Scottish Ballet: Hansel & Gretel

★★★★

Review by Stephanie Green | 13 Dec 2016

Published by The Skinny magazine.

Magic, humour, a frisson of scariness, a celebration of food and a happy ending: Hansel & Gretel, choreographed by Christopher Hampson, is perfect for a Christmas family outing

This revival of Hampson’s 2013 production, using music from Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera plus other pieces, grew from outreach sessions exploring what really matters to children: loving parents, and food. There’s no wicked step-mother, the witch is not too terrifying, and, charmingly, local children appear on stage.

On stage, a fridge – empty except for beer – and a TV dominate, alongside an ironic ‘Home Sweet Home’ sign. The boozy father (Evan Loudon)’s staggering dance with his cronies, and clowning about with cigarette-smoking mother (Marge Hendrick), are humourously done. Later on, in the children’s dream, she is an Audrey Hepburn and he's in black-tie; still smoking and drinking, albeit more classily. The dance of the rebellious Hansel (Andrew Peasgood) and his bossy elder sister, Gretel (Bethany Kingsley-Garner) is convincingly childlike, hungry but playful. Unlike in the Grimm original, their sortie is an adventure.

And here the scary magic begins: Araminta Wraith's Witch, whom we first see as a teacher, is glimpsed as a glamour puss surrounded by rockers. Transformed into a moon fairy, her cloak streaming, she is held aloft by her now-feathery henchmen, hints that her beauty is drawn from her evil suggested by jagged hand-shapes.

Act One in the forest drags a little, despite an atmospheric set. It’s saved by the ravens, their leaps a highlight, as well as a banquet dream sequence with plenty of colourfully-costumed waiters, waitresses, chefs, and cute strawberry tarts. The Sandman (Christopher Harrison), reminiscent of Johnny Depp, is fatally alluring and in Act Two, Dewdrop tutu-clad ballerinas perform a classical routine to please balletomanes.

The pièce de resistance comes, of course, when the fairy takes off her wig, revealing a scabby hunchback witch, her hobbling both scary and humourous. A shame then that there’s a dramatic faux pas: the shocking beheading of the teddy followed by an anodyne scene of floppy toys which cancels out the impact. But hooray, it’s the teddy-hugging Hansel who pushes the witch into the oven.

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Hansel & Gretel by Scottish Ballet 
Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Sat 10 - Sat 31 Dec, various times, £14.50-£43.50 (plus concs); £11 stand-by tickets for Under 26s. For details of audio-described performances, Wee Hansel & Gretel, pre-show talks, and family insights, click here. Also touring to Glasgow, Aberdeen, Inverness in January 2017.

https://www.scottishballet.co.uk/event/hansel-gretel

Rambert - Ghost Dances

Rambert – Ghost Dances, Frames and Tomorrow

Feature by Stephanie Green | 26 Nov 2016

Published in The Skinny Magazine

The iconic Ghost Dances, [★★★★★] visceral, sinister and melancholic, with its meld of skeletal Ghosts and folk dancing Dead, still in its 36th year, holds its power. Inspired by the military takeover of Chile, this is a non-polemical, imagistic piece, sadly still with universal relevance. In Rambert’s 90th year, what better than to revive one of their most popular pieces, choreographed by their former Artistic Director, Christopher Bruce?  

The sound of the wind, and the arid Andean backdrop give this an elemental atmosphere. The three skeletal Ghosts wear terrifying skull-masks influenced by the Mexican holiday, The Day of the Dead. Their movements are reptilian, lithe with sudden stops, eyes probing the audience in a chilling way. We are implicated in the universal fact of death. The Ghosts jump in off-balance barrel turns, or pose with arms swinging to suggest their provisional nature in contrast to the zombie-like approach of the Dead, dressed in colourful, tatty clothes. 

A live band performs the melancholic Latin American music with its distinctive breathy flute, inspired by the Chilean folk group Inti-Illimani.  A curiously defiant gaiety is mirrored in the folkloric dance steps as the Dead relive the past in striking duets: a girl in red, and a man with tie pulled playfully by his partner. The Ghosts weave amongst them then suddenly claim them – a particularly striking image is women raised aloft as if hanged. Death is brutal, unexpected. A brilliant, must-see production.

 Frames [★★★☆☆] choreographed by Alexander Whitley is interesting, but one waited with bated breath for the steel rods to come tumbling down. There is a startling image when the ensemble creates unfolding shapes with the rods like wings but overall, despite impressive dancers, there was no sense of relationship between dance moves and rods.  

As for Tomorrow [★★☆☆☆], this piece does Lucy Guerin’s career no favours. A split stage shows dancers in white rags twitching with spasmodic gestures symbolizing the psychic turmoil in ‘Macbeth’, the charismatic Miguel Altunaga drawing one’s eye. But on the other side, dancers in black suits mime like actors in an embarrassing am-dram production. The plot is run backwards. Why? Not a clever piece of deconstructivist post-modernism, just banal. 

http://edtheatres.com/rambert

MC 14/22 (Ceci est mon corps) and Crystal Pite's Emergence

                                    

Review by Stephanie Green

A well-matched double-bill, both about crowd mentality, but contrasting in mood, one dark, one bright: the first exploring masculinity, the other the ‘swarm intelligence’ of bees.

Angelin Preljoçaj’s work is known for its darkness and MC 14/22 (Ceci est mon corps) (‘This is my body’) [★★★] is no exception. The title is a reference to the Last Supper but this piece concentrates more on the male body: an ambivalent paean to masculinity. Glistening torsos are well-lit, the rest of their bodies disappearing in shadow, the males grapple, or slap each other’s bodies on steel tables reminiscent of the morgue. No heroes, they turn on each other, just like the Apostles. There is little individuality as they move in delayed synchronicity, bordering on monotony. If this is dance pushing the boundaries, of the dancers’ exhaustion and the audience’s tolerance, this is a close run thing.

There are only brief references to the Bible: a tender moment of foot becomes body washing and striking tableaux reminiscent of Da Vinci’s Last Supper. Christ’s humiliation is suggested: a man sings a haunting hymn whilst tormented, another attempting to dance whilst his limbs are taped, but these incidents verge on silliness. A splendid scene where dancers dive from a height to be caught would have been a splendid ending, but unfortunately the piece has no climax – it just stops.

Emergence [★★★★★] choreographed by Crystal Pite is a triumph. Abstract dance is balanced with insectoid hints: elbows raised like wings, jerks of the head. The ‘swam intelligence’ of bees is brilliantly matched to the regimentation of a ballet company. Set and lighting were dramatic: black streaks suggesting a ‘nest’ and the lit tunnel from which the dancers can emerge or dance inside in shadow-play. The highlights are a brilliant sequence when the ballerinas advance en pointe to be pushed back by the males and the entire company massed at the end, counting (humming?).

http://eif.co.uk

Published in The Skinny Magazine online.

Natalia Osipova & Guests

  Photo by Bill Cooper

Natalia Osipova & Guests @ Festival Theatre

Review

★★★★

Stephanie Green | 16 Aug 2016

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An exciting triple bill of dramatic contrasts shows off ballet star Natalia Osipova to stunning effect as her classical training skills meld with contemporary dance

Run Mary Run, choreographed by Arthur Pita is deliciously melodramatic. A tale of doomed teenage love, set in the 60s to the broken-hearted pop ballads of The Shangri-las, there’s a hint of Amy Winehouse’s tragic fate here.

Hands rise from black gravel, as the lovers rise from their grave to relive the fatal attraction between Osipova's sweet, naïve lead, wearing an auburn beehive and teeth-gritting acid greens and oranges, and her no-good man, performed by Sergei Polunin as a James Dean/Belmondo/Marlon Brando type, with louche walk, leather jacket and jeans. This is a series of vivid vignettes, more drama than dance: Polunin's solo sees him kicking the gravel into a swirl of dust. There's a moment of sugary sentimentality as Ospiova is spun on a swing by Polunin, whose clever juggling trick with glass and fag offers relief before the inevitable tragedy to come.

Choreographed by Moroccan/Belgian Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Qutb (which means ‘axis’ or ‘pivot’ in Arabic) is breath-taking. An awe-inspiring vast orange-red sun, occasionally eclipsed, dominates the back screen, and later appears on the ground. Three dancers rotate around it, aligning with each other and coming together or separating in an abstract dance which suggests planets orbiting the sun, reminiscent of whirling dervishes – all to the strains of nerve-tingling Sufi chanting. Osipova’s two male dancers, James O’Hara and Jason Kittelberger, get down and dirty, bringing an embodied physicality to proceedings.

Silent Echo is the most purely classical piece on the bill, a pas de deux choreographed by Russell Maliphant celebrating Osipova and Polunin’s strengths: superb lines, lifts and (a treat) the latter’s famed leap. The abstract classicism takes on a weird character set against Scanner’s electronic rock and some strobe lighting. Indeed at times, it is almost a duet with light, designed by Michael Hulls.

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Natalia Osipova & Guests, Festival Theatre, 12-14 Aug, 7.30pm, £12-32 (fees apply)

http://eif.co.uk

Published in the Skinny Magazine online.

Seven: Ballet am Rhein

Seven: Ballet am Rhein @ Edinburgh Playhouse, 20 Aug

Germany's Ballett am Rhein team up with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra to perform Martin Schläpfer’s response to Mahler’s Seventh Symphony

★★★

Review by Stephanie Green | 28 Aug 2015

Published in The Skinny Magazine.

Pointe ballet shoes, bare feet and boots sum up this contemporary ballet inspired by Mahler’s Seventh Symphony, superbly played by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and conducted by Wen-Pin Chien. Interrupted fragments of folk music, martial, or lyrical passages are echoed by the choreography: a collage of disconnected vignettes, Balanchine-inspired neoclassicism or tanztheater, in a  nocturnal dream world we cannot quite grasp.

Love duets become casually dismissive. Ugly contortions and drumming boots express abusive relationships: a male drags a female on stage with her head under his arm; others are dragged by the hair or lifted into the air with legs akimbo revealing too much crotch, albeit clothed in functional gym knickers. The males suffer too but there is something unpleasantly misogynistic in this piece, though occasionally the females fight back, usually en pointe and with hair in a bun.

Just as Mahler inserts cow horns, Schläpfer’s depressing view of humanity is undercut with silliness – dancers imitating a train or the girl underneath a tiny table (why?) but despite these moments, and extraordinary athletic dancers performing difficult choreography, its fragmentary nature is unsatisfactory and does not do justice to Mahler’s subtlety.

Only in the more cheerful Rondo is there a strong change of mood, when neoclassical dance is underpinned by the whole company in boots and long coats rushing round chairs in a circle, reminiscent of a children’s game where someone will be ‘out’. A reminder of the Holocaust, or of any outsiders in society. Finally, rather late, this stunning scene gives the whole piece depth.

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Seven: Ballett am Rhein, Edinburgh Playhouse, run ended

http://eif.co.uk/seven

Sylvie Guillem: Life in Progress

Sylvie Guillem: Life in Progress @ Festival Theatre

★★★★★

Review by Stephanie Green | 11 Aug 2015

Published in The Skinny magazine.

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Sylvie Guillem: Life in Progress, EIF

Subtle, intelligent, playful and moving, Life in Progress exemplifies Sylvie Guillem’s attitude through the 39 years of her dance career: balancing fun and risk, continuing to search for new possibilities, melding early classical training and moving to contemporary dance. The choreographers and co-dancers chosen here have all been important in her life and exemplify this approach. In fact, each piece feels as if we are experiencing the process of it being made.

Kathak-trained Akram Khan’s technêis introspective and compelling, involving many ground-based restless contortions superbly responsive to the Indian rhythms of the percussion.

Duo2015 is choreographed by William Forsythe, who strongly influenced Guillem’s development. Performed by Brigel Gjoka and Riley Watts, it is a tongue-in-cheek piece about male competitiveness which becomes increasingly technically demanding.

Russell Maliphant’s Here & After is a sinuous and elegiac duet with Emanuela Montanari (whom Guillem has produced in the past) set to Andy Cowton’s haunting music and impressive lighting by Michael Hulls, which encloses the dancers, patterning the stage with squares from which they dance in and out.

The delightful Bye, choreographed by Mats Ek to Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in C minor, Op 111, features Guillem in plaits and a cardie – herself as a little girl, perhaps a Pippi Longstocking – dancing awkwardly then flinging off her shoes, free to find herself. An intriguing light effect, a lit door she slips in through and later leaves to join others, is a wonderful symbol of her continual search for new life.

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Sylvie Guillem: A Life in Progress, Festival Theatre, run ended

Sylvie Guillem - A Life in Progress, Festival Theatre, run endedhttp://www.eif.co.uk/guillem

Madame Freedom - Hyo Jim Kin and Hyung Su Kin

Madame Freedom @ King's Theatre

★★★★

Review by Stephanie Green | 19 Sep 2013

Published in The Skinny Magazine.

Tradition and modernity meet head-on in this stunningly beautiful interactive performance of dance, film and innovative computer-generated visuals by a husband and wife team: choreographer and dancer Hyo Jim Kin with artist Hyung Su Kin. The dance re-creates and is performed in front of extracts from the 1950's film Madame Freedom, about a woman who seeks self-expression through work and sexual experiences outside the constraints of marriage, a film which caused a shocking sensation at the time and even today is relevant, not only to Korea but to the west, posing the question: how free is free?

The performance starts with a film of a woman being dressed by servants in Hanbok traditional costume. Below this image, the dancer, dressed all in black - long-sleeved jacket, baggy trousers and black tight slippers -performs Tae Phyung Moo, Peace Dance, a traditional Korean dance similar to Tai Chi based on control of breath and stop/start moves, which then develops into contemporary modern dance, a spell-binding sequence as we see her breaking out of the straitjacket of the past.

Later we see her in a western-style slinky dress and high heels with her dance-teacher and lover, performing latino dances to music and song performed above in the film, referencing a craze for anything American which followed Korea's liberation from Japan. The focus shifts between dancer and film image - sometimes the two combine, when the dancer is superimposed in the film and appears to have climbed inside. Inevitably, pairing the dancers with the film means that the huge, bright image of the singer shimmying in a tasselled dress draws the audience's eye, and the silhouetted figures of the dancers in shadow below are dwarfed, but it appears this might be intentional. However, you can begin to see that the interplay of shadow and light is central to the play of duality, the central theme. In fact, the significance of the woman's first dance, the Tae Phung Moo, becomes clear.

Represented by the Tao symbol, the Korean Taegeuk, which celebrates the balance of opposites - light and shadow, tradition and modernity - this aesthetic infuses the whole performance. Everything is set up as a binary and built in pairs: the central screen is split, so that the image is warped each time; there are two screens, one either side of the stage, playing simultaneously. In one scene a film of the dancer leans in to an open gate-way, and we see her face. On the other side we see her in the identical position, but her back-view. This gateway, to Korean eyes, is significant since it is the gateway to the palace Kyong Bok's servants' quarters. In the same way, Madame Freedom wants to break out of the confinement of the life of a servant to her husband as house-wife.

Later when the dancer merges with the extraordinarily inventive black and white video designs swamping the screens and stage, the interplay of shadow and light, dancer and visuals is most successful, wonderfully expressive of her guilt and despair once her affair is over. This is intensely moving, especially when the white behind the black designs grow larger and brighter, forcing the black shapes to fall as the dancer flings herself to the floor, then rears in agony. While so much of the technology in this year's Edinburgh International Festival's theme of the interface between the arts and technology has hardly illuminated the art work it is paired with, Madame Freedom has been a striking exception.

Run nded

http://www.eif.co.uk/madamefreedom

50 Acts - Wendy Houstoun

50 Acts – Wendy Houstoun @ Dance Base

A lively performanace combating ageism

★★★

Review by Stephanie Green | 23 Aug 2012

Published in The Skinny Magazine.

Stunning videos and humourous use of text, mime, speech and movement, make this an inventive piece of experimental physical theatre, full of authenticity about being age 50+.

Former collaborator with Lloyd Newson's DV8, Wendy Houstoun  surprises us with various random acts.  Very active and flexible, she rushes around, frequently with intentional falls, acknowledging the fear of frailty.  But she combats ageism with ironic humour, wearing a hard hat, complaining at youth telling 'old' people, at least over age 33, to stand aside, and a great scene when anger takes over and she smashes vinyl records with a hammer to a music-score. The humour turns bitter and the juxtaposition of a speech about cuts by David Cameron is particularly effective  played against a film of chorus girls while Houston sits in a chair as if in a care-home.

Throughout the piece, Houston draws attention to artifice and theatricality by referencing what she is doing: "Now I will stand here," as she stands, or later "Now I will gesture" as she gestures. It is clever, but rather distancing. Perhaps it was why, though charmed and touched at times, I was not deeply moved. But does that matter? Originality and humour go a long way.

Three performances only Fri 17-Sun 19 Aug at 9.30pm Age guidance 14+ All tickets £12 (£10) Running time 1 hour Dance Base, 14-16, Grassmarket, EH1 2JU 0131 225 5525 www.dancebase.co.uk

I am Son – Sanpapié

I am Son – Sanpapié @ Dance Base

Are we westerners?

★★★

Review by Stephanie Green | 18 Aug 2012

Published in the Skinny Magazine.

An existential quest, this is an ambitious piece exploring the contemporary emptiness of Western/European society in its post-war context, but sometimes less is more.

Although there are fine moments of choreography by Lara Guidetti and the white costumes and props are sometimes visually stunning, this surreal montage of fragments, informed by the post-modern 'poetics' of Heiner Müller, has far too many props: masks, tailors' dummies, red noses, hearts/balloons, a flag, projected text and too many themes: consumerism, the '68 revolution, pornography, the red noses suggesting the commedia dell'arte, national identity (whether Italian, or European or Western), so that what potentially could be a strong piece is overloaded.

This work grows out of its avant garde influences from Bob Wilson and Pina Bausch's Tanztheatr to Matthias Langhoff. But these influences saturate I am Son rather than being transformed into something more authentic. The section where Lara Guidetti alternates between moments of a Christ-like crucifixion and being beaten, to knowing smiles at the audience is chilling and effective, making the audience complicit, but the onanistic sequence is so repetitive it becomes tedious. This uneven quality shows that with a more rigorous, focused approach, this choreographer could achieve something powerful.

16-25 Aug (not 20) Times vary. Tickets £10 (£8) Running time 45 mins Dance Base, 14-16, Grassmarket EH1 2JU Booking 0131 225 5525 www.dancebase.co.uk http://www.dancebase.co.uk

Fruitful Ties and Bone Dust - Steinvor Palsson/Mathew Hawkins

Fruitful Ties and Bone Dust – Steinvor Palsson/Mathew Hawkins and Lucy Suggate The Bodyfarm @ Dance Base

An inspired double-bill

★★★★★

Review by Stephanie Green | 17 Aug 2012

Published in The Skinny Magazine

Fruitful Ties by former Royal Ballet member, Matthew Hawkins and Steinvor Palsson is outstanding: an elegant, stylish and stylised multi-layered piece, performed to a Concerto Grosso by Handel,  it playfully introduces lemons and ties to Hawkins and Palsson's classically inspired choreography. The superb costumes by Pearl reference 17th Century Inigo Jones' masque-dance, close bodice and feathery neckline and hems, wittily designed from ties. The punning title indicates this is also a piece about memory.

A soundtrack, rather like memory, fading in and out, suggests how objects, a lemon for instance, can help recall. Tied together with reins of ties, then stepping in and out of a cat's cradle, they step in and out of past and present: formal Baroque leg flourishes and modern slapstick. A masterpiece performed by two exquisite dancers.

Bone Dust by Lucy Suggate is also accomplished and ironic: a Dance Macabre with a difference. In the dark, out of a scary, billowing black tutu on the floor, a skull emerges. Lucy then talks about dance 'beyond the rot' in a highly amusing soliloquy. So often text introduced by dancers is of poor quality but Lucy is exceptionally talented as dancer and playwright and her dance imitating a cartoon skeleton's movements is a delight.

16-25 Aug (not 20) Times vary. £10 (£8) Running time 40 mins Dance Base, 14-16, Grassmarket, EH1 2JU Tickets 0131 225 5525 http://www.dancebase.co.uk

What the Folk

What the Folk @ Dance Base

Irish Craic.

★★★★★

Review by Stephanie Green | 09 Aug 2012

Published in The Skinny Magazine.

With all the famed wit and verve, hospitality, and gift of the gab of the Irish, not least a cup of tea and a piece of cake (Oh go on, go on), this is a dance event with a difference.  Oh yes, there's plenty of song and dance (Irish step-dancing like you've never seen before, high-kicking in the cleared space of a kitchen.  For this event does not take place in a studio.  We were taken to a secret location, invited into the temporary home of the dance company, Siamsa Tire, from Tralee in County Kerry, for a hilarious, spell-binding and heart-warming  50 minutes of craic.

In between the jokes, the stories about their childhood learning how to dance, the Psycho Mums who push their progeny with manic ambition into the  Feis, (or the Fish) the four dancers broke into strict competition style step-dancing, then the more relaxed North Kerry Munnix.  And they are talented Gaelic singers too. We heard stories about the people of  Siamsa Tire, the National Folk Theatre of Ireland, and felt we knew them as friends by the end. What is, who is and what the folk?   And boy, those kicks were pretty high!

What the Folk! National Folk Theatre of Ireland Meet at Dance Base and you will be taken to a secret location Fri 3-Sun 19 Aug (not Mon 6 or 13) at 3pm & 6pm For Age 12+ All tickets £12 (£10) Running time 50 mins.http://www.dancebase.co.uk