Mercoledi Musicale

When my friend Cathy posted this cartoon on Facebook earlier today it brought to mind one of those pieces that can easily become an ear-worm. And to be honest I'd never thought of the poor percussionist stuck on the snare drum for the full 15 minutes of Ravel's Boléro.

Though it is most often heard as an orchestral piece in the concert hall it was originally composed as a ballet for Ida Rubinstein in 1928.  Choreographer Bronislava Nijinska set her dance patterns to a rather flimsy scenario about a female dancer (Rubinstein) who mounts a table in a taverna in Spain at the insistence of the other dancers and becomes more and more abandoned in her movements.   Maurice Béjart, in perhaps the most famous version created in the late 20th century, echos some of that in a 15 minutes choreographic workout for a solo dancer (sometimes male/sometimes female) with some assistance from the corps that proves that dancers are more athletes than most athletes.

But I will be honest as much as I love the Béjart work I posted it once before several years ago; so when I went searching for a dance version on YouTube I was hoping to find a record of the piece that Peter Gennaro choreographed for the great Hollywood dancer Juliet Prowse.  It was the finale of her Las Vegas act for several outings and I recall seeing it at the MGM Grand back in the 1970s.  I still have the image of the complex finale - a stately procession across the stage, Prowse held aloft as her great black sequined cape (a Spanish funeral cape????) spread across the width of the stage and the whole (her and some 30 dancers) slowly descending from view into the depths of the stage floor.  It was the sort of thing that Las Vegas - and Prowse - did incredibly well before it all became a branch of Cirque de Soleil.  Though I recall she once performed it on The Ed Sullivan Show sadly it appears to not have been archived - though as I've found with YouTube you should never say never.

Unable to find the Prowse-Gennaro and not wanting to repeat the Béjart I found a version created by the French choreographer Roland Petit in 1997.  Danced by Lucia Lacarra and Massimo Murru on a barge in the harbour of Marseille, I find it lacks the dramatic intensity of Béjart's version.  I've always found Petit's choreography, with the exception of his Carmen,  had a certain coldness to it and often seemed mechanical and I'm afraid his Boléro is no different.  But then Ravel never liked Nijinka's creation - he felt it should have been set in the open air with a factory in the background and choreographed to reflect the mechanical nature of the music.  The barge setting definitely meets the open air requirement but that glorious night view across the Vieux-Port towards Notre-Dame de la Garde is magical more than mechanical.

Should you want to compare the two - and hear more of that insistent snare drum - here is a link to a performance by Nichola la Riche with the Ballet de l'Opéra National de Paris. 

23 January - 1943: Duke Ellington plays at Carnegie Hall in New York City for the first time.

A Short Evening of Petit

December was an eventful month musically with much going on operatically, orchestrally and on the dance scene. Couple that with holiday happenings and schedule conflicts meant some things had to be missed. But some fancy footwork and manipulating of TrenItalia schedules did allow me to see a Riccardo Muti conducted Moïse et Pharon at the Teatro dell'Opera on my birthday and then make a run to La Scala for the new Die Walküre the next night. Observations on both those performances should follow shortly. I had been looking forward to the mid-month Academia Santa Cecilia Christmas concert - note not Holiday Concert but Christmas Concert - and the opportunity to hear both Arthur Honegger's Une cantate de Noël and the much talked about young baritone Jacques Imbrailo but other commitments made it impossible.

However I wasn't going to miss the opportunity to see Eleonora Abbagnato, the Sicilian born premiere danseuse, of the Paris Opéra Ballet in Roland Petit's L'Arlésienne at the Teatro dell'Opera. And the fact that it was being paired with Petit's ground-breaking Carmen starring Polina Semionova, one of my favourite dancers, made the evening a must-see. So on the second last night of the year our friends Simonetta, Brigitte, Lorraine, Simon and Laurent and I ensconced ourselves in a palco at the Teatro dell'Opera for una Serata Roland Petit.

Abbagnato is as much known here in Italy for her commercials and magazine appearances (including a few of the gossip rags) as she is for her dance work but that all falls in the shadows when she steps on stage. This is a dancer who has "star" in every step she takes and even her stillness has impact. Though the role of Vivette doesn't have the showy opportunities that Petit gives to his male dancer in this tale of obsessive love it is technically and theatrically one of nuance and Abbagnato makes every moment on stage electric.

As often happens at the Teatro dell'Opera the originally announced cast list qualified as a work of fiction - Benjamin Pech, Abbagnato's frequent partner in Paris, was scheduled to dance Frederi but was replaced by Alessandro Riga, a dancer who received his major training here in Roma. It was an impressive substitution. Petit's choreography for the village boy driven mad by his love for an unfaithful girl from Arlés requires virtuosity as both a dancer and an actor: after a slightly tentative beginning Riga delivered both. That final desperate descent into madness was electric and the suicidal leap breathtaking. He is listed as a "guest artist" for several productions in the coming months - it will be interesting to see him in other types of roles.

I had seen L'Arlésienne many years ago when Petit's Ballet de Marseilles brought it to Ottawa along with the Carmen that he had revived for Karen Kain. I don't recall it having the same impact as it did in this performance. Even with the less than stellar company of the Teatro dell'Opera the power of this piece of dance-making, with the central drama set within the framework of the folk-inspired movements of the Corps de Ballet, came through.

Here is Eleonora Abbagnato with her frequent partner (on and off stage) Jérémie Bélingard in the final scene of L'Arlésienne. Unfortunately it is split in two clips and the dark setting does obscure some of the complex leg work that Petit demands of the male dancer - but Bélingard is incredible in this performance as is Abbagnato in a quieter way.

My friend Simonetta and I turned to each other almost simultaneously at the end of the Carmen and muttered "dated". This is arguably Petit's most famous work and one of his earliest - it was created in 1949 for his Ballet de Paris and more particularly for his wife the great French ballerina-performer Zizi Jeanmarie. Looking at it now it is very much dance theatre of its time - even the once striking decor and costumes by Antoni Calvé have a musty feel to them. On the way home Laurent remarked that he kept thinking "Gene Kelly" and there was a certain truth to that - the choreography has a quality to it that marks it as a piece of dance from the 50s. Perhaps with a Carmen of more sensuality than Semionova - she's just too nice - and a José of more passion than Robert Tewsley it would have had more impact. I recall seeing Semionova and Roberto Bolle dancing the pas de deux at a Gala two years ago and feeling at that time that there was something missing. In both instances the technique was there but not the sexuality.

The company put a good deal of energy into the performance and notable amongst the gypsies, cigarette girls and riff-raff of Seville was Alessandra Amato as the chief bandit. She is a dancer who has demonstrated rare skill over the past few years and it has been interesting watching her develop. Hopefully the Company's new director, Micha van Hoeck, will give us more opportunity to see her in other roles.

Though there have been great dancers who have assumed the roles of Carmen and José there have never been any to challenge the sensuality and sexuality that Zizi and Petit brought to those first performances. Fortunately it was caught on film in Black Tights, a 1960 dance film that featured four dance pieces choreographed by Petit for Zizi, Moira Shearer and Cyd Charisse.

It was an enjoyable evening but as I made note in the title a rather short one. Perhaps budgetary constraints stopped van Hoecke from programming a third Petit work to fill out the evening. It would have been interesting to see another of his works - Le Loup, Le jeune homme et la mort or even the Company's lead male dancer Mario Marozzi in Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune which he danced here several years ago. However given the current financial situation - the Company is only presenting 4 programmes this season - I should just thank the gods he was able to give us an evening of dance at all.

04 gennaio - Beata Angela da Foligno