Nacho Duato’s Ballet Nacional de Espana swept into the Yerba Buena Theater for two programs, February 20-23, sponsored by San Francisco Performances, also sweeping the Wednesday night audience off its feet. Like Wow!In a program of Castrati, Rassemblement and White Darkness, the 27 dancers displayed not only their strength and flexibility but Nacho Duato’s inventive, disturbing. ultimately marvelous choreography with a conviction and understanding thoroughly absorbing.
Castrati, of course, refers to a two-century, primarily Italian practice to castrate young men to preserve the soprano range of the pre-pubescent male voice, one contributiing factor to Italian opera
development. Reflecting Euro-centric history, the program notes refer to the historical development of eunuchs in the West, saying the practice was pre-Christian. Chinese history records the practice as dating back to the eight century BCE, Before Common Era, as used in Asian-related museum practice. Duato’s ballet was premiered April 5, 2002 in Spain.
Eight men in dark brown sleeveless redingotes flaring to a full circle from the waist over white tights exploded into dance to Vivaldi’s turbulent baroque sonorities and parts of the sung Sabat Mater and Salve Regina, hands accented by same-toned wrist bands. Abetting the shoulder rolls, the arm flexings and thrusts, hands rolling, crossed or clenched, the brown circles whirled with pirouettes, were grasped and flung, portraying a second voice of protest in Castrati. Spasmodically the men clutched their crotches, formed units of four, a group of eight, confrontations of two. Classical vocabulary melded into Pilates-like postures, accents of head, foot and weight shift.
Several of the men appear without their redingotes, white capri length tights topped by strapless corsets glimmering slightly with silver accents, a reminder of the aim of the brotherhood. A ninth appears in trunks with knitted blouse and strings, and is swept into the arms of the skirted men, lifted, periodically signaling the forthcoming sexual sacrifice. At two different times, the initiate lies on stage left and again down stage right, back to the audience, in fetal position. When the act occurs the brown redingotes swallow the upended initiate who emerges with bloodied hands. His immediate brotherhood soon vanishes, and the initiate with the most pathetic of gestures with his reddened hands is alone as the curtain descends. Stein Fliojt was unforgettably eloquent as the fated initiate.
Rassemblement used Creole song from Haitian voodoo as the background for the eight dancers whose mute postures and despairing shoulders evoked the heritage of slavery and oppression. It was originally created for the Cullberg Ballet in Sweden in 1990. Everything about the setting, the curtains low to the floor the men and women emerge from, is muted in tone, beiges, greys, khaki, timid blue greys. A dance of equals, both men and women cope with oppression; there also is retribution for either too much spirit or the attempt to escape.
Movements cried sorrow, despair and dreams, the comfort of human touch. Two policemen, Gentian Doda, Fabrice Edelman, collect one man from down stage left, dragging him to upstage right, binding his arms, forcing him on his knees. Facing each other, the policemen clap their hands overhead, bringing them down to resound on the stage floor, a telling, marvelous device, followed by the reaction of the man’s spine as if struck with a whip.
White Darkness set skirted, red-haired Yolanda Martin and Danilo Kirilov against four other couples in black tights and tunics and vertical shafts of white sand falling from the flys, the emblem
of heroin. Nothing if not stark, Martin drifts/dances/agonizes in and out of two pools of falling white before Kirilov no longer supports her and she sinks, hair stringing like a drenched junkie
in a stready stream of falling white particles.
Duato provided very clear program notes; whether the works met the explicit concepts he enunciated may be debatable. He is blessed with committed artists with enormous skill; however others may view his creations, the three seen were strong, provocative. Duato is most powerful when working with his own company.Compania Nacional de Espana should return every two or three years; others echoed my visceral
response.
Fliojt, Doda, Edelman, Martin, Kirilov
Printer-friendly copy
Email this topic to a friend
