"The Golden Cockerel"
The Royal Danish Ballet
Operaen Store Scene
Copenhagen, Denmark
28 September 2012
by Helene Kaplan
copyright 2012 by Helene Kaplan
At the end of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera "The Golden Cockerel" the Astrologer tells the audience that only he and the Queen of Shermakhan are real human characters. In Ratmansky's new version for the Royal Danish Ballet which premiered in September, these two characters are so viscerally alive compared to the rest that no disclaimer is necessary, and they are squarely within two great traditions of the Royal Danish Ballet: conveying underlying, roiling emotion in mime and storytelling. For the rest of the cast, Alexei Ratmansky's "The Golden Cockerel" made yeoman demands in mime, particularly in telling an unfamiliar story clearly and concisely, but as two-dimensional archetypes -- the coddling nurse, the sulky Princes, the maidens, the happy loves, the bereaved fiancee, the King's useless advisors, the Golden Cockerel -- and the development of underlying emotion was not an option for most of the ballet. This is the antithesis of what the Company does and what its audience expects from it.
The Royal Danish Ballet
Operaen Store Scene
Copenhagen, Denmark
28 September 2012
by Helene Kaplan
copyright 2012 by Helene Kaplan
At the end of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera "The Golden Cockerel" the Astrologer tells the audience that only he and the Queen of Shermakhan are real human characters. In Ratmansky's new version for the Royal Danish Ballet which premiered in September, these two characters are so viscerally alive compared to the rest that no disclaimer is necessary, and they are squarely within two great traditions of the Royal Danish Ballet: conveying underlying, roiling emotion in mime and storytelling. For the rest of the cast, Alexei Ratmansky's "The Golden Cockerel" made yeoman demands in mime, particularly in telling an unfamiliar story clearly and concisely, but as two-dimensional archetypes -- the coddling nurse, the sulky Princes, the maidens, the happy loves, the bereaved fiancee, the King's useless advisors, the Golden Cockerel -- and the development of underlying emotion was not an option for most of the ballet. This is the antithesis of what the Company does and what its audience expects from it.
Based on a Pushkin tale, with sets and costumes by Richard Hudson based on Natalia Gontcharova's for the Ballets Russes, the work is part of a long tradition of protest art. (The opera was censored for two years after completion, and the composer, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov died before its premiere.) In "The Little Humpbacked Horse," which Ratmansky choreographed for the Mariinsky Ballet, the Tsar is a bumblingly malevolent secondary character who gets his comeuppance. By contrast in "The Golden Cockerel", the Tsar figure is the central character, King Dodon, created for and by the incomparable Thomas Lund in his last new role before his retirement, and that he is on stage for almost the entire ballet, hog-tied and unable to use many of his greatest gifts seemed almost perverse. The word "gift" cuts two ways, but as antithetical as it is in the RDB tradition to separate mime from genuine emotion, the way the dancers performed this work as if it were a jewel suggests a happier meaning, at least to an outsider.
The basic plot concerns an Astrologer, who is obsessed with capturing the Queen of Shermakhan, and a King who is afraid of being attacked by hostile kingdoms. The Astrologer creates a Golden Cockerel, portrayed here as a dancer-turned-animated-wind-up-doll, who can warn the King of impending attack. In return for the Cockerel, the King agrees to a Player-to-Be-Named-Later, and each time the Cockerel squawks of danger, he responds, first by sending his sons into battle, and then leading his bumbling advisors into war, leading to tragic results (for them, at least). After the King sees the Queen, falls madly in lust, and is seduced by her in an attempt to save her kingdom, the Astrologer names his price: the Queen. The King refuses and kills the Astrologer, and the Cockerel tears the King to death. The Astrologer is resurrected in the final scene, and in a repeat of the opening scene, he tracks the Queen with his telescope. Unlike Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelungen," which ends with a new beginning of sorts, even if the math says the only characters to survive are the Rhinedaughters and Alberich, there is no such conceit here, and the prognosis is grim: la plus ça change, and the same-old isn't pretty. In fact, it's rather cold.
In Ratmansky's "Don Quixote," the standard, thin plot is the form on which he created layers and layers of overlapping characters and action, like crowd scenes in a Fellini film or "Chidren of Paradise", cinematic in scope and perfect for an age of constant distraction. Even Kitri in a bright red dress makes an unassuming entrance and has to demand attention. (If, among all the things in the crowd scene on which to focus, you've noticed Gamache on his second floor balcony watching for her in a frenzy, you have seen her sooner, through his eyes.) In "The Little Humpbacked Horse" he told a tale familiar to his Russian audience of an underestimated hero who wanders through many encounters and adventures, as familiar as Looney Tunes cartoons and Punch and Judy shows are in their contexts. (For New York audiences, it was like watching an opera in Czech with supertitles in Catalan and much easier to surrender to the ride and to soak in the characters and the choreography.) In "The Golden Cockerel" Ratmansky takes the opposite approach for a story unfamiliar to its premiere audience and, particularly in Act I, tells it in a detailed, careful, linear way, with no libretto necessary. At the same time, except for King Dodon's sons' "I can top that" extended solos, the dances in Act I are abbreviated, almost staccato. The pace and storytelling feel like children's theater, but theater that doesn't talk down to the children.
In the first scene of Act II, the tone and the pace changes. The Queen seduces the King to ensure peace in the kingdom, but, at the same time, is ready at any moment to escape the big, lethal baby of a King. She's no Odile: smitten as the King is, he's far more high maintenance than Prince Siegfried. He's a voracious voyeur, and she can't let up for a second, scene after scene, spelled only occasionally by her posse. While the King can afford to be missing a third dimension -- i.e. having a clue -- the Queen of Shermakhan cannot survive without one, since everything the King and his men touch turns to death. In the second scene of Act II (the last act), the ballet turned to the familiar pace of "The Little Humpbacked Horse": a lot of plot and non-stop narrative presented with rolling sweep, as one plot element morphs seamlessly into the next, building episodically to the climax and epilogue. The last act flew by.
The sets and costumes are washed in color, and they establish the visual charm of folklore (The excellent photo gallery on the RDB website gives a taste of what they are like, and the promo video shows the costumes in motion.) It is a perfect setting for a kingdom in oblivion and denial, and it ties the work to its Ballet Russes roots. So did the King's iconic expression -- head atilt, eyes open wide -- familiar from centuries of art, and which could have been Beatriz Rodriguez's opening gaze in Millicent Hodson's reconstruction of "The Rite of Spring" for the Joffrey Ballet. The King doesn't have the luxury of being rolled on and off the stage on giant building blocks to make cameo appearances as the plot demanded, and the genius of Lund's performance is how he made constant micro-adjustments to show 2,000 shades of dark gray in order to remain live and present and that he could be so vividly and deliberately two dimensional for nearly two hours was a triumph and delight.
While the ballet is named for the Cockerel, in her brief appearances she's a mindless, mechanized, drone-like weapon of the Astrologer, and Lena-Maria Gruber was frighteningly convincing in the role. If there was a trace of another great ballet "Firebird" in this story, as is usually suggested when there's a magic bird of any kind, it was in the Queen's determination to rid herself of any bind or obligation to a man. As a human woman, the Queen of Shermakhan's fate was similar to Penelope's: to always be the target and expected prize of men as long as she isn't owned and controlled by one. Her defense is her long seduction of King Dodon, and it is a tour de force, and Gudrun Bojesen ran the gamut from slithering vamp to zany temptress, throwing out every trick in her and her retinue's arsenal, including a rich, sensuous adagio with the King. (A battle won in an eternal war.) Bojesen was a focal point whenever she was onstage.
In other notable performances Lis Jeppesen was the picture of the concerned and fussy housekeeper -- a nanny, really -- and Cedric Lambrette imbued the Astrologer with pulsing, obsessed drive in his brief scenes. In his one great solo in Act I, Ulrik Birkkjaer showed the best of Royal Danish training, especially in his soft, pliant jumps and landings, with a personal style that was a combination of virility and grace. Geoffrey Styles conducted, and the orchestra emphasized the many layers of the brilliant score.