Homage to Diaghilev
John Neumeier, “Daphnis and Chloe”, “The Afternoon of a Faune”, “Le Sacre”
Hamburg Ballett John Neumeier
Hamburg Opera House
Hamburg, Germany
November 13, 2008
by Horst Koegler
copyright @2008 by Horst Koegler
In Hamburg, John Neumeier started his 2008/9 Diaghilev anniversary season on November 7 with a revival of three of his earlier creations: “Daphnis and Chloe” and “Le Sacre”, both dating from his Frankfurt beginnings in 1972 sandwiching his version of “Afternoon of a Faune”, created in 1996 in Dresden for Vladimir Derevianko and two of his partners. I attended the fourth performance on November 13, with a full house enthusiastically applauding all three newly polished pieces, and danced by a new generation of dancers; the threesome looked in mint condition. Actually it was one of the happiest performances I attended in recent months, one of the reasons being that the ballets are set to three of the century´s musical masterworks by Ravel, Debussy and Stravinsky. Though I have heard them at former occasions far more brilliantly played than on that night by the Hamburg Philharmonic and Chorus under the competent, but hardly electrifying, baton of Christoph Eberle, the musical riches were truly overwhelming. Remembering that they all date from the years before World War One, a whiff of nostalgia was unavoidable if one compared them with so much electronically generated sounds and noises as our customary fare in so many of today´s modern oriented ballet-evenings.
In Frankfurt in 1972 “Daphnis” was double-billed with “Le baiser de la fée”, making them complimentary seasonal evocations of summer and winter. Bathed in blazing sunshine, Jürgen Rose´s slightly art nouveau décor suggested a Mediterranean island, invaded by a group of high school students on an excursion to study the remnants of ancient Greece, dominated by a huge statue of a Phidias, or maybe Apollo.
Enters Daphnis, a handsome, still somewhat shy and hesitant schoolboy Thiago Bordin, looking at the imposing stature, comparing it with his own more modest, but perfectly proportioned body, looking up the details in his guide-book, instinctively starting to move in beautifully undulating motions. He is followed by a group of rather carefree and flirtatious girls, among them the pretty Chloe, Florencia Chinellato, high-spirited , but the moment she views Daphnis, obviously attracted by his sexy charms, even if he is not aware of it. She approaches him and even dares to shyly kiss him, but gets interrupted by an elegant lady of easy virtue: Lykanion, the languorously moving Catherine Dumont, who tries to seduce Daphnis, entangling him in her erotic net, to which he appeals now more curiously, while Chloe gets involved with three sailors – reminding me somehow of their pals from “Fancy Free”. There is a lot of joking and horse-play, some people from the village nearby join them and joyful dancing with some Greek overtones develops.
When night falls, the lights change, the sea glitters in myriads of flickering splashes and Daphnis dozes off. In his dreams three nymphs emerge very much modeled like pillared caryatids, but their beautifully posed figurations give way when a horde of pirates appear, led by the virile Dorkon of Carsten Jung, with Lykanion in his entourage. They seize Chloe and abduct her to their cave where they try to rape her, but are disturbed by the appearance of Daphnis with the nymphs, obviously now provided with godly powers, looking like a younger Apollo himself, shying them away, having become the no longer so innocent young man, and giving his amorous instincts free rein. He is reunited with Chloe and they celebrate their reunion with a rousing paean to love with all its uninhibited promise of eternal bliss and happiness And then the whole ballet explodes in a finale of escalating joy unbound, a hymn to youth and beauty, during which they seem to dance on the ripples of Neumeier´s bubbling choreography which reflects the waves between tide and flood. There is a wonderful flow of movements like the eternal jeux des vagues, and its mix of dancers from the regular company and the students from the school makes it a fabulous challenge for the youngsters to live up to the standards of their adult colleagues. It´s one of the ballets which makes one wish to hug them all. Splendid!
Follows “Afternoon of a Faune” – very distant from Nijinsky or Robbins. No Faune – no nymphs. Afternoon – yes, a hazy, misty atmosphere, sleepy, the lights already somewhat dimmed, a beach, behind a veil one senses the contours of the Phidias stature. The afternoon of life? A mature man, Otto Bubenicek, already beyond his midlife crises, dozes away. leaning against a rock. A youth appears, curiously watching the old man (is he Hemingway, musing about the Old Man and the Sea?), approaching him. He is in his boxer pants, his naked torso deeply bronzed, gets more daring in his moments, touches him – he is Edvin Revazov, obviously one of Neumeier´s favourites, of Ukrainian descent, who was seriously miscast as Tadzio in Neumeier´s “Death in Venice” several seasons ago, but here ideally suited to his role as a tempestuous, daredevil lanky guy of compact build and untamed force. Anyway he is the tempter in their siesta-like dallyings, joined by a lady of refined sexual appetites, the sophisticated Hélène Bouchet, and the three of them start a flirtatious pas de trois – a bit like Debussy´s “Jeux”, and one is very much aware of the musical relationship between the two pieces. It is all rather harmless, though, quite without the scandalous titillations of the original Nijinsky – an afternoon petting among three cultivated partners from three generations, performing a musical fluid B-category Neumeier choreogeraphy, without stirring any deeper emotions –a ménage à trois without consequences.
“Faune” is really a sort of intermezzo only, especially if one compares it with the adjacent “Sacre.” For “Sacre” emerges like a cosmos of a ballet. It evokes no ancient Russian rites, and its body-flesh costumes (Neumeier designed) suggest naked mankind, which develops from simple goings in regular lines, still without music, as if measuring the size of the stage before the music sets in and seems to electrify individual limbs of the body. It looks at first completely uncoordinated before the movements start to flow, getting more and more involved and convoluted. There exists no classical harmony, bodies look cramped and spastic, and a frightening feeling of anxiety spreads, with everybody trying to seek protection and yet shying away from contact with a partner. One is less aware of groups than of individuals struggling to survive, and one identifies, individual dancers like Peter Dingle and Amilcar Moret Gonzalez. A couple comes to the fore, they are Carolina Aguero and Stefano Parmigiano. There is the disturbing presence of a motionless lying figure – a dead man? But in the second part the individuals congregate and their masses form a threatening clump which move like waves rolling over the whole stage. flooding it, so that one fears that might any moment swap over into the auditory. It´s like a tsunami (the choreography dating from 1972 when nobody had ever heard of a ´Tsunami´). From this emerges a single girl, Leslie Heylmann, and she dances as if possessed by a demon, though I remember Beatrice Cordua, creating the role 36 years ago in Frankfurt, as a much more ferocious and aggressive dancer. With the dancers clumping like rolling waves, this also assumes a dream-like atmosphere, but this time more like a nightmare. At the end one has the feeling that the whole company is in a state of panic. Since Neumeier´s “Le Sacre” was created a generation ago, we have seen dozens of different versions of Stravinsky´s still mind blowing score, but few that match his almost terrorist grip.
Photos, all by Holger Badekow, from top:
"Daphnis and Chloe": Catherine Dumont, Florencia Chinellato, Thiago Bordin and students from the Ballet School.
"Afternoon of a Faune": Joelle Boulogne, Arsen Megrabian, Ivan Urban.
"Le Sacre": Amilcar Moret Gonzalez, Yohan Stegli and ensemble.