3 posts tagged “dance”

Title: Anna Karenina
Cast: Finnish National Ballet
Musicians: Singapore Festival Orchestra

Based on the novel by Leo Tolstoy, the production is an Asian premiere. I thought that the set was pretty nice and versatile enough. I also liked the train. And the costumes were so pretty, especially Anna's red dress in her final scenes - very gorgeous. What's not to like about ballet? Beautiful costumes, elegant dance steps, graceful movements and arches, etc...

The dancers were really fine too. At one point, lead dancer Minna Tervamaki (Anna K) fell down. But she recovered so quickly, it could have been a blink-and-miss affair. SN later told me she suspected the dancer probably broke her shoe, but she was so strong, she recovered almost immediately. It's always such a pleasure to watch ballet dancers who're wonderful... :)

Anyway, next on my agenda of things to do will be to buy the book and finally read it. I'd been thinking of getting the book for years, but have always procrastinated. So, no more excuses now.

Title: Sutra
Choreographer & Lead Dancer: Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui
Visual Creation & Design: Antony Gormley
Cast: Monks from the Shaolin Temple

Prior to watching the performance, SN told me that people who like Shaolin's martial arts won't like this production and people who like Sidi Larbi also won't like this performance. So I decided, I shall just go with an open mind. And boy, an open mind can be a truly wondrous thing.

I confess that I'm a complete novice when it comes to dance performances. Most of the time, the choreography just escapes me and I absolutely reject most contemporary dance performances by default. However, I was rather awed by the rich imagery that Sutra had to offer. Gormley's use of wooden boxes was meant to "embody the Buddhist concept of the body as both vector of energy and as delimited space". What struck me was the everchanging design of the "props". At times, the monks would be moving around the stage and carrying the boxes on their backs, at times stacking them up into 1 single row (which reminded me of those portable toilets found at outside sites actually... :p), at times stacking them up into rows and columns of 4, reminding me of a bookcase, etc etc. When the monks moved around stacking the boxes, Sidi Larbi would actually be at a corner, stacking up little boxes into the exact same structure as the larger boxes - interesting!

What I also found intriguing was the scoring of the music. The 5-piece ensemble of piano, percussion and strings was amazing. The music was tentative at times, which eventually grew to be more and more energetic and powerful. But the intriguing part was really how a contemporary classical score can gel so well with the Chinese-ness of Shaolin's martial arts. The monks' performance also displayed their ability to 刚中带柔 which contrasted very nicely with Sidi Larbi's extremely flexible movements. The youngest monk in the production was also rather adorable and he drew laughter from the audience with his cute moments.

Anyway, all in all, it was a really enjoyable performance for me. I'm not sure if I learned anything more about dance after this, but it sure made me want to go read and learn more about movements & choreography. 

The Architecture of Silence - by Slovene National Theatres Opera & Ballet Maribor and Ljubljana and the S'pore Festival Orchestra.

Performing to Mozart's Requiem in D Minor, KV 626 and Zbigniew Preisner's Requiem For My Friend, the dance which involved 45 ballet dancers was choreographed by Romanian Edward Clug (who's very handsome by the way). In the rich mosaic of dance and music, the choreographer arranged images and forms of the motions of fish. The symbols of fish, represented for Clug, an elemental manifestation of silence.

I'm not really a fan of dance (ballet's an exception), and definitely do not really know how to appreciate contemporary dance. To me, contemporary dance is always so abstract, so... out-of-reach. Likewise, for this performance, I must admit that by the end of the show, I still didn't get understand the choreography. However, I was able to fully enjoy the powerful, yet graceful and elegant movements of the dancers. It was so obvious that the dancers were top-notch, and they had great core strength, for they made every single movement (which were obviously challenging to execute) appear so effortless!

The solo vocalists were great with their crystalline and bright voices, and the set was simple. The choristers stood in 4 rows at the back of the stage. Initially, when the light came on, it was as if there were 4 rows of candles. Only later did I realise the orange shades were faces! It was very nice - reminiscent of the rows of candles found in churches.

All in all, a rather enjoyable performance. My "beneficiary" for this performance, R, also enjoyed the show, though she doesn't attend such performances much. I'm still not a convert for contemporary dance, but this performance has made me feel that it's more acceptable than before.