo, Carlos Acosta and Jonathan Cope looked, at times, lost and unable to make the most of the continuing action.
Although the corps de ballet showed a distinct dislike for keeping in line and dancing in unison, The Dream benefited from the superb performance of Johan Kobborg as Oberon, one of the best if not the best after Anthony Dowell, the original interpreter. As Titania, Leanne Benjamin delved deeply into the sensuous side of the character, but often went over the top, turning the fairy's childish mischief and subtle sexual drive into exaggerated coquetry and earthly seductiveness. Giacomo Ciriaci, as Puck, was one of the hits of the evening, for he managed to compensate for some not very evident technical faults with an outstanding interpretation of the role. The other hits were Luke Heidon as Bottom and Nicola Tranah as Helena.
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