Dance
The Tchaikovsky Trilogy (Peter Schaufuss Ballet, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh)
Dream on
Giannandrea Poesio
The complex symbolism that permeates Tchaikovsky's ballets — Swan Lake, Sleep- ing Beauty and The Nutcracker — has inspired a wealth of unconventional pro- ductions. While most choreographers have delved into the psychological and metaphorical nuances of each work sepa- rately, the Danish dancer and choreogra- pher Peter Schaufuss is probably the first to have explored the possibility of estab- lishing thematic links between the three ballets. Tchaikovsky's tormented life and the way it informed his ballet music have long been two of Schaufuss's inspirational factors, as those who saw his version of The Nutcracker — where biographical refer- ences to the composer's life were interpo- lated in the original libretto — might recall.
With this 'trilogy', presented last week in Edinburgh, Schaufuss has moved a step further. Each work has been carefully pruned of the ornamental balletic surplus, in order to make the new reading more direct and accessible to a contemporary audience. The original text has been reduced considerably and the standard movement vocabulary has been turned into a more modern combination of ballet steps and post-modern solutions. And the cre- ation of recurring characters and dramatic themes allows a new approach to each story-line and confers a sort of Wagnerian continuity on the entire trilogy, which echoes the parallels drawn in the past by a dance scholar between Wagner's operas and Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty.
`Of course I won't pick someone up if I don't like the look of them.' The three titles of the Tchaikovsky trilo- gy are seen as choreographic metaphors referring to the composer's life in the form of three different 'dreams'. Swan Lake is the 'nightmare' of a man looking for his own sexual identity and suffering from his being unable to make the correct choices. Sleeping Beauty, on the other hand, is the `sensual dream', where the covert sexual symbols contained in the original fairy-tale become synonymous with the acceptance of one's own persona. Finally, The Nutcracker is the 'happy dream', which corresponds to the more serene state of mind one should experience once the inner turmoil has calmed down.
According to Schaufuss, the three works correspond chronologically to Tchai- kovsky's painful discovery of his homosexu- ality while experiencing a troublesome marriage (the first Swan Lake, 1877), the acceptance of his homosexuality (Sleeping Beauty, 1890) and the hypothetical achieve- ment of some inner happiness (The Nutcracker, 1892). Pity that the composer never came to terms with his feelings, as demonstrated by the constant pessimism that informs his works and that his last bal- let was anything but a happy experience. The embittering failure of the first perfor- mance, in fact, was followed by the com- poser's suicide.
Historical flaws notwithstanding, the tril- ogy works smoothly and builds up to an intriguing, if not moving, finale; at the end of The Nutcracker, a female figure in white appears to comfort the so-called 'dream- master' — Schaufuss's representation of Tchaikovsky, a key figure present in all three ballets — very much like the muse celebrating Hoffman's glory at the end of Offenbach's Tales of Hoffman.
Not all the new solutions, however, work well. While I found particularly interesting the portrayal of the evil fairy Carabosse in Sleeping Beauty as the Princess's jealous half-sister and a projection of the deceiving Black Swan, I had difficulties in accepting her symbolic presence in The Nutcracker, where she does not seem to have any raison d'être. Similarly, it remains a mystery why Princess Aurora should fall asleep having worn the wrong pair of pointe shoes — her half-sister's gift — instead of pricking her finger, and also why, according to the pro- gramme note, the wicked present should make her 'suffocate'. It would appear that in looking for new dramatic and choreo- graphic ways of reading the three stories Schaufuss has not been able to resist the temptation of keeping all the possible read- ings he could come up with, instead of opt- ing for one and sticking to it.
In my opinion, only The Nutcracker stands out for dramatic and choreographic consistency. Yet I could not help enjoying the humorous references to the standard choreographic version in the new Sleeping Beauty, as well as the powerful way the character of the `dream-master' is depicted throughout the trilogy: now silent witness of the action, now active participant, assuming the identities of magic helpers such as the Lilac Fairy or Drosselmeyer.
The major difficulty in assessing Schau- fuss's new readings stems mainly from the knowledge of illustrious precedents, such as those signed by Mats Ek, Matthew Bourne, Mark Morris, John Neumeier and Roland Petit. Although comparisons would not be fair — after all the given story-lines and the musical scores are bound to prompt similar images — it is inevitable that some ideas (such as the male swans, the male snowflakes, the roller-skating bal- lerina and the queen giving birth to Princess Aurora) appear rather dejai vu. This is why I would have expected more innovative choreographic solutions to com- pensate for the lack of interpretative novel- ty. Unfortunately, Schaufuss's choreo- graphy is as inconsistent as his theatrical choices are. Fortunately, however, he can rely on a company of absolutely fabulous dancers one can only dream of.
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