THE GöTEBORG BALLET

IMPRESSIONISM-DUATO/KANAMORI/TANKARD

A MAGNIFICENT DANCE EVENING AT THE OPERA
She’s blinking! The first impression during the evening at the Göteborg Opera is the discovery that Edouard Manet’s bargirl, projected onto the curtain before the opening, is not just a painting.
The Opera’s fairly recently appointed Ballet Director Kevin Irving explains in the program that the 1880’s impressionistic painting probably has nothing to do with modern dance, but he uses them, together with sensitive songs, soft and delicately performed by Grith Fjeldmose, to open a door to the world of dance. He sees the intention of the impressionistic painters to cease the moment, and from this moment elicit a feeling of kinship with the dance’s sequences of fleeting moments filled with details.
It is an accurate and captivating description, and I suddenly realize why I’m sometimes taken by surprise by the fact that dance is so beautiful as a still picture – the photography captures the detail, freezes the moment so that I have time to see it. It is quite different when we talk of movement. We then talk of the magic of the emotion conjured up by the series of experienced moments. This in turn goes well with the opinion of musicologist Jan Ling’s description of what is new in the impressionistic music: Sounds and intervals become free as birds to take their own route to the heaven of music.

The impressionist Debussy is also behind two of the three dance works. First out is Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato’s Duende, a lyrical, transient, light and beautiful dance that makes me think of elves and spirits of nature. The Spanish notion of Duende is as a matter of fact about elves and the essence of nature.
The choreography is remarkably metaphorical, the dancers don’t only convey emotions and relations with their movements, they also form visual sculptures together, often as surprising indications of the last notes of the music. Arms and legs can stick out from a single body that has been created by the dancers individual bodies and give the impression of wheels or of arms of a God with many arms. A foot stretched against the ceiling can be angled to mark the last notes. The three male dancers end one sequence with their legs up, each forming a triangle.

When it is time for the young Japanese Jo Kanamori’s first opening of his piece side in / side out, choreographed especially for this production, you get something completely different: three dancers in a large white square move almost like puppets in a sandbox to Debussy’s A Faun’s Afternoon. Their movements are special; with a twist of the hip they find new positions as if they are exploring the possibility of reshaping their bodies. It reminds me of the body language of a pantomime, and the kinship to the theatre – not least the Japanese – is reinforced by the white facial mask, which during the piece move from one dancer to another, as a magical permission to be the one in turn to explore his identity and relationship to the others. It is completely irresistible: expressive, innocent, accessible, touching. But then the three dancers, Heather Telford, Thomas Zamolo and Tyler Gledhill also bring down the house.

Jo Kanamori’s second piece, with music by Paul Dukas, is also about the search of one’s identity but with a different setting, that of a larger dancing group of teenage girls who are trying out their role as leaders and group dynamics. Costume designer Ai Kanamori (the choreographer’s sister) creates a mild, beautiful and somewhat surprising synthesis of Japanese and Western. The dancers are dressed in light yellow, wide skirts that remind me of either fans or starched 1950’s. They also wear blue, flowery blouses of a decidedly Japanese cut, and little pink socks, which take us back to the teenage look of the 1950’s. The range of color is dizzying, bordering the unthinkable, and becomes exquisite.
They move between high, narrow, red Japanese lanterns, which, it turns out, can be pressed together and become more rounded, used to distinguish where the leader and the challengers of the group are at the moment.

We are then thrown into the expressive, full movements of Meryl Tankard’s choreography to Maurice Ravel’s Bolero. A suggestive stage set, which touches the heart and fills your chest and stomach with emotions. The dancers move behind and in and out of the set as shadows; silhouettes of moving bodies, almost like black paper figures in mechanical motion, parts of bodies suddenly enlarged and hiding the others. Everything of course in the relentlessly accelerating tempo that is characteristic of the music. Color, background and patterns also shift in an increasing pace and elicits a feeling of relentlessly growing chaos around the small and vulnerable man and woman, who constantly look for, find and lose each other in the middle of the inferno of movements, bodies and colors. A brilliant picture of inner chaos, a psychological realism in a dream format that goes straight to your subconscious and lets the emotions take over your mind.
After that there is nothing more to add. Except that Impressionism is well worth a visit.
Bohusläningen Sept 23,2003

A WINK AT MANET
The country’s second Opera House has an envious freedom. No traditional “have to:s”, but other completely different ones. Kevin Irving, Ballet Director, successfully launches the ballet evening called Impressionism, where three dance works are framed by three paintings by impressionist Manet. They are projected onto the stage and have been discretely animated so that the woman who serves us at the bar in Folies-Bergère looks us straight in the eye and blinks. Olympia lifts her silk scarf. The animated paintings are accompanied by impressionist music: songs by Debussy, Ravel, Fauré.
Carpe Diem, that was the starting point of Modernism, and this delightful impressionistic wrapping is smart, pedagogic and sensitive, and danced by a modern company which is seemingly uniform, reliable and bold. The evening begins with the somewhat cool Duende, excellently, uniformly and beautifully danced. Bolero concludes the evening. Ravel’s music is almost worn out and over-played but seems like new with Meryl Tankard’s choreography and Régis Lansac’s silhouettes of the dancers. A screen covers the entire stage opening, and dancers in different sizes dance hot impressionisms in a work of passion against a background of blood red, sandy yellow and terra cotta.

A young Japanese choreographer, Jo Kanamori, creates the evening´s second performance, which opens for the first time tonight. His side in / side out consists of two parts. The first is the strongest, with a strict composition around three dancers and a white facial mask. The dance rests fitfully in Debussy’s A Faun’s Afternoon. An undulating, flowing pattern of movement lets a hundred years of modernism fly towards us with unerring accuracy.
Margareta Sörensen Expressen Sept 21,2003

DISTORTED AND TOUCHING MOVEMENTS
With an unembarrassed wink at the audience, the Göteborg Ballet invites us to the triple evening Impressionism, which has been marketed with Edouard Manet’s famous painting of a bargirl.
Wink, wink! Impressionism! Well, some sweet sugar coating never hurt anyone.
And it is difficult to attract the audience to modern ballet programs in three acts. So why not? Besides, Kevin Irving has put careful thought into the evening now that he launches his first ballet program. The evening is joined together by clever, moving renditions of three paintings by Manet, and Grith Fjeldmose, soprano, who sings Debussy, Ravel and Fauré.
(Jo Kanamori) has used Debussy's for this commissioned work, which opens for the first time this evening. The first part of the choreography, side in, is exciting as the bodies are turned inside out, so to speak. The movements are distorted, limp and spasmodic. The piece is lustfully danced by Heather Telford, Thomas Zamolo and Tyler Gledhill. The diptych’s continuation, side out, unfortunately mostly consists of glossy surface. With Kanamori, the inside has more relief. The triple program opens with an old favorite, the Spaniard Nacho Duato’s Duende, which was performed three years ago. This new production doesn’t add much, but the choreography is amusing against a romantic, magic deep timbre, full of surprising quick formations.
The highpoint of the evening is not unexpectedly Bolero, despite Ravel’s almost overexposed music. Australian Meryl Tankard is a renowned choreographer and her Bolero is a gem of a dance – without a dancer in sight. The dancers are constantly moving behind a screen that covers the entire stage. It is an ingenious shadow play in the Asian tradition, where the sizes of the dancers go from tiny to gigantic. Régis Lansac’s stage set and lighting are as excellent as exciting, and the Göteborg Ballet is obviously enjoying itself when it dances to this humor filled, intelligent and enthusiastic choreography. Bolero also contains an elusive question: What is added when three-dimensional movement is reduced to two? It is a wonderful conclusion of the triple program together with the Göteborg Opera Orchestra. The whole evening is rounded of in a rather redundant way, i.e. one more staged Manet painting. Go see Impressionism - forget the framework.
Dagens Nyheter Sept 22,2003

TRIPLE EVENING BRINGS HOPE TO THE BALLET
In his first own ballet program, Ballet Director Kevin Irving has created a clever setting for the three completely different choreographies. “Seeing pictures” is what he calls his video presentation where three famous paintings by Edouard Manet are recreated as projections with a live model. The common thread this evening is impressionism – moments of transient existence.
The paintings of the 1860’s meet modern dance. “Bar at the Folies-Bergère” suddenly comes to life when the waitress blinks, and turns out to be the lifelike Cecilia Selander Moss. Daring and amusing! The soprano Grith Fjeldmose’s song mirrors the feelings embedded in the models eyes directed at the viewer.

Impressions also characterize the music and the choreography. The Spaniard Nacho Duato’s Duende – part of the Göteborg Opera’s repertoire a few years ago – is a clever and intricate weave of dance movements for creatures of nature, with slender, broken lines and flowing motions. Timing and delays interchange in a play of precision, where Duato opens up Debussy’s waltz rhythms. The twelve dancers – among them Mattias Suneson who has returned to the Opera – move in perfect harmony.
28-year old Jo Kanamori is from Japan and was during Anders Hellström’s time a charismatic dancer in the Göteborg Ballet. He has now created his own choreography – side in / side out – for his former colleagues. As the title suggests, the work is divided in two parts. It opens with a trio for Heather Telford, Thomas Zamolo and Tyler Gledhill. They move in a circus ring - restless and affectionate intimacy in a cat and mouse game with elements of noh-games and mime, close to the body.

Manet’s Olympia provides the transition to the second part. The model seductively places a red rose behind her ear and bares her pointy breasts. The circus floor turns into a floating white sail in the lighting of Anna Wemmert Clausen. Seven mischievous ballerinas appear in Ai Kanamori’s bright yellow tulle skirts, Japanese silk blouses with turquoise embroideries, and red shoes. Classic, romantic ideas are shattered by unrestrained gestics. Spool-shaped lampshades are transformed into swelling, glowing, red Japanese lanterns. If yet a little straggly, Kanamori’s dance enactment shows musicality and theatrical imagination – refreshing and charming.
Bolero was written by Maurice Ravel at the request of the Russian ballet star Ida Rubenstein and first opened in 1928 with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska. The Spanish inspired music was according to the composer “an exercise in orchestration” – a device that has appealed to many contemporary choreographers. Perhaps the most known is the version by Maurice Béjart from 1961 that is still performed as an ecstatic worshipping of the other sex – sometimes a woman, sometimes a man in a ritual circular dance.

It is an achievement by Irving to take Meryl Tankards original version – created for the Lyon Opera Ballet – to Sweden. Here the visual aesthetics triumphs. On a screen in three parts, the Australian choreographer and her set designer Régis Lansac paints a fascinating poem of movements, where the repetional effect is congenial with the increasing intensity of the music.
A dream play with Asian and African roots with optic illusions of increasing and decreasing shadows, shifting perspectives and silhouette games. Monica Milocco and Andrzej Glosniak lead the dance between heaven and earth. A life cycle of affirmation and grief. Loneliness and deliverance are Tankard’s focal points, in whirls of flamenco and tango. Enslaved and free in a primitive, eternal cycle, often with nightmarish contours. The female characters are witches, who turn into calamity howlers, who turn into earth mothers.
A performance in red and black and consistently as silhouettes - to see the dancers’ faces, make-up and expressions would have disrupted Tankard’s magical pattern. Vivacious, pulsating, touching.
After this overwhelming experience it was a little difficult to take in the third, sweet Manet-painting, even if it can be dramaturgically motivated. Here the song alone would have served as a rightful conclusion of a triple evening that brings hope to a Göteborg ballet in great form.
Gunilla Jensen, Svenska Dagblatt Sept 25,2003

BEAUTIFUL, GöTEBORG OPERA!
Triple ballet performances are an established concept at the Göteborg Opera.
To have different choreographies is entertaining, but it seldom offers a comprehensive
view. With yesterday’s premiere of Impressionism, the Ballet Director shows that this isn’t necessarily the case. His way of giving life to Manet’s art is exceptional.
The classic pictures blend so well with Grith Fjeldmose’s song that they in and of themselves deserve to have their own show. Now the living paintings work as transitions between the different dance works.

The opening Duende by Nacho Duato feels like a dark midsummer night’s dream. The dancers playfully dance across the stage in clever arabesques. The choreography is strongly influenced by Debussy’s music.
Jo Kanamori is a relatively new choreographer and his work side in / side out opens for the first time this night. One woman and two men in a symbolic triangle, who move around the stage on unsteady and surprisingly limber legs, dance the first part of this work. The expression is really unique. The second part, which surprisingly seems to be completely separate from the first, could be a modern response to a painting by Degas. Light pink and bowed heads are exchanged for bright red socks and cocky, angled feet. A refreshing sight.

The highlight of the evening is Meryl Tankard’s Bolero. I find it difficult to imagine a better illustration of Ravel’s famous piece. The dancers are shown only as silhouettes against the dramatically colored curtains. Their bodies undulate back and forth as if in a surreal kaleidoscope. It is intimate, beautiful art that has to be experienced.
Liv Landell, GT Sept 21,2003

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