Ballet company presents three stunning works by leading choreographer

Three by Ekman
Royal New Zealand Ballet
Auckland until June 1, then Napier June 4, Christchurch June 9-10, Dunedin June 14-15

Francesco Ventriglia, the artistic director of the Royal New Zealand Ballet, reflecting on the work of Swedish choreographer Alexander Ekman seems slightly mystified: “Is Alex’s work ballet, contemporary dance or something else?  Probably something else!”

Even Ekman seems to have difficulty defining what his creations are. At various points through his performances there are texts and refrains of “What does it mean,” “What is revealed.”

In Three by Ekman what is revealed is the mind of the artist – part choreographer, part storyteller, part philosopher. What we get is some sort of autobiographical, self-reflecting understanding of his processes and the thinking behind his creations, which use dance, music, film, theatre as well as appropriating dance and rituals of several cultures to create modern narratives and contemporary myths.

In all three works, there is an emphasis on the both mind of the choreographer and the mind of the dancer. In much of these works it is the dancer who is seen as the motivating force behind the movement and gestures as Eckman explores the nature of rhythm, which is at the heart of dance. On the way, this exploration looks at the rhythms not only in dance but also poetry, music and gesture.

The first work on the programme, Tuplet, refers to the musical concept of notes with irregular beats, not conforming to traditional notation and time values.

The work involves six dancers who respond to the music as well as their own self-generated tunes, their own breathing and heartbeats. They perform a series of vignettes, which are like a continuous collage involving movement, texts, music and sounds that create a form of gestural language or semaphore

They pose and move, sometimes like dancers but also like sumo wrestlers and boxers. And there are sequences where Eckman seems to have borrowed from Pacific slap dance and haka.

Before the second work, Episode 31, there was a short video made of some of the dancers seen rehearsing and then dancing, jiving and posing on the streets of Wellington, on the wharves, in the cable car and into Botanic Gardens. This attempt to take inspiration of the sounds of the city and the sounds of the natural world was probably putting the dancers far outside their comfort zones, having them work in a different environment but not totally engaged with it. This idea was further pursued in Episode 31 itself where the dancers explored new concepts of time and space.

The main performance involving 16 dancers was defined and regulated by one dancer who initially turned on a light at one corner of the stage and then proceeded to walk slowly around the perimeter of the stage, arriving back at the beginning point to turn off the light just as the dance was completed. He was like a rotating, defining sun, the dancers only permitted an allocated period in which they could perform.

The dancers performed some rapidly changing fragments incorporating various moves; running, crawling and jumping with one dancer moving about the stage en pointe, with others in their jazz shoes. A couple of stage hands wheeled spotlights around the stage as though on the set of a Hollywood musical.

Cacti, which the company has performed to acclaim previously, was the last and most impressive work of the evening. It is a complex multilayered work with dancers expressing themselves through sound as well as dance, on-stage musicians, architectural elements which the dancers manipulate, a long, spoken interchange and of course the cacti.

The work also makes references to other dance works, pop music videos, imagined primitive dance and Busby Berkeley. The architectural elements are reminiscent of the Anthony Gormley designed plinths in Sutra, choreographed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, which was at the 2010 NZ Festival.

While the work takes an experimental and challenging approach to dance, it is also witty, reflecting on the nature of contemporary dance with the voiceover asking “What does it all mean? We are asked to consider what the roles of the dancer, the choreographer, the audience and the critic are – a postmodern questioning of a postmodern art form.

In this process of questioning, we see 16 dancers on a checkerboard of square platforms performing a variety of dance moves that range from yoga poses to frenetic activity,

The music for the work is provided by members of the NZ String Quartet who spend much of their time on stage playing disjointed passages of music, notably Schubert’s soulful Death and the Maiden along with passages from string quartets by Haydn and Beethoven.

The dancers respond to the drama of the music but occasionally they appear to lead the music as their movements become those of a conductor, music and dance meshing in a new way.

After initially appearing to be constrained by their square platforms, the dancers begin to use them as architectural elements, turning them into elements of dance and then they construct an elaborate three-dimensional structure which allows for more unrestrained dancing.

Here we witness one of the more entertaining duos of the evening, with Veronika Maritati and Shih-Huai Liang dancing to a long monologue that imagines the two dancers communicating to each other about the dance piece they are engaged in. The voice relays the sorts of commands, observations and reflections that could be running through their heads of the dancers. So, the elegant dance is reduced to the physical manoeuvring and posturing they have been instructed to perform.

The three works are among the most innovative dance pieces the Royal New Zealand Ballet has staged in recent years, the programme evidence of the company’s international standing in attracting one of the great contemporary choreographers, the skilled dancers of the company and a visionary artistic director.