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Reviews

Nureyev's Children

by Carol Pardo
copyright © 2001 by Carol Pardo
Summer 2001

The health of a ballet company is a fragile thing, dependent as it is on the unstable alchemy between dancers, repertory and direction. For the last two decades or so, thanks in great part to the presence and legacy of Rudolf Nureyev in the company and to Claude Bessy and her staff at its school, the Paris Opera Ballet has been producing more gold than lead. But the precariousness of such good fortune hung heavily in the air while watching three programs in Paris this spring: an all-Kylían evening, a new work by Jean-Claude Galotta and the school’s graduation performances of Albert Aveline’s Coppélia and John Neumeier’s Yonderling.

Kylían is beloved in part, I suspect, because he talks (or writes) a good ballet. Program notes are extensive, the programs of the ballets grand in their aims. Doux mensonges (Gentle Lies), created for the company in 1999, is a pas de quatre for two couples set to Gregorian chants and madrigals by Gesualdo and Monteverdi and sung by members of Les Arts Florissants. According to the program notes, the ballet is about the little lies we tell ourselves to make it through the day, the lies lovers tell each other to keep a relationship afloat, the lies inherent in theatrical presentation. Kylían adds another layer to this last by projecting onstage a film of the performers offstage. Looking at the piece from the audience, however, one could be excused for believing that the subject of the ballet is the stage machinery of the Palais Garnier. All entrances and exits are made through trapdoors; forbidding looking walls blocks the wings. The singers appear at bust-length through the floor. We see the guts of the machinery on film as the dancers ready themselves for their next entrance. It all looks interesting—until the visual novelty quickly wears off—but I am not convinced that choreography is central to Kylían’s theatrical event. Anything could take place on stage as long as what takes place is also provided simultaneously on film.

Stepping Stones, the next work on the program, also has grandiose ambitions. It is nothing less than the choreographer’s homage to the past, to the traditions of classical dance. (The women are on pointe for the only time during the evening.) The ballet’s inspiration is a remark made by an Australian aborigine about keeping native dances alive: “Because my father taught me this dance, I, in turn, must transmit it and teach it to my son.” Kylían’s take on this is to adorn one side of the stage with three cats whose roots are supposed to be Egyptian but which look more like Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear by way of Fernando Botero. A large triangular form with a circle cut from its middle hangs from the other side of the stage and because of its lighting becomes the most compelling element of the stage picture. The dancers, clad in black, spend much of their time passing around boxes that contain reproductions of sculpture from pre-historic times to Brancusi which the audience never sees. Any interest in aboriginal traditions—in tradition in general—would have been far better served by a visit to the contemporaneous exhibition of boomerangs at the Australian Embassy.

Bella Figura is another meditation on the real and the theatrical, its vocabulary consisting of two-dimensional squiggles until the third of seven parts when, all of a sudden, the movement vocabulary moves into the third dimension. One’s attention is caught and the ballet becomes interesting. Such good fortune, however, does not last. The penultimate movement is a cat fight executed by two topless women in long scarlet skirts. How to beat that? The finale brings back the full cast while a barbecue pit spits fire upstage right.

Jean-Claude Galotta’s Nosferatu owes less to Stoker, Murnau or Klaus Kinski than the recent rash of Dracula-inspired ballets would lead one to suspect. Rather, its source is more self-referential: the idea of the vampire serves the choreographer as a point of departure toward a consciously sought sensibility in opposition to that of his earlier Variations d’Ulysse, all turquoise and white and blindingly bright Mediterran-ean light. Nosferatu takes place in some urban under-ground, part the crap game in the sewer from Guys and Dolls, part West Side Story. Gray and spare, what light there is enters through a roundel—like a manhole cover—at the top of the stage. The dancers are dressed in slightly theatrical versions of street clothes in shades of blue, brown and gray. Set to music by Pascal Dusapin, the piece begins with the introduction of the vampire and his five central victims with a female ensemble followed by soli and dances for small groups followed in turn by six pas de deux (including some gender-bending) each of which is followed by a group dance in silence ending with the finale for the entire cast of thirty-eight. Having repudiated narrative, Galotta uses the structure of a theme, set out by the vampire figure, and variations, picked up everyone else, to indicate the subjugation of the group to the will of “Nosferatu.” Since the piece unfolds so softly and gently, this structure could reflect a growing sense of community among a group of the otherwise marginalized. Even at the end with the dancers supine on the stage, one is as likely to think of sleep, with its inferred reawakening, as of death. Nosferatu is not a great work, but in its sharper focus and tighter structure, it represents a giant step forward for the choreographer in his collaboration with the POB.

The company’s school also included a work of late twentieth century Euroballet on its program, John Neumeier’s Yonderling which I first saw two years ago. The piece has not improved on further acquaintance; it is still overblown and hollow. The student dancers give it much more than they receive.

Of far greater interest was the revival of Albert Aveline’s production of Coppélia. After some erratic tempi during the overture, the curtain rose on a pastoral village, bathed in golden light (based, as were the costumes, on the originals for Saint-Leon’s production of 1870). The plot and theme are familiar from productions of Coppélia based on Russian descendance. In keeping with French practice, act three has disappeared. In contrast to original practice, Franz is danced by a male dancer rather than a woman en travesti. Dramatic details differ from the Russian strain: for example, the doll Coppélia never moves, never acknowledges either Swanhilda or Franz. Some of the choreography cannot be from the original (Franz is given a solo in act 1). Some of it may well be—Swanhilda’s steps in the Theme slave varie look very familiar. But the question of authenticity is a sticky one.

This production was most fortunate in its young cast. Most of the dancing falls to Swanhilda. After a strident first entrance, Charline Giezendanner tossed off step after step with ease. Mathieu Ganio was an appealing Franz. More surprising was the Coppélius of Cédric Lambrette who mimed well, and in creating his character, resisted any temptation toward condescension or hamming it up. But for me the great glory of the evening was the execution of the folk dances. Rhythms were clear, footwork clean. The dancers were not afraid to sink their weight into the floor; they actually looked happy to be doing so. For once, Delibes didn’t write his mazurka or czardas in vain.

According to the program, Coppélia benefits from an uninterrupted performance tradition at the Paris Opera. Since this chronology includes the current version, by Patrice Bart, in which Franz is given increased prominence, and since so many people have had a hand in fashioning the work since 1870, it would be foolish to thing that most of Saint-Léon’s original has survived. Moreover, much of the company’s historical repertory has been off-loaded to the school including The Two Pigeons, Coppélia and next year, La fille mal gardée. Is this a step toward oblivion or conservation? In a company which dropped Giselle from its repertory, only to have it restored to Paris by Diaghilev, and whose current version of Sylvia is by John Neumeier, I’d hate to have to guess.

Nor does the repertory announced for next year, consisting of Bart’s Coppélia, Nureyev’s Don Quixote and La Bayadère and full-length works by Petit (two), Bejart, Mats Ek, Angelin Preljocaj and shorter works by Douglas Dunn, Bianca Li and Pina Bausch indicate any overwhelming regard for the company’s classical heritage. While I am sure that this programming reflects the interests of director Brigitte Lefevre who trained at the POB School but switched allegiance to modern dance, it is also the result of something over which the direction has little, if any, control. The generation of “Nureyev’s children” (to quote étoile Kader Belarbi) has come up against the company’s mandatory retirement ages, forty for the women and forty-five for the men. By the time these performances took place, Carole Arbo had already retired. Fanny Gaïda and Isabelle Guérin were scheduled to do so late in the season. (Due to injury, Guérin’s final performance has been postponed until October.) This leaves the company with three female étoiles: Elisabeth Maurin, the last of the women shepherded by Nureyev who will turn forty in 2003; Agnès Letestu and Aurélie Dupont, accomplished technicians and Lefevre appointees, but not yet artists of the level of Guérin, Elisabeth Platel (retired 1999) or Monique Loudières (retired 1996). If one needs proof of the importance of dancers to a repertory, here it is.

I am not saying that the company is without talent. Talent abounds in the ranks, but is this repertory going to develop it for the long haul? The school too is continuing to turn out beautifully trained classical dancers. But what do these young performers have to look forward to in a repertory that is increasingly reliant on the modern idiom (not always at its most expressive or compelling) and increasingly turns its back on the heritage of the oldest ballet company in the world? The future does not look particularly bright for Nureyev’s grandchildren.