BALLET: Stanley Peskin
I DO not wish to attribute any intentions to Veronica=20 Paeper and her version of Spartacus, but any real=20 interest her ballet has belongs more to the influence=20 of Cecil B de Mille than to either the Bolshoi=20 (strictly socialist realism) or Howard Fast (liberal=20 humanist). What Pact Ballet presents is Paeper de=20 Mille, which, apart from three reasonably written pas=20 de deux, is thinly seasoned (choreographically=20 speaking) and served as stale Roman ham.
Paeper’s Spartacus is vaguely modelled on a performance=20 given in London in 1968, 12 years after the ballet’s=20 first presentation in Moscow. The story, taken from=20 Roman history, describes the fate of Spartacus, a rebel=20 slave who led a revolt against his Roman captors (chief=20 among whom was Crassus) and who was betrayed and=20 brutally killed.
Where the Bolshoi ballet places the conflict between=20 Spartacus and Crassus at the centre of the work, both=20 in terms of ideological convictions and difference in=20 choreographic styles, Paeper displaces the dramatic=20 focus from Crassus on to Gracchus in the gladiatorial=20 and bachanallian sequences. Not only does she show=20 Crassus as a libidinous swine, whose desire to possess=20 Phyrgia has little to do with Spartacus as a freedom=20 fighter who threatens his power, but she also=20 diminishes Spartacus’ heroic stature by making him an=20 ineffectual military and political leader. Like many=20 Hollywood producers of epics before her, Paeper=20 confuses sexual peepshows with power politics, and=20 offers a dull one at that.
The ballet should be muscular and virile, but the=20 gladiators and soldiers are required to do little more=20 than hop, skip and jump in choreography that looks as=20 if it has been made for a performance at a children’s=20 ballet training school.
Paeper’s choreography is well performed by the leading=20 dancers. Canadian Rex Harrington does not exactly soar,=20 but he is splendidly athletic. He has considerable=20 presence, and makes the most of the several transitions=20 from military vigour to the tenderness of love. Tanja=20 Graafland is Phyrgia, and, like her partner, she can no=20 more successfully transform melodrama into tragedy.=20 Nevertheless, she movingly conveys, in both mime and=20 some exquisite dancing, a sterling pride that cannot be=20
As Crassus’ mistress, Leticia Muller is more than sexy:=20 she is sexual and so all the more potent and dangerous.=20 Together with Gracchus (Johnny Bovang), she dances a=20 pas de deux, which contributes little to the meaning of=20 the ballet, but which proved to be the highlight of the=20