"Sehnsucht" and "Schmetterling"
Nederlands Dans Theater
Cal Performances, Zellerbach Hall
Berkeley, CA
October23, 2013
by Rita Felciano
copyright © Rita Felciano
The West Coast premiere of two recent works by Nederlands Dans Theater longtime in-house choreographers Paul Lightfoot, now artistic director, and Sol León, artistic advisor, left behind a profound unease, coupled with admiration. "Sehnsucht" was dedicated to the choreographers fathers;"Schmetterling", to one of the dancer's mothers. Both works were drenched with a sense of the absurd that ultimately fell flat despite the brilliance of these dancers.
The object of Henriksen's (at least partial) longing, appears to be Parvaneh Scharafali -- he does get to hold her for a tiny moment -- who herself is involved in a problematic relationship with Medhi Walerski. In an impressive coup de theatre the couple is caught in a revolving box that turns perspectives -- and relationships -- upside down. The choreography fills this hamster cage to the last corner with athletically fractured encounters for two people who ignore, drop, reject but also hang on to each other. A slippery affair at best, you had to cheer for Scharafali when she finally dove out the window.
To my eyes watching the second section, set to the third and fourth movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, became an endurance test. It's music in which the composer masses all his forces to build to a huge crescendo, however, so grandiose and grandiloquent that it just about squashes the listener. I am not sure to what extent Lightfoot/Leon tuned into that aspect of the score though they choreographed it very closely--Beethooven gives us a fugue, so do they--for a dozen topless men and women. Their androgyny deprived them of an essential humanity. Emerging from the wings like shadows, they moved through fast-paced, spacious and highly disciplined unisons, sometimes punctuated by solos or small ensembles. However, inevitably these dancers stepped back into a group that looked like a well-tuned machine or something spat out by an assembly line. When they surged downstage staring at us, their onslaught felt like a catastrophe about to happen. Were they a herd or a community? These choreographers are not into politics but it was satisfying that in the end Walerski returned to draw a witch's circle around Henrikson.
Witty and charming songs by The Magnetic Fields set the tone for the darkly appealing "Schmetterling." Lightfoot and Leon designed a puppet theater set with a narrowing upstage perspective and a series of wings from which performers would pop up only to be sucked in again. The black-on-black of set and costumes nicely set into relief the dancers' legs and arms movements in skittery choreography which suggested puppets on strings. The individual duets, not all that different from another passed by quickly, almost like fleeting thoughts. Synchronized bobbing heads recalled mechanical dolls. Someone's bowlegged walks suggested a cowboy. A lovely growing line of shoveling feet and gesturing hands gently slowly sank into the orchestra pit.
Winding through these madcap encounters was a darker reality. Its protagnists were Walerski, the only one in street clothes, and tiny Ema Yuasa whom we first encountered during the intermission when she picked up Henriksen's dragging himself across the stage with leaded feet. Now with gray hair and a Butho make-up, Yuasa meandered but threw herself repeatedly at Lerski who responded but seemed as much at loss as she was. They were an odd couple; he sturdy and huge; she like a fluttering moth, or perhaps a butterfly. Towards the end he picked her up and carried her upstage cradled in his arms just as the set opened to reveal a huge beautiful landscape. I kept thinking of a similar scene in the movie "Soylent Green." But this too was puppet theater. One of the stagehands pulled the landscape curtain aside and we were left with blackness.