Nijinsky -- Hamburg Ballet Performance San Francisco Ballet Performance, Program 1
Nijinsky
Hamburg
Ballet Performance at the San Francisco Ballet
February
19, 2013
When I attend a theatrical performance, I am always most
interested in the concept of the piece, it's psychological import and meaning,
it's cultural and historical significance.
I think about who wrote this and why.
What were they trying to get across.
In this performance those aspects are not easy to
grasp. Unless you are an expert on the
history of ballet and know a lot about the life of Nijinsky, you are not likely
to get all the references and allusions in this performance. I went with a friend who happens to hold a
doctoral degree in musicology and she did not get it either, although she got a
lot more of it than I did. She at least
knew who he was and his significance, and was able to make connections to some
of the other ballets he had been in and she knew a most of the music that was
used. But she did not know the
biographical details of Nijinsky's life and was thus unable to understand much
of what was going on.
I was able to discern that it was a kind of retrospective,
that many of the sequences represented the contents of the lead dancer's mind,
reminiscences of things that had happened in the past. There was at least one and probably multiple
triangles involving two men and a woman.
I'm not sure if it was the same woman in all of them. There was a wedding, that was clear, but the
character of the marriage was not clear.
The second act seemed to be a descent into psychosis with references to
the war (World War 1) and many deaths.
The second act had a surreal quality that was less accessible to being
grasped intellectually, but in my eyes it had a more powerful emotional and
psychological impact.
This ballet should be very popular among experts on the
ballet. The general public will have a
harder time with it unless a special effort is made to prepare in advance. I studied for several months before attending
the Ring of the Nibelung cycle in
2011, and that preparation paid off.
However, I don't really want to have to do that with every performance,
but this is one of that sort where significant early preparation would make a
big difference. Art should be
challenging and it should push us beyond our natural boundaries of
understanding and perception. My feeling,
in this case, is that the authors did not think enough about who the audience
was going to be and the impact that it would have on a naive viewer, which is
what most of them are going to be, at least in the United States. Since this is a large scale production aimed
at an audience made up of people who are mostly not experts on ballet and
certainly not steeped in the details of Vaslav Nijinsky's life, it could have
been done in a way that would have made it more immediately accessible. This production might have worked well as an
opera. It does seem to lend itself to
that kind of grand conceptual enactment.
The verbal aspect available in opera would have helped a lot in terms of
making it intelligible to a viewer not steeped in the life of Nijinsky.
Having said all of that, I still like this. I liked that it was a big concept, that they
were trying to do something with substance and powerful emotional significance,
as opposed to gentle entertainment. This
was a performance with real import, although the character of it was not
immediately evident. It had narrative
elements, it had subjective explorations of the inner life, it had allusions to
historical events that were of relevant to the story line as well as the psychological
development of the characters. It was imaginatively
staged, flawlessly executed, and superbly performed. It is the kind of performance I like to
attend. I came to it unprepared, which
was my own fault. But even unprepared
this ballet wins the audience over on the strength of its imaginative
conception and first rate execution.
SF Ballet Performance, Program 1
February 2, 2013
There were three ballets on this performance program. The first was Suite en Blanc Composed by Eduoard Lalo, and choreographed by Serge
Lifar. This is a very conservative,
traditional ballet. Light on substance,
but strong on aesthetics and technique.
If you like pretty pictures and dainty, picturesque movements of agility
and grace, then you'll love this. Superbly
performed by the SF Ballet dancers. This is visually pleasant to watch, but basically
light entertainment. Nothing challenging
or particularly interesting to my taste.
In the
Night was the second ballet.
Choreographed by Jerome Robbins, it uses four Chopin Nocturnes as a back
drop to four male-female duos. Despite
the fact that the four Nocturnes vary somewhat in character, the four dances
were all very similar. It struck me that
the dancing did not fit with the music.
These Nocturnes are introspective pieces. They are narcissistic rather than
romantic. The choreographer treats them
as love songs with a happy ending. I
don't think so. I think the
choreographer misunderstood the Chopin Nocturnes. The second one against Op. 55 No. 1 was
particularly offensive in this respect.
This opening section of this Nocturne is tender and delicate, but the
middle section is rather distressed and contentious, in high contrast to the
sweet calm of the framing segments. None
of this was reflected in the dance. The
dance was rather bland and had a sameness throughout. The final one, the famous E-flat Nocturne Op.
9 No. 2, is a dreamlike reverie, a lullaby almost. It is reflective and somewhat nostalgic. But the dancing didn't come anywhere near
that kind of feeling. It's weird
watching a dance performance where the dancing seems to have nothing to do with
the music that is backing it. I think
this one needs to be rethought.
The final segment, the World Premier of Borderlands, by composers Joel Cadbury and Paul Stoney, and Wayne
McGregor as choreographer, scenic and costume designer, and Lucy Carter as
lighting designer, was by far the most interesting of the three pieces. The style was very different from the first
two selections. This was hyperactive, with
frantic, discrete movements emphasized by strobe lights that seemed to reflect
a temperament, and perhaps a lifestyle, of the modern era that is atomized,
choppy, jerky, and abrupt. The
soundtrack -- it wasn't exactly music -- is too loud. It's rather assaultive. Perhaps that is the object to blast the
audience with harsh sounds and oppress them into a kind of unpleasant
resistance. It fits with the anxious,
staccato, discontinuous movements, but it draws attention away from the dancers,
overwhelming the audience with obnoxious sound.
Differentiation between the genders is much reduced. Distinct genders are still discernible but very
much blended. Identity of gender becomes
indistinct. However, the sexes are very
much interactive, touching, embracing, well engaged with one another. The middle section cast in orange light is a
man apparently trying to invigorate a woman who keeps falling away from him in
a kind of lethargy. She doesn't seem to
have the will to keep up with him and remain connected with his interest. But in the succeeding segments she casts off
the deadness within herself and becomes a much more alive and responsive partner, and
they become a more involved couple with smoother, more fluid movements. The ballet ends on a positive note with the
couple dancing with energy, and mutual engagement. It was by far the most interesting of the
three selections of the evening, and all were superbly presented by the San
Francisco Ballet dancers at their usual top level of performance.