The Major Fall the Minor Lift
On another deconstructed ‘Swan Lake’
If your head was throbbing from that galumphing elephant of a Swan Lake – a museum visitation in the worst sense – courtesy of Ballet Theatre at the Music Center, then I hope you turned to UCLA/Live for the latest installment of “La La La Human Steps,” Édouard Lock’s acclaimed Canadian troupe that shouts, “The world is my avant-garde oyster!”
Because, wow, nothing stood as a better antidote to all that’s stultifying about a classical ballet frozen and weighted heavily than his deconstruction of Swan Lake.
Lock calls it “Amjad” (Arabic for man or woman) – this astringent palate cleanser that strips the whole 19th-century epic down to its emblematic essentials, key among them those magnificently fluttering arms. And anyone who expected to hear Tchaikovsky’s wondrous score, which usually gets strait-jacketed by a pickup band for seat-of-the-pants accompaniment to onstage dancers, was also in for a surprise.
So what did Lock’s composers come up with? A marvelous transcription for amplified piano quartet – many parts of which, like the lilting waltz, moved from major to minor mode, had their themes relocated and disturbed, even enjoyed a tango interpolation. All of it caused new appreciation of the music to the point of putting pleasure-grins on faces. In fact, every warhorse could benefit on occasion from this kind of acerbic freshening.
And the choreographer’s staging was equally a turn-on. For starters “Amjad” resembled an underground noir affair – a sanctum in black: men in black shirts and trousers, women in black strapless designer leotards, sheer black tights and on pointe, of course. The only light came from overhead spots beamed on the dancers, who were already tightly confined by the ever-vertical choreography and made more so by this
lighting scheme.
What they delivered – these sleekly muscular women – were knife-edge, angular moves in the form of staccato semaphores, most of them done in place, with occasional lifts partnered by men. Lock banished any hint of the soft, gliding, space-absorbing choreography that the originators of Swan Lake gloried in. But he made the mighty, iconic arm flutterings and flappings (which, by the way, matched the deliberative killer steps) a still-powerful motif.
Was there a deal-breaker in all this wonderment? Uh, yes: The piece clocked in at an hour and 45 minutes, making it twice as long as viable. Well before the final curtain, most audience members had reached a point of diminishing returns. Lock seemed not to know when his investment had maxed out.
But Luis Bravo, whose Forever Tango recently touched down at the Wilshire Theatre, has learned a few things over the course of his 15 or so touring years as producer. One of them involves the format. No longer must we wade through an orchestra number, followed by a vocal, in order to see the next dance. Now he’s put them together as a unit and forged a really terrific band of bandoneones and string virtuosi. Thank you, señor. And, by the way, all those couch potatoes who hungrily gobble up the crummy Dancing With the Stars should get a gander at Julio Altez and Carolina Garcia. Then they might learn what real dancing is: a couple as two bodies enthrallingly merged into one heartbeat, one breath – not a trained seal act.
Published: 04/23/2008
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