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DVD Review: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

January 26, 2015 by Rachel Hellwig

by Rachel Hellwig

Alice in Wonderland PicThe opening of the Royal Ballet’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland interposes a psychological basis for Wonderland. Alice (Lauren Cuthberton) is not a little girl in this version, but a young teenager who shares an infatuation with the gardener’s son Jack (Sergei Polunin). But, tsk tsk, this is the Victorian Era and Alice’s mother (Zenaida Yanowsky) disapproves of this class-disparate romance. She takes the opportunity to dismiss Jack after she erroneously believes he stole a tart. Not surprisingly, Yanowsky returns in Wonderland as the Queen of Hearts and Polunin returns as the Knave of Heart who “stole tarts”. The premise of dual characters is carried farther as family friend Lewis Carroll (Edward Watson) reappears as The White Rabbit, and tea guests such as the visiting Rajah (Eric Underwood) and Magician (Steven McRae) later morph into The Caterpillar and Mad Hatter.

Video projections are appropriately used to portray Alice falling down the rabbit hole. In the sequences that follow, a combination of projections and more traditional theatrical effects help create the famous “Eat Me” and ”Drink Me” episodes (where Alice grows and shrinks) as well as the “Pool of Tears”. All of these scenes are fun to watch, although, if you haven’t read the book in while, they might be hard to follow in places. “The Pool of Tears” is actually the most visually effective though it’s also the most conventional – dancers “swimming” in between rows of stationary scenery painted to look like waves. While suggesting just enough of reality, it retains the charm of a storybook illustration – something that is not as easy to accomplish with video projections.

A challenge in adapting Alice in Wonderland for a non-verbal medium is the fact that much of the story’s potency comes from wordplay and parodies of poems and songs. The wordplay, of course, can’t be translated into dance, but there is a perhaps a nod to it in some of the projected backgrounds which feature skies of scrambled letters. The element of parody though does find an interesting parallel in Christopher Wheeldon’s choreography which incorporates spoofs of classical ballet, most memorably in the Queen of Hearts’ botched Rose Adagio. Elsewhere, Wheeldon employs a mix of non-satirical classical ballet, contemporary ballet, and, occasionally, other styles of dance. The Mad Hatter is in fact reimagined as a tap dancer, an effect which works remarkably well.

As for the music, I admit I have mixed feelings about the original score by Joby Talbot. Of course, it makes sense that a soundscape for Alice in Wonderland would express the madness, confusion, curiosity, and even violence that are integral to the story. However, whether or not you enjoy Talbot’s approach to this will depend on your taste for modern symphonic music, which, of course, doesn’t shy away from dissonance and percussion-heavy moments. At the risk of sounding like a throwback, I think it’s harder to pull off effective dissonance than it is effective melody. So, to me, the score is most compelling when it sticks to the latter. During these moments, such as Alice and the Knave of Hearts’ courtroom pas de deux, the music takes on an engaging cinematic quality which enhances the already engaging visuals onstage.

Speaking of engaging visuals… the costumes, colors, scenery (with a small caveat about out-of-place grimness of the kitchen set with its sausage maker and pig carcasses), lighting, and overall composition of each scene is top-notch, sometimes to the degree that the designs begin to compete with the dancing for your attention. The courtroom in Wonderland just might be the best for its geometry, full prism of costumes, and a giant house of cards looming in the background.

When that house of cards literally and figuratively falls and Alice awakens in reality, we notice that she is now wearing a modern-day dress. The Knave of Hearts/Jack, sitting nearby her, is sporting a t-shirt and blue jeans. Yes, as it turns out, this story wasn’t about a Victorian youth dreaming of madness, love, confusion, and discovery based on her real-life experiences. It was instead a dream about a Victorian youth who had such a dream. Hmm… I’m not sure this conclusion is quite as interesting as the scenario seemingly set forth at the beginning.

The dancing, of course, is world-class all around, as you would expect from the Royal Ballet. As Alice, Lauren Cuthbertson is like a music-box ballerina in her seemingly effortless precision, line, and musicality – her technique so pure it’s almost startling. She also possesses a natural girlish playfulness and lightness that are ideally suited for the role. The other standout is Zenaida Yanowsky as the Queen of Hearts. Her acting is spot-on, and, even more impressively, her classical grace radiates so thoroughly through her every movement that you’re simultaneously in awe of how well she embodies her comical character and how she makes it so beautiful to watch — without dampening the fire of the satiric choreography.

This OpusArte DVD of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is from 2011. Since then, the Royal Ballet has revised and extended the production. I haven’t yet seen the updated version, but Sarah Crompton of The Telegraph wrote that the changes were all improvements. I truly believe that this ballet has masterpiece potential, though, as with all art, it takes time and revision to achieve that end.


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Filed Under: DVDs, Reviews Tagged With: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, ballet dvd, dvd, dvd review, royal ballet

DVD Review: TuTu Much!

January 29, 2014 by 4dancers

220px-TUTUMuchPosterby Emily Kate Long

TuTu Much! Follows nine female ballet students through the audition process for Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet School. These girls are pushed to their physical and emotional limits over the course of the four-week summer school, which serves as an audition for the RWBS year-round professional division. They compete with friends, classmates, and roommates, but most intensely with themselves. They’ve taken to heart the message that dance is hard work and not for the faint of spirit, the indifferent, or the undisciplined. They’re regular kids with big, serious ambitions, and they handle themselves with poise where there are careers are concerned. To balance the solemnity of the studio, there’s plenty of levity in endearing shots of the girls video chatting with family, mock-fighting with water sprayers, and raiding the school vending machines.

This film is an honest look into one school’s selection process, and the nine young subjects, their teachers, and their families are all very candid about the ups and downs of professional ballet training. The film hit selected movie theaters across Canada in 2010, giving the general public a peek into this foreign, mostly inaccessible world. Producers Vonnie Von Helmolt and Merit Jensen Carr and Director Elise Swerhone deserve kudos for presenting to the public a much more realistic look at professional dance training—what it actually takes to “make it”—than any American TV program ever has.

TuTu Much! made me root for all parties involved. I wanted these young women to succeed. I felt for their parents facing tough financial and family decisions. I sympathized with the teachers’ demands that every student bring her full effort into the work. Though most appealing to a dance audience, the film is important in a broader sense because it presents a set of highly driven young people, something that seems to be increasingly rare. It’s mostly straight talk about the sometimes harsh realities of the dance world, with just enough sweetness and charm to be satisfying.

Filed Under: DVDs, Reviews Tagged With: ballet dvd, ballet in canada, Royal Winnipeg Ballet School, tutu much!

Ashton Celebration: The Royal Ballet Dances Frederick Ashton

December 28, 2013 by 4dancers

by Emily Kate Long

dvd_ashtonAshton Celebration: The Royal Ballet Dances Frederick Ashton is true to its title, offering both onstage and offstage tributes to Frederick Ashton, one of the twentieth century’s choreographic giants and architect of the English style. Through six ballets and fifteen minutes of interview footage, we get a look at the particularities and peculiarities of Ashton, and the rigor undergone to preserve the works. The ballets represent a full range of flavors in Ashton’s work, from the steamy, serpentine Monotones I to the heartbreakingly romantic Marguerite and Armand. The DVD was filmed live at the Royal Opera House in February 2013.

One of the special features on the DVD is a series of interview clips on the subject of the Frederic Ashton Foundation, whose aim is to perpetuate the legacy and work of the choreographer. Among comments from stagers and dancers about the preservation of the choreographer’s intent and style, Anthony Dowell makes a very important point: in all of this, the aim is not to “make museum pieces,” but to keep the works alive and in good custody so they remain relevant. Rojo adds the observation that the sheer difficulty of the choreography keeps the ballets challenging, even as dancers become more and more technically skilled.

The comparison is often drawn between Ashton and George Balanchine, but it’s especially striking in La Valse, the first ballet on the program, because Balanchine used the same Ravel score for a work of his own. Frederick Ashton did for British ballet what Balanchine did in the US: He defined a style, fiendishly athletic but with a different emphasis, more subtle but no less expressive. Ashton’s La Valse is most interesting for the complexities of epaulement within a standard choreographic composition. The whole affair sumptuously dark, a rich painting of Ravel’s unnerving score. It all dissolves into giddy, brassy chaos as the curtain descends on a corps de ballet of dozens and three principal couples.

Next are two very different pas de deux, the Meditation de Thais, set to Massenet, and Voices of Spring, set to Strauss. The first is aching and exotic, a la La Bayadere; the second is a playful showpiece more along the lines of Spring Waters. I don’t think this particular Voices of Spring is the most satisfying example available on video; Yuhui Choe and Alexander Campbell perform with great competence but little dimension. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: Ashton Celebration: The Royal Ballet Dances Frederick Ashton, ballet dvd, royal ballet

DVD Review: First Position

February 27, 2013 by 4dancers

by Emily Kate Long

first position documentaryThe documentary First Position chronicles the journey of seven young dancers through the semi-final and final rounds of the Youth America Grand Prix. The film’s subjects range from age nine to age 17. They ride in Jaguars through Palo Alto, CA for private lessons; they ride the subway home to graffiti-slapped Queens, NY. They are girly-girls, military kids, and war orphans.

What these students have in common is love for their work and dreams of success. The ones who stand out as truly special are infectiously passionate about the work they get to do in order to achieve that dream. They are an inspiration to their peers, to their families, and to their teachers and coaches.

First Position does a thorough job of presenting the sacrifices and challenges these young dancers face, as well as their passion and their triumph. It also affords interesting perspective from some of the YAGP judges concerning the place and purpose of competitions in the ballet world. Happily, the overall consensus at YAGP seems to be that competitions exist to provide exposure to young dancers. They are a stepping-stone, not an end goal, and certainly not an occasion to objectively quantify students’ abilities. That message is emphasized by a closing shot of the Royal Ballet School’s “Bridge of Aspiration.”

This film carries an air of cool suspense throughout, and a certain matter-of-factness appropriate to a documentary about such tough, driven young people. That’s not to say it’s without moments of humor, emotion, and warmth—especially funny are shots of 11-year-old Aran Bell on his Pogo stick and of coach Viktor Kabanaiev wincing and guffawing at nine-year-old Jules Fogarty’s botched tours and pirouettes. Well-depicted, also, are the special bonds between students and coaches.

First Position is directed by Bess Kargman. It has won awards at national and international film festivals in 2011 and 2012. Extensive information about this excellent documentary is available on the film’s website, www.balletdocumentary.com.

Filed Under: DVDs, Reviews Tagged With: ballet dvd, bess kargman, dance movie, first position, royal ballet, yagp

DVD Review: Ballet and Orchestra of the Lyon National Opera in Maguy Marin’s Cinderella

September 12, 2012 by 4dancers

by Emily Kate Long

There’s the saying that if you want to hide something, you put it in plain sight. By dressing her dancers as dolls—wigs, masks, and full-body stuffed suits—Maguy Marin places the un-reality of the fairy-tale as such in plain sight. It is not about a girl and a boy feeling specific things in response to specific events governed by the norms of a specific time and place. Joy in response to love, sadness because of loss, fear of despair and isolation—none of these things are character- or situation-specific to Cinderella. They are simply human, and this staging of Cinderella brings them front and center.

Visually, the work is wonderfully strange with plenty of irony and, sometimes, downright silliness. The Sisters and Stepmother are pitifully rude, comic at times and sinister at others. Their torment of Cinderella is violent—thank goodness for the padded costume! Some of the same partnering elements are used later and more gently among Cinderella and the Good Fairies, effectively contrasting the Sisters’ roughness with the Fairies’ care.

Most touching in this work is Cinderella’s awakening solo in Act Three. After attempting to console herself with a broomstick version of her beloved prince, she collapses to the floor in utter despair. Who hasn’t felt so hopelessly wretched upon losing the things most dear to us: love and affirmation?

Marin incorporates play in a very literal way—the Gavotte contains plenty of flat-on-the-back falls for Cinderella as the Good Fairies encourage her to dance, and the ball scene includes guests sliding down the stairs and games of hopscotch and jump-rope. The pas de deux between Cinderella and the Prince features a shy game of paddy-cake and the “airplane,” with her supported off the ground on his feet. All this happens without seeming contrived; the exuberance and joy build naturally. After all, we are dealing with the language of young children, which is widely understood without any words at all.

Also striking about this version of Cinderella was the collision of old-fashioned and futuristic elements. The plaster-face doll masks reminded me immediately of dolls I used to play with at my grandmother’s house. The little girl through whose imagination we witness the story is dressed in vaguely Victorian clothing. Yet, the construction of the dollhouse is minimalist, the Fairy Godmother is an androgynous robot, and Cinderella travels to the Ball in a miniature car. The ballet concludes with a parade of Victorian pull-toys and a clear cellophane film descending as a scrim would. It seals the dolls in their house, as if reminding us that projections and interpretations are just that, real though they may seem. They exist both uniquely for each of us and commonly for all of us.

Ballet and Orchestra of the Lyon National Opera in Maguy Marin’s Cinderella. ArtHaus Musik GmbH, 2012. 87 Minutes.

Emily Kate Long, Photo by Avory Pierce

Assistant Editor Emily Kate Long began her dance education in South Bend, Indiana, with Kimmary Williams and Jacob Rice and graduated in 2007 from Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School’s Schenley Program. Ms Long attended Milwaukee Ballet School’s Summer Intensive on scholarship before being invited to join Milwaukee Ballet II in 2007. She also has spent summers studying at Saratoga Summer Dance Intensive, Miami City Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School, Pittsburgh Youth Ballet, and Ballet Chicago.

Ms Long has been a member of Ballet Quad Cities since 2009. She has danced featured roles in Deanna Carter’s Ash to Glass and Dracula, participated in the company’s 2010 tour to New York City, and most recently performed the title role in Courtney Lyon’s Cinderella and the role of Clara in The Nutcracker. Prior to joining Ballet Quad Cities Ms Long performed with Milwaukee Ballet and MBII in Michael Pink’s The Nutcracker and Candide Overture, Petipa’s The Sleeping Beauty and La Bayadére, Balanchine’s Who Cares?, Bournonville’s Flower Festival in Genzano and Napoli, and original contemporary and neoclassical works by Tom Teague, Denis Malinkine, Rolando Yanes, and Petr Zaharadnicek.

Filed Under: 4dancers, DVDs, Reviews Tagged With: arthaus musik, Ballet, ballet dvd, cinderella, dance dvd, dvd review, Lyon National Opera, Maguy Marin, naxos

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