BALLET: Stanley Peskin
IN Marius Petipa’s Paquita, Roland Petit’s Carmen and Mikhail Fokine’s Firebird, Pact Ballet presents three works that are luxurious and richly satisfying in quite different
Paquita (1881), originally a three-act ballet which has survived as a series of divertissements, has been given a new production. An impressively ornamented archway (designed by Riaan Bosch) at the back of the stage, and the deep-grape costumes for the Ballerina, the Cavalier and the women of the court, are appropriate for a ballet which, despite the Spanish influence in some of the choreography, is quintessentially Russian.
Quintessentially Russian, too, is guest ballerina Irina Zyrianova. She dances with an amplitude and bravura technique which bring the whole body into play. The movement of the shoulders and arms are particularly pleasing to watch, and her sense of occasion injects an excitement into proceedings.
In the grand pas, Johnny Bovang, adjusting his style to suit his partner, is chivalric and attentive. He performs his solo with classical purity and considerable
In Petit’s Carmen (1949), the action of Georges Bizet’s opera has been concentrated into five scenes dominated by two duets danced by Carmen and Don Jose. Where the opera has lost its power to shock, Petit’s ballet, despite its mannered sophistication and self-conscious rendition of sexual role-playing, is often startling in its brutality.
The idyllic music written as an entr’acte to Act Three in the opera is used by Petit for the coital and audacious pas de deux which is at the exact centre of the work. The pastoral mood is transformed into an intense eroticism which is recalled in the orgasmic shudder of Carmen’s
Ann Wixley’s Carmen has a forceful independence of spirit and a sexual provocation which allows for an interesting contrast with Iain McDonald’s vulnerable Don Jose. There is, however, an absence of passion which diminishes the impact of the ballet. Robin van Wyk and Kazumi Ishii are marvellously vital and nasty bandits.
Firebird was first performed by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes in 1910. The East was a source of great fascination at the time of the ballet’s composition and its influence is heard not only in Igor Stravinsky’s music, but is to be seen in the choreography. Kostchei’s court is inhabited by weird creatures whose Infernal Dance marks them out as infidels.
The scenery and costumes designed by Peter Cazalet exploit Oriental paganism to the full before the final tableau in which Tsarist power and the authority of the Russian Orthodox Church are entrenched. Here, the onion domes, myriad spires and icons are all spectacularly lit by Tersia du Plessis.
Firebird is a story ballet compressed into 50 minutes. The action is contained in four main components which would seem to leave little room for development of the principal characters. Yet both in the variety of choreographic effects and in the colouring of the music, there are clear indications of character and symbolic meaning.
The Firebird is the only character in the ballet who dances on point, and this technical device separates her as a source of preternatural power from the mortal world.
The music for the Firebird herself is hushed and glittering. Stravinsky employs folk-style music both for the intrepid hero Ivan (a non-dancing role) as well as for the 13 enchanted princesses, while for the ogrous Kostchei and his minions he uses a savage chromaticism. The rejoicing mood of the finale could hardly be more splendid.
Wixley conveys the mysterious “otherness” of the central character and her fear of captivity. She is able at times to suggest suspension in mid-air and in her opposition to the evil Kostchei she emerges as a potent force of good.
Matthew Dalby, partnering an exquisite but bland Adele Grey and an exotic Karen Beukes in the title role, is an imaginative Ivan: inquisitive, predatory, loving, and authoritative in the final tableau. And he makes the most of the suspenseful moment when he shatters the Faberge- styled egg in which the magician’s soul and power are
The last few performances of Paquita (at the Opera, State Theatre, Pretoria) will be accompanied by Frederick Ashton’s masterpiece The Dream (an imaginative recasting of Shakespeare’s play) and David Bintley’s Still Life at the Penguin Cafe, a rousing and eloquent ballet which mourns the loss not only of endangered species, but of all possessions that we cherish and value.