The van Manen Festival, Programme IV

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Dutch National Ballet and Guests Hans van Manen Festival IV National Opera and Ballet auditorium 29 June 2022 20:15

I would argue that Hans van Manen is the greatest living choreographer and one of the greatest of all time.  I have been a fan ever since I first saw his work some 50 years or so ago.   In that time he has made over 150 ballets and I have seen a fair number of them.  His works are performed regularly by the world's leading ballet companies including those of the United Kingdom.

Earlier this month van Manen celebrated his 90th birthday.   To mark the occasion, the Dutch National Ballet ended its 2021-2022 season with a special Hans van Manen Festival.  Between 8 and 29 June 2022, the Dutch National Ballet and companies from Austria and Germany performed 19 of van Manen's works arranged in four separate programmes.  

I attended the fourth of those programmes on 29 June 2022 which consisted of Four Schumann Pieces, In the Future, Variations for Two Couples, Solo and Concertante.  I chose that programme for three reasons.  It was an opportunity to see the latest recruits to the Junior Company which I had followed closely since 2013.  They were to perform In the Future which I had previously seen at their 5th-anniversary celebration at the  Stadsschouwburg on 15 April 2018, the 2018 gala and in London on 5 July 2019.  Secondly, one of the works was to be performed by the Vienna State Ballet and another by the Stuttgart Ballet which had been Cranko's company.  These are companies that rarely visit this country and it was a chance to see them. Finally, the fourth programme included Concertante which is the work by van Manen that I know best.

Van Manen had created Four Schumann Pieces for the Royal Ballet.  It was first performed at Covent Garden on 31 Jan 1975 with Sir Anthony Dowell in the leading role.  The music is Robert Schumann's String quartet in A opus 41 no. 3.   The ballet revolves around the leading male and there is some YouTube footage of Dowell in that role.  It was part of a mixed bill which I attended.  I can't remember much about it but it would have been one of the reasons why I began to admire van Manen.   According to the programme notes, the male lead was later performed by Rudolf Nureyev, Hans Ebelaar, Wayne Eagling and Matthew Golding each of whom interpreted it in a different way.  The company that performed the piece on 29 June was the Vienna State Ballet.   Davide Dato was the lead male  He was supported by Hyo-Jung Kang and Arne Vandervelde, Liudmila Konovalova and  Francesco Costa, Elena Bottaro and Igor Milos, Sonia Dvořák and  Géraud Wielick and Aleksandra Liashenko and Andrey Teterin.  The company danced Four Schumann Pieces for the first time in the Vienna Volksoper on 4 June 2022. For them, it was a brand new piece which they danced with appealing energy and freshness.

In the Future was created for the Scarpino Ballet Rotterdam in 1986,  a company that is even older than the Dutch National Ballet.  The piece was inspired by music that the Scottish composer David Byrne had written as a soundtrack for Fritz Lang's film Metropolis the previous year.  As striking as the music are the set, costume and lighting designs of Keso Dekker  Each dancer wears a garment that is green at the front and red at the back. The dancers pulsate to the music as if they were beams of light.  It is a perfect piece for the Junior Company which is now a completely different cohort from the one I saw in Amsterdam in 2018 and London in 2019.  The members who danced on 29 June were Luca Abdel-Nour, Koko Bamford, Lily Carbone, Mila Caviglia, Sven de Wilde, Lauren Hunter, Nicola Jones, Gabriel Rajah, Guillermo Torrijos, Louisella Vogt and Koyo Yamamoto.  They were as impressive as their predecessors and I look forward to watching them develop as a troupe and blossom as artists of the Dutch National Ballet and other leading companies.

Variations for Two Couples is one of van Manen's latest works.  It was created for Anna Tsygankova,  Matthew Golding, Igone de Jongh and Jozef Varga and first performed on 15 Feb 2012.  It is a very short piece that packs in music by Benjamin Britten, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Stefan Kovács Tickmayer and Astor Piazzolla.   The programme states that for van Manen it was all about the personalities of the dancers that he wished to draw out.  Varga danced the role that van Manen had created for him on 29 June. but instead of Tsygankova, Golding and de Jongh he was joined by Riho Sakamoto, Young Gyu Choi and Jessica Xuan.   Van Manen intended this to be a very understated ballet.   He said, "everything is 'low down' – even the dancers’ lifts."  That is echoed by Dekker's costumes and backdrop.  The result is a work of refinement and elegance.

There was an interval after Variations for Two Couples.   On returning to my seat I noticed that van Manen was sitting in my row.  Several of his fans were talking to him and one gave him a hug.   He stood up to allow me to pass and for a moment I felt impelled to introduce myself and shake his hand.  However, the curtain was about to rise and I let the moment slip.  The very next day my friend Gita Mistry button-holed him in the lobby of the National Opera and Ballet auditorium as we gathered for the Gala.  She introduced me to him and  I had the opportunity to tell him how much I had enjoyed his work over the last 50 years.  However, Gita went one better and actually took a selfie of herself with the great man. In her interview with Judith Mackrell, Laura Esquivel compared the art of the chef with that of the choreographer (see Like Water for Chocolate  23 July 2022). Gita offered to cook for van  Manen and as she is an artist in spice he would enjoy one of the best meals of his life were he ever to take her up on the offer.

Solo danced by Henrik Erikson, Alessandro Giaquinto and Matteo Miccini of the Stuttgart Ballet won the loudest and most sustained applause of the evening.  It is a very short piece set to Bach's Violin Partita. Keeping up with the music requires great virtuosity and equal stamina.  It was danced with energy, flair and fluidity. - an altogether brilliant display.

The first time I saw Concertante it was performed by Northern Ballet.   I wrote in Terpsichore:

"What can one say about a masterpiece? Especially when there is a YouTube video of the great man himself discussing his ballet. According to the clip van Manen staged the work for the Nederlands Dans Theater junior company (Dans Theater 2). He spoke very highly of the Leeds dancers (Bateman, Batley, Leebolt, Contadini, Lori Gilchrist, Nicola Gervasi, Prudames and Isaac Lee-Baker) as well he might for they were good."

The video to which I referred was an interview with van Manen in Leeds on 6 June 2013.   I have seen performances of the work by other companies since then and it never ceases to impress me. Floor Eimers said that Concedrtante brings out the best in her and that seems also to be the case with other dancers.  There is something compelling in Frank Martin's music, Kekko's designs and of course the choreography,   This was the last work of the van Manen season and it was danced with verve by Nina Tonoli, Timothy van Poucke, Jingjing Mao, Martin ten Kortenaar, Lore Zonderman, Jan Spunda, Khayla Fitzpatrick and Conor Walmsley.

The evening had begun under the baton of Matthew Rowe, a compatriot and (I believe) an old boy of St Paul's School.  It ended under that baton of Northern Ballet's Director of Music, Jonathan Lo.  As he was led onto the stage the applause was deafening.   I felt very proud of him as well as Matthew Rowe.   But the loudest cheers and most vigorous clapping were reserved for van Manen himself.  They were in appreciation of the works that we had seen that night but also for his lifetime's achievement.

Birmingham Royal Ballet performs my favourite ballet at last

Birmingham Royal Ballet

(c) John Lambert 2016: all rights reserved

Birmingham Royal Ballet, The Taming of the Shrew. Birmingham Hippodrome, 18 June 2016

John Cranko created some of his most best known works including The Taming of the Shrew for the Stuttgart Ballet but he trained at Sadler's Wells School and started his career at the Sadler's Wells Ballet part of which is now the Birmingham Royal Ballet. Despite its shared connection with Cranko it was only on the 16 June 2016 (some 47 years after the premiere in Germany) that the Birmingham Royal Ballet was able to stage this work in this country.

For me that is a matter of regret because Cranko appeals to me more than any other choreographer and The Taming of the Shrew is the work that I love most. Even more than The Prince of the Pagodas, Onegin and Pineapple Poll. So if anybody were to ask me which is my favourite ballet I would have to say that it is this one.  I first learned about the work in Dance and Dancers in 1969 and have longed to see it ever since (see Cranko's "Taming of the Shrew": Now's our chance to see one of the Ballets everyone should see before they die 21 Sept 2013). I got my chance on 23 Nov 2013 when the Stuttgart Ballet visited London (see Stuttgart Ballet's "Taming of the Shrew" - well worth the Wait 25 Nov 2013).

I think the reason I love the ballet so much is that I love the play and the reason I love the play is that I love paradox. I began to appreciate the paradox upon seeing snippets of Meryl Streep's performance as Katherina in New York City many years ago (see Kiss me Petrucchio (1981) Meryl Streep and Raul Julia - A Documentary from 1981 on YouTube). I never saw that show but I do remember her explaining the work in a feminist context. I am also enjoying the serialization of Anne Tyler's The Vinegar Girl on Radio 4 just now. In her programme note, Pas de Dukes, Katherine Barber who runs Tours en l'Air (see Tours en l'Air a Really Useful Resource  23 Feb 2014) draws parallels with Romeo and Juliet:

"But The Taming of the Shrew is in many ways the 'anti-Romeo and Juliet.'  Silly (with an inspired silliness and comic. It mirrors its solemn and tragic sibling sometimes scene for scene: a tender wedding with the wise Friar Lawrence becomes a farcical free-for-all with a cartoonish priest; bridesmaids who are an ironic harbinger of death in the one are chased around by a baulky and belligerent bride with a limp lily in the other; a pas de trois depicting exuberant high spirits of young men in Verona becomes a vaudeville trio of Chaplinesque buffoons in Padua. Both ballets end in tears, though in one they are tears of sorrow and the other tears of laughter."

An interesting idea and one that had not occurred to me before though I caution against drawing too many parallels because all love stories and the ballets derived from them share at least some of those elements.

Although the Birmingham Royal Ballet uses Cranko's choreography and Kurt-Heinz Stolze's score the designs are different. Elisabeth Dalton designed the sets and costumes for Stuttgart (see her obituary in The Stage) while Susan Benson designed Birmingham's. One the whole I think I preferred Benson's as they gave an even greater freshness and touch of joy to the Birmingham production. In a post to BalletcoForum Barber suggested that Birmingham Royal Ballet had used the National Ballet of Canada's costumes and it is certainly the case that Benson contributed the designs to the Canadian production (see The National Ballet's Ballet Notes for its 2007 season which incidentally also publishes Barber's article sub nom The Taming of the Shrew: Shakespeare in Motion).

The reason I took notice of the ballet in 1969 is that Cranko deployed a stellar cast:

• Marcia Haydée – Katherina (Kate)
• Richard Cragun – Petruchio
• Susanne Hanke – Bianca
• Egon Madsen – Gremio
• Heinz Claus – Lucentio
• John Neumeier – Hortensio.

The dancers in Saturday's matinee were pretty impressive too. 

Kate was danced by Elisha Willis. I count myself as one of her biggest fans and I had been led to believe by a clipping in the Birmingham Mail that Saturday's would be her last performance (see Roz Laws Birmingham Royal Ballet star Elisha Willis on ditching dancing for stitching 14 June 2016). I have since learned that she will dance at least one more show in Bristol. I shall miss Willis and I wish her all the best for the future. 

Willis was partnered brilliantly by Iain Mackay. Jenna Roberts was a sweet but not too sugary Bianca while Brandon Lawrence was her Lucentio. I also enjoyed Rory Mackay's performance as Gremio (particularly his wooing of Bianco and his discomfiture by Kate), Chi Cao's as Hortensio and Delia Matthews's and Angela Paul's as their wives and Jonathan Payn's as Baptista. However, I should say a special word for Valentin Oloyyannikov who doubled as the publican and priest. He is a great character dancer and his characterization of the cleric was nothing short of brilliant.

The play has inspired Jean-Christophe Maillot to create another version of The Taming of the Shrew for the Bolshoi which was screened to British audiences in  January (see Competition for Cranko: The Bolshoi's Taming of the Shrew streamed from Moscow 25 Jan 2016). I enjoyed the screening very much and I look forward to seeing it live when the Bolshoi bring it to Covent Garden.

Stuttgart Ballet's "Taming of the Shrew" - well worth the Wait

In the film that preceded yesterday's performance by the Dutch National Ballet Junior Company of Hans van Manen's Kwintet, one of the dancers (I think it was Daniel Cooke but I could be wrong) spoke about the history of the work and the dancers for whom it was created  but added "it was way before my time," Oh puer felix to be so talented and so young.  Alas van Danzig and such stars as Alexandra Radius were not before my time. Van Manen was one of the Colossuses of the time that I first began to appreciate dance. And John Cranko (whom I discussed in "Cranko's "Taming of the Shrew": Now's our chance to see one of the Ballets everyone should see before they die" 21 Sept 2013) was another.

I first heard of Cranko's Taming of the Shrew from the review in the July 1969 issue of Dance and Dancers and I made up my mind to see the ballet when I could.  Last Saturday I achieved that ambition when Cranko's company, the Stuttgart Ballet, performed the ballet at Sadler's Wells. The French have an expression "Tout vient à point à qui sait attendre" which is roughly equivalent to "patience is a virtue" but it means something more than that.  If you wait long enough you will be amply rewarded albeit, perhaps, in Heaven. And so it proved with the Stuttgart Ballet's performance on 23 Nov 2013.

Cranko had created the ballet for the great Marcia Haydée who was one of the greats of her age along with Antoinette Sibley, Lynn Seymour and Alexandra Radius (see "Ballerina" 1 July 2013). However, something of her greatness was reflected by Sue Jin Kang who danced Katherina on Saturday together with Flip Barankiewicz as Petruchio. These are both exceptionally gifted dancers as you can see from the YouTube clip of their dancing those roles in an earlier performance.  

The ballet follows the play pretty faithfully save that Cranko dropped the prologue and substituted his own sub-plot of Lucentio's duping Gremio and Hortensio into marrying two local sex workers, something that could easily have been written  by Shakespeare. For a feminist Taming of the Shrew is not an easy play to watch and the ballet was worse with actions not words.  Starving poor Katherina and depriving her of sleep Guantanamo style so that she ends up saying: 

"Fie, fie! unknit that threatening unkind brow,
And dart not scornful glances from those eyes,
To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor:
It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads,
Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds,
And in no sense is meet or amiable."

Ooh it makes my blood boil. I was mentally settling the divorce petition  on Saturday night. But Petruchio as danced by Barankiewicz is a hunk so I suppose you can see why she gave in to him. :-(

Cranko gives strong roles to Lucentio danced by Evan McKie and Bianca danced by Hyo-Jung Kang but also demanding character roles for Gremio (Brent Parolin), the priest (Matteo Crockard-Villa) and the tarts (Magdalena Dziegielewska and Daisy Long).

This is a happy ballet with a strong sense of fun. We English like to tease the Germans for their lack of a sense of humour so we say; but this ballet is hilarious.  There are at least as many laughs as is Ashton's La fille mal gardée.   Bits that the audience loved were Bianca's turning Gremio's script the right way round after he had finished wooing her and the dancers on their backs at the end of the first Act.

I ought to say a few words about the score which was Kurt Heinz Stolze's arrangement of Scarlatti. Not everybody liked it but I did.  Tragically, Stolze like Cranko died far too young.  Also a word about Elizabeth Dalton's sets and costumes - simple as though for The Globe but instantly recognizable.

One of the reasons I have had to wait 44 years to see Shrew is that the Stuttgart Ballet hardly ever come to London. I think we had to wait 20 years to see it staged in England for the first time and even longer for the company to come back again.  This should be a staple of all major ballet companies because it has everything. Powerful turns and jumps for the men, a wonderfully dramatic role for the ballerina and lots for the character artists. Just the sort of thing for a new director to get his teeth into. 

And they have the cheek to call Balletomanes obsessive.

Apparently something to do with Dr. Who    Source Wikipedia

This Saturday I shall see the Stuttgart Ballet dance Taming of the Shrew at Sadlers Well's.  The next day I am catching an easyJet flight from Luton to see the Dutch National Ballet's Junior Company dance at the Staddschowburg in Amsterdam.  Then next Sunday I shall be in the audience of the Stanley and Audrey Burton Theatre for MurleyDance.

"Aren't you being a teeny weeny bit obsessive?" asked one friend who is a Dr Who fan.  Another friend who is a Chelsea supporter told me to get a life.  "Like watching 22 grown men chasing an inflated pig's bladder around a freezing stadium?" I replied.  If you ever want a study in obsession find yourself a football fan. When I was at St Andrews I learned of somebody's dad who demonstrated his allegiance to Rangers by planting forget-me-nots in his lawn as that was the only part of his dwelling that he could not paint blue. And as for Dr Who I remember being dragged around industrial estates in South Wales after a strenuous hearing in the Trade Marks Registry by a former clerk on the hunt for David Tennant. "Now there's obsession for you" as the locals would probably say.

Now balletomania isn't like that.  It can save lives and civilize as I mentioned in my article on "The New Mariinksy" of 4 May 2013. Tamara Karsavina's brother probably owed his life and certainly his liberty to the fact that his interrogator loved ballet.  And I don't think that loving ballet is an obsession for it is nothing more than the pursuit and admiration of beauty. A dancer like Sarah Kundi actuates an electrochemical switch in the brain that induces a feeling of contentment and well being.  Look at her "Dépouillage" in "Ballet Black's Appeal" of 12 March 2013 or her "Dépouillement" after the terrible events in Woolwich.  See what I mean.  That's why I can hardly wait for MurleyDance (a company that I would have longed to see anyway for the reasons I set out in "Something to brighten up your Friday" on 8 Nov 2013).

As for the trip to Holland I think we shall see a lot of Michaela de Prince in the opera houses of the world but at seat prices greatly in  excess of a return flight on a budget airline.  Often a dancer is at his or her best when he or she is young and I shall have seen this remarkable young artist while she is still young (see "Michaela dePrince" of 4 April 2013).

As for "Taming of the Shrew" see my post of 21 Sept as why John Cranko's masterpiece is one ballet everybody should see before they die.

If you are still unconvinced go, find yourself a dalek to play with.