Shoot the moon - Nederlands Dans Theater - Sol León & Paul Lightfoot

Another favorite--Shoot the Moon--by the NDT

Silent Screen - Sol León & Paul Lightfoot (NDT 1 | Scenic Route)

One of my favorite modern dance creations from my favorite modern dance company--the Netherlands Dance Theater (NDT). I was reminded of it tonight when I was at the Opera (Operaen.no) to see three different dance pieces--one classical ballet--Divertimento No.15--choreographed by George Balanchine, the other two experimental modern dance pieces--27' 52'' and Some Girls Don't Turn--choreographed by Jiri Kylian and Emma Portner respectively (Portner/Kylian/Balanchine - at Oslo Opera House (operaen.no). I enjoyed all three, but when it comes to experimental modern dance, my taste runs more toward NDT. 

Woyzeck at the Norwegian Opera and Ballet

Last night my husband and I went to see the modern dance production of Woyzeck at the Norwegian Opera and Ballet. It was in fact the fourth performance of this modern dance piece; it premiered in Oslo during the last week of September. The story of Woyzeck, written originally as a play by Georg Büchner, has also been adapted as an opera and as a number of different films, but this was one of the few times it has been presented as a dance piece. It was created by the German choreographer Christian Spuck to music by Martin Donner, Philip Glass, Gyorgy Kurtag, and Alfred Schnittke. As fate would have it, Inger-Margrethe Lunde, the theater critic for Aftenposten (the Norwegian newspaper), did not like it. In fact, she strongly disliked it, going so far as to call it ‘bullshit’. I am attaching the link to her review (in Norwegian—it can be translated using Google Translate but you have to tolerate some weird translations here and there): http://oslopuls.aftenposten.no/kunst_scene/article605271.ece.  She headlined her review with the words “Embarrassing and disappointing”, followed by “Bullshit, I think, despite the frantic, endless standing ovation”. And the review gets worse from there, ending with the same-- “Bullshit, I think”…… I cannot remember ever reading a review of any production, dance or otherwise, quite like hers. When I read her review, I thought, yikes, just our luck; we have season tickets to the ballet, and Woyzeck was the first dance of the season for our subscription. I have to say I was dreading it, because there is nothing worse than sitting for two hours watching something that is boring. That has happened on occasion—that I have been bored by an opera, but I do manage to differentiate between my subjective feelings and my objective appraisal of the actual performance—were the singers good, were the sets attractive, and so on. I am not opposed to someone writing a negative review, but hers could have been more professionally-done. In any case, as luck would have it, we ended up not sharing Lunde’s opinion of Woyzeck. And in fact I have to wonder if we actually saw the same dance piece. I cannot understand what it was she did not like, and have to conclude that it was the theme of the story (the humiliation and cruelty that one man is subjected to that results in a tragic outcome) that bothered her. That I can understand—that it would have bothered her. But not that it would lead to her disliking the entire production or calling it bullshit. Because it wasn’t. I was actually quite moved by this dance production, especially by one of the final scenes where the low-ranking soldier Woyzeck dances with his girlfriend Marie who has been unfaithful to him; the dancer who played Woyzeck last night, Kaloyan Boyadjiev, was wonderfully expressive with his body and his arms, and really made you feel his humiliation, his pain and his desperation. His murder of Marie is the culmination of a long series of humiliations that he has been forced to endure because of his poverty; he is often humiliated by the army for which he does odd jobs and by the scientists who poke and probe him as part of the experiment that he is a part of. He endures all of these humiliations in order to earn some money, and when he comes home in the evening to Marie and their son, he is free and you see that in the way they dance with each other. They actually know some happiness and they seem to be in love. So that makes it all the more tragic and poignant at the end when he realizes he has lost her, lost the only thing that means anything to him.

Apart from what Lunde explained about the story of Woyzeck in her review (and I forgot the plot by the time we went to see it), I really did not know the story in detail nor what we were about to see when we walked into the theater. It was the same for my husband. During the dance, I had so many thoughts and feelings about what was transpiring on stage. Franz Kafka came to mind (as it did for my husband as well), as well as the brilliant English series, The Prisoner, with Patrick McGoohan (where the prisoner, a former spy, was just a number, surrounded by a nameless bureaucratic system of jailers all trying to probe him for information). The feeling of systematic cruelty, of a total lack of empathy, pervaded the piece. I found myself thinking about totalitarianism and communism and the loss of personal dignity and identity. So if a dance piece can make me feel all those things, as well as move me because of its poignancy, then for me it was something of value that I was privileged to experience. It is impossible to defend the man Woyzeck because he murdered Marie, but it is completely possible to understand what drove him to do that. I felt sorry for him in spite of his tragic choice. That is a testament to the quality of the dancing and the quality of the production. I’m proud to say that I disagree completely with Inger-Margrethe Lunde, and I truly hope, as my husband also commented, that her review did not discourage people from going to see the production. My guess is that it did, unfortunately. So perhaps she should take heed for the future and remember that the dancers have worked hard, likewise the choreographer. She should separate her personal feelings from an objective appraisal of the production. There do exist objective criteria for the evaluation of cultural events and creations. Perhaps she had a bad day going into the theater—car broke down, problems at work, or other irritations. Let’s hope she manages to write a better review next time.