Jamie xx - It's So Good

 

The Nutcracker - English National Ballet

The ticket fairy flew by and dropped an invitation in my lap, so I got to see the English National Ballet's 'The Nutcracker' last night and it was worth it for the last six minutes alone. Helicopter view first. When the opening curtains parted the set was dripping in richness, luxury and elegance, and this continued with every set change throughout the performance. The art of set designing has improved beyond description since my theatre days in London. If like me for quite some, you haven't been to the theatre, I urge you to try again. It's so much more immersive.

The first act caught me by surprise, there were about 25 ballet dancing children as the mice or skating soldiers, and they were really good, I didn't see a single mistake. How do they get all those children off school and performing around the country? All of them transformed into real mice at one point with collective fingers waggling like the whiskers and paws twitching as mice eat. However I was anticipating the grown ups to take over and to be candid, I didn't see the kind of performance I was expecting. Now, it might have been the view I had or the excessively hot theatre, or even the version being watched, but the only performance worth noting was the lead female dancer. I believe her name is Fernanda Oliveira from Brazil. Where Yijing Zhang of Birmingham Royal Ballet was magnetically tall, Fernanda's Sugar Plum fairy was diminutively hypnotic. Precision, levitation and elegant symmetry all rolled into one. Superb stuff.

The second act was closer to my expectations. More Corp de Ballet, more Batterie and an astonishing Coda. I think it says more about me than anything but I don't understand why Swan Lake, not The Nutcracker is most popular in the United States. I've also come to the conclusion that if there's no orchestra I'm not going to attend. The richness of sound, in this case the ENB Philharmonic, is something no sound system can come close to. When I went to see Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty earlier this year I didn't write it up as I thought it was crap for various reasons but more expensive tickets and no Philharmonic Orchestra will suffice. Anyway, the wrap up Coda of ENB's The Nutcracker was a dazzlingly baroque, twisting Rubik's Cube of light, shadow and writhing bodies, internally-externalising with the mechanism and precision of a watch. I'll add close examples to the post below. It was worth every penny just for that and I left delighted.

Brandon Lawrence & Friends - BIRMINGHAM ROYAL BALLET

Source material

Yassaui Mergalyev

You may recall that I was recently floored by a dancer with the Kyiv City Ballet Gala at Southampton Mayflower theatre, and that I couldn't locate his name or the extraordinary music he danced to.

Well, I received a lovely email from the artistic director who corrected a few errors I'd made (now updated) and shared with me the dancers name and the music that was driving me nuts trying to locate. When I looked down the concert program the first name I picked out was Yassaui Mergalyev because of the Asiatic name, and my brief experiences of former Soviet Union states, yet still I managed to get the music wrong or clicked on a different rendition of the classical piece called November by Max Richter. If you haven't heard it, I hope you find a few minutes to listen at some point.

Now then, as soon as I had Mr Mergalyev's name I did a search and saw a bunch of videos but two of them appealed to me because they were so grainy and posted well over a decade ago. The location, Kazakhstan I believe, might not be The Bolshoi but on that stage, you and I can view those minute and a half clips, from a (distant galaxy) or generation ago as if we are talent spotters trawling the planet for the new and the best, and it's among the most extraordinary footage you or I could have ever expected. You can see for yourself how exceptionally talented a dancer Yassui Mergalyev is.

Those unbelievable pirouettes that I've seen world class ballet dancers misstep when drawing to a halt, because everybody is vulnerable to dizziness, no amount of training takes it all away, a lot yes, but not all, yet Mr Mergaliev delivers easily the most unprecedented number of turns for a male dancer that I've yet witnessed. 

Finally in the first clip, the dances' denouement ends in a what looks like for a microsecond, a stumble or fall, but no. The music is surgically severed exactly on-point and we apprehend all of a sudden that it's a choreographed collapse and thus takes us somewhere I've not seen outside of Nureyev or any of the biggest names. It's a large claim but you can see for yourself.

It's a real treat even to the untrained eye.

First Draft. I'll clean up later as I must crack on.

MEDICI.TV

Kyiv City Ballet

I went to see Kyiv City Ballet last week for their gala performance in Southampton. 

They're exiled and inevitably (somewhat) stranded in the former Warsaw Pact country Croatia after a stint in Paris.

There's a lot I noticed and ordinarily would wish to write about, but now isn't the time.

Kyiv City Ballet were sparse but dignified.

They were professional with a wide ranging and versatile repertoire.

There was nothing but effort, and from time-to-time unforgettable performances from a skeletal ballet company under pressure, surviving at first week to week, followed if lucky by month to month, and then inevitably we tell ourselves the years trundle or roll by-on-by.

Not once did they solicit maudlin sympathy or allow anger, jingoism or bitterness spoil their performance. 

If anything was obvious, it was the absence of propaganda in either direction, and not its presence as it were.

The dancer in three images above, was not only extraordinary in a fluid and uncoiling manner, but the music for his sleeveless black-tunic performance has tested my sanity (help me out here please) trying to find it. I pulled my phone out to sound-search using Google Assistant but unsuccessfully.

I was hopeful it might be Le Spectre de la Rose (Carl Maria von Weber's Aufforderung zum Tanz - Invitation to Dance) or Elgar's Nimrod (Tribute to Peace) from the single-sheet concert program I subsequently located, but my hopes were skripaled early on and I've yet to find what I'm looking for. 

Show must go on.

Update. I received a lovely email from Croatia and I have the music so I'll be sharing that and more.

Birmingham Royal Ballet - Swan Lake

I haven't been to the ballet since Paquita, by the Ballet de l'Opera national de Paris in Beijing, 2008. You can read that linked review if you wish but at the time I couldn't tell the full story as I was a career-focused guy and this blog was mainly for advertising professionals. Well, I got stoned before heading out to the ballet at the Egg cultural centre. I lived just off Tiananmen square, and hopped onto my electric bike to see the show. I was just a smidge too stoned and miscalculated the time I'd need to take a different route around the square than usual, so I was the last person to arrive at the theatre. The ushers at the end of a long corridor were beckoning me wildly to move my ass as the show was just about to begin, so I legged it down the corridor and they let me in, closing the doors behind me.

I was high, out of breath, heart beating wildly, and as I looked around the theatre, the entire Beijing audience turned to gaze at me disapprovingly, knowing full well it was me that had held things up. I had a really good centre seat ticket, so half an entire row had to stand up to let me get there, while I apologised profusely. I sat down and the ballet began immediately. 

I'd heard that sometimes performers will choose a person in the crowd to play to on a personal level, to bring out the best and most sincere dramatization, and that night, I was that guy. The lead dancer, a beautiful Parisienne based swan looked at me straight in the eye all night, even to the last pirouette where she gracefully collapsed to the stage floor, arms open looking at me. 

Wow, what a night.

Southampton has one of the largest theatres outside of London and is the largest on the South coast. It only takes ten minutes to walk there from my home and I'm grateful to have exceptional cultural content so close to me.

As soon as the curtain raised for Swan Lake I was mesmerised. Stagecraft has progressed noticeably since my last ballet and it looked more real than reality, but in a holographic sense, more three dimensional and I was excited. Act I introduced our hero Prince Siegfried, his wingman Benno and his mother the Queen dowager who is recently widowed. Permit yourself to an appetiser if the text is worth returning to, or not. Let it speak for itself

The first intermission was described as a three-minute scene change but took so long many of the audience seated near me pointed out that a toilet break or a quick drink at the bar may have been possible but eventually the curtain raised and Act II commenced.

Siegfried and Benno have followed a flight of swans to a lake in order to hunt them. This felt transgressive as I am aware that killing swans in the United Kingdom is illegal to kill or eat as they are considered the property of the King. However, the swans they are chasing are in fact human between the hours of midnight and dawn. It is here Siegfried is amazed to see a swan change into the beautiful Odette played by the magnetically tall and exquisitely gifted Yijing Zhang. Some of her moves I'd never seen either a human or a fictional media character ever make. 

There was a time when I was training as a gymnast that I did ballet to improve balance, elegance and control. I regret not taking it up professionally. I would have been good. How good? That's another question but the principal male lead, Siegfried played by Tyrone Singleton did an amazing job. This will sound mean but it's just the truth. In these days of the obesity pandemic it's heart lifting to see beautifully formed men and women during ballet. Tyrone's strength raising up Yijing is a sight to behold. This is what the human form was designed for and I'll write about the purposeful destruction of our bodies one day. I now have the date it started and by whom and how.

Many of you will know that I make bold claims fortified with photographic evidence and documentation trails about the use of doubles, masks and clones in the high-profile business of politicians and billionaires and so forth. Swan Lake's central story mechanism is about a double for Odette. Our hero Siegfried falls in love with her but in Act III she is replaced by a black magician double, whose real name is Odile but is for simplicities sake also played by our heroine Yijing. Swan Lake is as contemporary as is possible and for those who recognise the name Odette she was a British agent and French operative Odette Sanson also known as Odette Churchill and Odette Hallowes or Lise as an agent for the clandestine Special Operations Executive.

It's close, isn't it? 

Doubles, clones, deception, espionage and subterfuge but in Act III we're back to the Royal court which is now dripping in illuminated red and black shadows for contrast, which is a colour coded and symbolic leitmotif I've been researching for quite some time now since the dance edit of ELO's don't bring me down.

Our handsome hero has fallen for Odette but at court sees double vision Odile and makes the mistake of erroneously pledging his love for her, which is the only magic spell rule that Odette had specified in order for their love to be conjugated. 

In a last attempt to gain his attention our Odette locks eyes with Siegfried who finally recognises his mistake and pursues Odette to the lake. After a stunning display of the swans emerging invisibly from ground floor mist before unforgettable choreographed dance scenes, both Odette and Siegfried throw themselves into the lake, thus ensuring that by the morning, their lives will be united in a world of eternal love.

Branded?

Here's one I made earlier..

Paquita

Earlier this evening, the Ballet de l'Opera national de Paris danced a 'Paquita' for a predominantly Chinese crowd at the Beijing National Theatre for Performing Arts (The Egg). Quite astonishingly (to me) they played with the narrative on two notable occasions.

They were spectacular, fluid, and yet tight when it counted. Gutsy in a word.

At the end of the first act through a triangle shaped formation, the dancers hopped violently backwards and receeding back into the stage, with peaked caps, bathed in the deepest hues of revolutionary red, and saluting violently to the audience whose spontaneous applause they won through sheer bravery given the context of the protests by China against the French in the last few days that is bordering on rage and insanity.

For a brief few seconds, it was as if the French were saying to the overwhelmingly Beijing intellectual-elite audience plus a few oiks myself, "is this what you want?", "is this how you want France to be?", "jumping up and down every time China starts to wave a stick?" ...."haven't you, you of all people, had enough abuse of power?"

It was the most creative thing I have ever seen and I will never forget it.

Bravo!