From The International Herald Tribune: Such stuff as dance is made on BY ROSLYN SULCAS | INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES Shakespeare, who turns 450 in April, doesn’t seem to have lost any power to inspire creators in every art form. Dance is no exception. Choreographers have been turning to his plays at least since Jean-George Noverre created ‘‘Antony and Cleopatra’’ in the 1760s, and there’s barely a midlevel ballet company today that doesn’t perform a version of ‘‘Romeo and Juliet.’’ Alexei Ratmansky, the Russian-born artist in residence at American Ballet Theater, has already had a go at ‘‘Romeo.’’ Now he turns his attention to another Shakespeare play, and one with a less propitious dance history. His new one-act, ‘‘The Tempest,’’ set to Sibelius’s incidental music for the play, will open Ballet Theater’s autumn season next week at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center. It’s a fascinating prospect. ‘‘The Tempest’’ had a moment of choreographic popularity in the early 19th century, with ballets by Filippo Taglioni and Jean Coralli. It had a second rush of choreographic popularity more recently, with versions by Glen Tetley, Michael Smuin and Rudolf Nureyev appearing in quick succession from 1979 to 1982. (One day, someone will have a theory about that.) None of these have endured, but ‘‘The Tempest’’ isn’t the only Shakespeare ballet to have disappeared into the crevices of dance history. Among the dozens that choreographers have attempted over the centuries, there have been numerous versions of ‘‘Hamlet’’ (Bronislava Nijinska, Robert Helpmann and Christopher Wheeldon, among others), of ‘‘Othello’’ (Salvatore Viganò, Serge Lifar, José Limón, Lar Lubovitch), and even, in the early 19th century, ‘‘Macbeth’’ and ‘‘Coriolanus.’’ The fascination endures: Next year, Krzysztof Pastor will choreograph a full-length ‘‘Tempest’’ for the Dutch National Ballet, and Mr. Wheeldon will create ‘‘The Winter’s Tale’’ for the Royal Ballet. Those Shakespeare ballets that have survived — Kenneth MacMillan’s ‘‘Romeo and Juliet,’’ John Cranko’s ‘‘Taming of the Shrew’’ and the versions of ‘‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’’ by George Balanchine and Frederick Ashton — have done so partly because of their strong scores (by Prokofiev for ‘‘Romeo’’ and by Mendelssohn for ‘‘Midsummer’’), as well as the storytelling gifts of their choreographers. But the relative lack of success of danced versions of Shakespeare isn’t hard to understand. What makes his narratives great as literature and drama is the language — precisely the element left out of a ballet. No dance is an interpretation of the play the way a new theater or film production would be. The kinds of specificity of character and emotion (Juliet’s erudition, Prospero’s memories, Macbeth’s fears) that Shakespeare evokes in the plays is worlds away from the inchoate, ineffable communication of dance and its relatively broad storytelling capacities. And ‘‘The Tempest’’ might be viewed as a play that is all about language, its potency and its magic, with a central character whose very identity is defined by thoughts and memories. As Mr. Ratmansky put it in a telephone interview, ‘‘Past and future are very tough for ballet.’’ That difficulty may be, in part, what has drawn Mr. Ratmansky, 45, to tackle ‘‘The Tempest.’’ Like most good artists, he relishes a challenge, as he has demonstrated in works like ‘‘The Bright Stream,’’ with its evocation of a cheerful Soviet collective of the imagination, or his recent ‘‘Shostakovich Trilogy.’’ He has demonstrated his storytelling skills in numerous ballets. But he is also a dance maker with a poetical and fantastical streak; ‘‘Namouna,’’ created for New York City Ballet, and ‘‘Psyché,’’ created for the Paris Opera Ballet, are just two examples of pieces that draw from other ballet genres but invent their own terms. ‘‘The drama of ‘The Tempest’ is very hard to translate into dance,’’ Mr. Ratmansky said. ‘‘There are big themes I’m not sure we can address. But finding the true feelings and motivations of the characters, that’s my goal. The Sibelius score is very poetic, like illustrations in a book, and this is at the moment my idea for the ballet.’’ The characters, he added, had been his principal inspiration. ‘‘They are beautiful types,’’ he said. ‘‘I thought, A.B.T. has perfect people to dance these characters: Marcelo Gomes as Prospero, Daniil Simkin as Ariel and Herman Cornejo for Caliban. When you have these kinds of dancers, it is exciting to think of being able to use them all at once. It’s a feast that you don’t find in other places, an amazing group of talent.’’ Although he listened to scores for ‘‘The Tempest’’ by Tchaikovsky and Purcell, Mr. Ratmansky picked the 40-minute Sibelius suite for its evocative, atmospheric qualities. ‘‘It doesn’t tell the story consistently,’’ he said, ‘‘which is understandable because it accompanied a theater production. It is more mood-setting than narrative.’’ The ‘‘Tempest’’ plotline is a particularly difficult one for a ballet, since a great deal of the drama has happened before the action begins. Prospero, the former Duke of Milan, can explain the treachery of his brother that led to his exile with his daughter, Miranda, on a lonely island, but a ballet character clearly cannot. To help Mr. Ratmansky find his way through these issues, he enlisted the theater director Mark Lamos, who said he had studied ballet as a child, and regularly attends performances. ‘‘I really love Alexei’s work,’’ he said. ‘‘When the call came, I couldn’t say yes quickly enough.’’ The two men began by listening to the score and reading the text. ‘‘He wanted to know what my reaction was to the music, piece by piece,’’ Mr. Lamos said. ‘‘We were both asking questions: What do you see here? Does this seem effective as an entrance? It was how he turned that verbal into the kinetic which was the important part.’’ Mr. Lamos laughed, and added, ‘‘Sometimes we’d have a detailed discussion of the score, and then I’d say ‘What do you see here?’ and he’d say ‘Six couples.’’’ Mr. Lamos said that he and Mr. Ratmansky did not talk much about character and motivation, but about concrete problems, like dealing with the back story, or evoking psychological states of mind. ‘‘Every movement is related to the character,’’ Mr. Cornejo said in a telephone interview after his first rehearsal as Caliban. ‘‘He wants the movement and the feeling together from the start, and he is very specific. So far it has been challenging, because my character is grotesque, a kind of monster, and you have to move your body in a different way, really using all your muscles. At night, you want to just step into an ice bath.’’ Mr. Ratmansky said that in addition to watching film versions of ‘‘The Tempest,’’ he had looked at paintings and drawings of scenes from the play, and seen several dance adaptations. But, according to Santo Loquasto, who designed the scenery and costumes, Mr. Ratmansky had no strong convictions about the ballet’s aesthetic. ‘‘I have placed the period in the 19th century, so that the court is post-Napoleonic,’’ Mr. Loquasto said. ‘‘The principal characters have mostly more realistic dress, the spirits of the island are more fantastical.’’ The décor, he added, is relatively simple, with ‘‘one moving element that could be part of the boat that brought Prospero to the island. The backdrops are just slices of sky and water.’’ Mr. Ratmansky said that he was still trying to answer his own questions about the work as he was creating it. ‘‘Ballet has its own structural imperatives that are not those of theater,’’ he said. ‘‘You need to balance the dance of action, when relationships develop, and pure-dance sections, which are also necessary. I’m not sure if I have clear answers about Prospero either. Is he aggressive? Is he a caring parent or a manipulator? What is his revenge? Does he carry it out or does he forgive at the end? More than the story, I think the music will tell me how to answer these questions.’’ ◼ Get the best global news and analysis direct to your device – download the IHT apps for free today! For iPad: itunes.apple/us/app/international-herald-tribune/id404757420?mt=8 For iPhone: itunes.apple/us/app/international-herald-tribune/id404764212?mt=8
Posted on: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 20:44:24 +0000
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