Telling dances
Robin Young
The Swedish choreographer, Birgit caber& says that her aim is r° avoid mystification and to let the dancing speak for itself, telling tales so simply and clear131 through the chore' ography that the audiences need neither explanation nor cony mentary. It is no mean ambition, consider' ing that she set herself, in the opening programme of her company's British debut at Sadler's Wells this week, to re-tell the stories of Medea, Adam and Eve 44 Romeo and Juliet all in one evening. As one who loathes and refuses to tolerate the deliberate obscurity of much nuld' ern dance, I have every sympathy With Madame Cullberg, and I am glad to report that the performance lived up to the filial' national reputation which had attracted a star-studded audience. Even so I had
doubts during the dancing of Medea.
Cullberg's tendency, very clear in rill' programme, is to bring her characters dovia to our level, to show their ordinary hurt° characteristics and traits. This works very well sometimes — but not, I think, with Euripides. The choreography is, indeed, simply expressive and some of the grouping beautiful to watch. But pointedly as Magda Vrhovec danced the title role, the malevolence she could put into it was what one might expect to see in a Carabosse.
Medea, drumming her fingers •on her folded arms while plotting her revenge upon the unfaithful Jason (who would surely not have been tempted from the charming opening love-nest by such a thick-set Creusa), looks the archetypal harpie. Jason (Dan Moise) takes to kicking Medea around the stage and makes a wifebeater of the Bad Baron. And their pathetically cowering children, ready for the kill, look just like the Babes in the Wood. The effect of the shortcuts and simplifications which are necessary to choreographic narration is to bring Greek tragedy dangerously close to the level of pantomime.
Even so, the story is indeed so clearly told that no one, however unfamiliar, would have difficulty understanding it. And Medea was one of Cullberg's first exercises, originally created more than twenty years ago. Since then she has found more approPilate subjects and remained very faithful to her personal style, which blends classical and modern dance techniques with a Peculiarly Scandinavian humanism. It is interesting that, apart from one Petipa pas de deux for the benefit of a guest artist, the only piece in the London repertoire which Is not by Cullberg herself is a restaging of The Green Table by her original master, Kurt Jooss. Adam and Eve, as danced by the strong, handsome and blond Niklas Ek and the demure Mona Elgh, are a couple we can easily identify with as human beings. They are engaging in their naïveté — Eve's first exploration of Adam is by dog-like sniffing, and at one point he chases after her in gibbon-gait. The apple-eating at the tree of knowledge and the discovery of sex are very neatly related, and in face of God's wrath the couple fall over each other to repent. Sadly, however, the blotchy and indistinct back projections which serve as a set add nothing to the effect.
Best of all is the abbreviated Romeo and Juliet which dispenses with all the fussy bits (Nurse, Friar Laurence, and the balcony and indeed all the sets) and uses selections from Prokofiev's score. Household rivalry is dashingly represented in some banner-twirling episodes and the Capulets' anxiety to have their daughter married off to Paris is made emphatically clear. The street fights are made up of insults, in dance and gesture, brawls, and more formalised tournaments, and even in this capsulated version, Mercutio finds time and space for a protracted death agony.
It is an ingenious stroke to have Romeo (Ek again) encounter Juliet at the ball in the disguise of a jester's funny nose. This Romeo and Juliet (a winsome Lena Wennergren) really are young lovers without mistake, taking frank delight in tumbling together. .Their love scene and final reunion in death are beautifully realised, and, all in all, as an account of Shakespeare's story the ballet is both intelligible and intelligent. It follows that it is also moving.
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