Griegiana

Speranza

Good dancing - pretty awful production to some.


Let's count the ways in which this ballet has been savaged.

1) Poor choice of camera angles showing dancers from waist up or from pov where action is blocked.

2) Robotic, random cutting that has no relation to what is happening or what the viewer might want to see.

3) On stage narrator interfering with action and interrupting music and action with gratuitous comments on the story.

4) Music slowed down and dynamics crippled to accommodate meaningless choreography.

Some nice dancing though!

And the only version of this ballet you're ever likely to see!

I watched this once, just to have seen it and keeping on my shelf as a reminder not to order again!



Thoroughly Gynt


A  wonderful adaptation by the Zurich ballet.

The dramatic energy depicts in a more abstract way the whimsically disturbing notions of Ibsen's play.

While Grieg's incidental music is not complete here, the more dynamic movements are used to superb effect.

Short of a full stage production of the play set to the music on DVD, this is all to be wished for.

Marijn Rademaker gives an excellent dance interpretation of the title character.

Emotions are easily gleaned from his techniques.

His performance runs the full spectrum of appropriate character attributes with vibrancy.

A perfect cast selection.

Each of the key characters and the dramatic situations surrounding them are supported by the orchestral passages and SONGS provided by Grieg.

Some spoken word passages extracted from
Ibsen.

And the physical manifestation of the performing talents present on stage as secondary character impressions.

For instance the youthful dance version of Peer Gynt is continually accompanied by the older Gynt depicted on stage by the vocal talent used to recite passages from the play as the ballet proceeds.

Another example is the Dancer Solveig accompanied in the shadows on stage by the soprano.

I would have preferred the Norwegian to the German recitations and singing in this production.

With moments vulgar or brutally shocking, this is a high contrast performance representing the treachery that easily co-exists with the folly of deluded youth.

Symbolically the drama focuses on the vulnerability and audacity driving the motives of this tragicomic hero.

The music of two modernists is woven through the work to help create dramatic dance vignettes.

These musical insertions provide deeper context to conscience of the characters as performed in dance.

This lends to a well balanced sequencing of the whole performance.

In summary, the spirit of the drama envisioned by Ibsen and supported by Grieg can be greatly experienced in this abridged and slightly skewed dance interpretation of the play.


Choreographer/director Spoerli's gentrified golden haired Peer, January 31, 2010

Gone is Ibsen's Peer.

The roughhewn, impoverished peasant youth who hunts reindeer and bear rather than taking work to help his widowed mother Aase; who is a teller of tall tales and fantasizes that money and power will fall into his lap; who is a wastrel and the village nuisance.

Rather, Heinz Spoerli, the absolute bedrock of the Zurich Ballet, raises the curtain on a vanilla blond youth who is clean, combed, nicely dressed in a jacket, all the prettier for being represented in this performance by Marijn Rademacher.

Peer is surrounded by six maidens, lightly choreographed, and he is flirting with all of them.

Ibsen's Peer is not a womanizer.

After a little affection with his enfeebled mother, he encounters demure Solveig for the first time and they bond in a pas de deux.

But 80 percent of the commitment is on her side as it will turn out.

Then he indicates that he must dash off and marry "rich" Ingrid!

Alas, she has just married another.

The wedding reception is a natural for spirited dancing by the whole corps, and indeed is the choreographic highpoint of this production.

But impulsive Peer runs off with the bride, pursued by the indignant husband.

In the mountains alone, Peer is assaulted by Norwegian folklore.

He is taunted by Water Rowdies (not in Ibsen, but an opportunity for eight young dancers), by three herd girls bereft of their sweethearts and seeking to marry trolls, by a Tranny in Red Heels (replacing Ibsen's Woman in Green), by the Mountain King and his roiling band of space-alien trolls.

Peer escapes homeward, only to have Mother Aase die in his arms.

He flees again, but this time from Norway.

Decades later, in North Africa, we find him rich and ebullient on the Moroccan coast (the stage is actually buried in "sand"!).

Spoerli brings on 16-20 military men and veiled girlfriends (another departure from Ibsen) as a choreographic opportunity.

These false friends rob Peer while he is attending Anitra's rather subdued dancing, then the looters' ship explodes at sea (little bang! wisp of smoke).

In Egypt, Peer's brief encounter with the Statue of Memnon (a pharaoh) is modified by the stage designer into a glinting metallic stele, which made me think of Mammon (Avarice).

At the Cairo madhouse, Peer is crowned Emperor--a life goal "fulfilled."

Spoerli makes another departure from Ibsen by introducing the villain Death who repeatedly bouts with Peer.

In the final chapters of the play/ballet, defeated worn Peer takes ship for home (the sea is those seesawing blue rods) and nearly drowns.

At last on home soil, he and the big narrator guy (Peer Gynt #2) encounter old faithful Solveig.

She will take Peer to her breast, watch over his sleep, lead him to God.

THE REAL NEWS IN THIS DVD IS ...

...that it introduces us to the Netherlander Marijn Rademacher, in his mid-twenties and among the few European dancers anointed for international stardom.

He rose like a rocket through the Stuttgart Ballet. As a guest dancer in Zurich, he shares the Peer Gynt role with other premier dancers.

But I think a special sequence should have been added for him, say a possessed flight through the glimpsed terrors of the night as he leaves the mountains.

Let's bring the audience to its feet now rather than later!

As it is, too much of Rademacher's capabilities are dissipated in supporting Solveig, combatting Water Rowdies, milling about with trolls, cavorting in Moroccan sands, posturing in the asylum, being tossed about by Death.

The other principal dancers are stunning.

Yen Han, the Eternal Feminine, is as tuned, as soaring, as mournful as the most beautiful violin.

The Mountain King is danced by Arman Grigoryan who, rich in characterization, amuses with his scratchy-monkey manner and astonishes with his hummingbird-like suspensions in mid-air. Vahe Martirosyan, Death with slicked-back hair, sheds half his clothes to reveal a masterfully etched torso, and is the epitome of the martial artist to punch-stop your heart, or to just somersault away, this time.

THIS MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTION ...

... includes German actor Philipp Schepmann as narrator with head mike; five singers onstage when performing, but in shadow; and an offstage chorus. The narrator/reciter is identified in the program as Peer Gynt #2, and episodically he hovers near Peer #1 as if he is conscience, a great overgrown Jiminy Cricket--there is absolutely no resemblance between #1 and #2.

When Ibsen's play was to be produced in 1876, he asked Grieg to provide incidental music, and 22 of those pieces appear in the ballet score.

Eight additional pieces are drawn from contemporary composers Mark-Anthony Turnage of England and Brett Dean of Australia. I was particularly taken by the Turnage piece (titled Scherzoid) for the dancers on the Moroccan beach; a nightclubby orchestration pops up and nudges Peer and his sycophants into rhythmic bouncing.

THE BOOKLET

The two ballet acts are 50 and 46 minutes.

Language is German with optional English or French subtitles.

The booklet includes inflated remarks by Spoerli and the all-too-familiar misleading synopsis.

Most notably, the celebrated role of the Button Molder (whose job is to melt down individuals of worthless metal into serviceable buttons) seems not to be included. Or, hmmm, is this the guy in long black coat with flaring mesh cuffs (ladles?) who directs two flashlights at Peer?

No supplements on the disk. The track menu seems to have a glitch, with only the first five of the 30 tracks directly accessible.

WELL, MY BELOVED FAN BASE,

Though I was critical of some aspects at first viewing, let's all get over it and just flow with the show, and you'll be quite entertained--so will the young.