'Art of Fugue' reviews recent Pretty Ugly reviews more PhilipB reviews

Hailing from Freiburg in the extreme southwest of Germany (you can pretty much walk to France from their Freiburger Municipal Theatre base) Ballett Freiburg appeared with the same show, Die Kunst der Fuge ("The Art of Fugue"), at last year's Edinburgh Festival. Before that, they have appeared at the Linbury Studio Theatre at the ROH in 2000, again performing an Amanda Miller piece, Four For Nothing, set to music by Johann Sebastian Bach, and although it wasn't well-received critically Miller was obviously keen to continue exploring the dance opportunities of Bach's densely counterpointed music. The 250th anniversary of his death in 2000 gave Miller the chance to both create and effectively market another new piece to Bach (her first was created in 1990), set to his unfinished and untitled fugue work, entitled The Art of Fugue by his son-in-law Johann Christoph Altnickol in 1751. A fascinating essay on the obscure history of this musical work can be found here:
www.fdavidpeat.com/bibliography/essays/dentler.htm

Amanda Miller is the company's Artistic Director and main creative force. Hailing from North Carolina in the United States and a dancer and choreographer with William Forsythe in Frankfurt from 1984, she left to set up a new company which she named Pretty Ugly in 1993, after a favourite piece of hers from 1986. The company finally became Ballett Freiburg Pretty Ugly when they took up residence in the town of Freiburg. The Art of Fugue was premiered in Freiburg on the 6th May 2000. Originally part of a two-work performance along with a piece set to music by Domenico Scarlatti, it is now being shown on its own and it stretches to 100 minutes, with one interval.

The stage is very clean with no wings and is thus wider than usual, but there were two 'choir' benches at the back of the stage filled, 15 minutes before the start, with 23 young people. Who they were (or, indeed, are) remained a mystery but if they were placed deliberately to distract the main audience, it worked. As there were plenty of empty seats in the more traditional audience area, this was all very strange. To the right of the main stage were two gym benches, on which would the 7 dancers would sometimes rest, basketball-style.

The black stage floor had a white square marked out over the majority of the space, jutting out at angle to the audience's right, in the same manner as Tryst's design by Jean-Marc Puissant, but mirrored. However, as the evening unfolded and dancers strayed off this area many times, it was unclear if this design was aiming to accomplish the unsettling of the audience a la Tryst, or something more mundane.

The dance troupe, clad in various styles of t-shirts and shorts in varying shades of blue, were accompanied by a baroque five-piece orchestra on period instruments (violins, viola, violoncello, harpsichord, contrabass and cembalo) and they played beautifully, obviously experienced and confident in this role of dance partners. Playing on stage (front left) they were always involved in the dancing, with dancers sometimes careering off the marked area into their space, or pausing to simply look and listen before continuing on with the matters at hand. A brave experiment as the temptation to watch the talented musicians instead of the dance was sometimes too great to ignore.

The Art of Fugue is an abstract ballet and, although the dance grammar has its roots in classical ballet lines or, more generally, Merce Cunningham, there is a variety of styles being used, some of which are practical and appropriate, but occasionally the mixed bag jars and prevents the viewer from being immersed. One distinct leit motif is that of expressive and expansive port de bras, often with the hands in a classical position, but sometimes with the wrist sharply bent and the hands at right angles to the arms. Ronds de jambes of all sorts were common as were single pirouettes and arabesques at various angles (usually above horizontal), hopefully deliberately.

In contrast with 'fugue' as being flight towards God, this work is very grounded. Very few jumps or extensions, plus the first lift being kept for the end, meant the third dimension went largely unexplored, except by the hands. A missed opportunity.

The general structure of the evening was that a large group of around 7 dancers would perform the languid free-flowing dance style, usually in their own separate space but occasionally two or three dancers would link a few steps together even if they were some distance apart with other dancers whirling away between them. These temporarily melded groups might be formed to explore different threads in Bach's layered music. Interspersing these group movements would be solos, sometimes short with two or three dancers playing short tag solos, and sometimes as long as several minutes. One 30 second pdd included a bracing balance very reminiscent of a Tryst position with the boy and girl leaning backwards, hands gripped around the other's wrist and inside feet braced against the other's, leaning backwards. A split second of dynamism in a blue sea of languidity.

Generally, the pace of all the dancing was consistent, but elegiac, with a few faster turns or a quick jog around the stage for a change in tempo. Once or twice a dancer would jump AND turn which was very exciting, relatively. Several movements would infer the presence of an unseen partner - arms outstretched and curved as if about to start ballroom dancing. This simply drew further, unnecessary, attention to the fact that there was so little contact between the dancers who spent most of the evening without acknowledging the presence of their fellow dancers – whilst on stage anyway: off-stage or while leaving or entering the stage they made eye contact and grinned at each other in a very odd way.

One yearned to see the kind of emotion briefly glimpsed in a final pas de trois right at the very end of the work, but by then the climax had come too late and it was merely of academic interest. One’s ability to engage and be touched had long since left the building.

In short, The Art of Fugue is a pleasant work, precisely danced, to pleasant and well-played Bach. There is no obvious reason why this needs to be a two-act, 100-minute, work and it should have been condensed to 25 at most. The company have close historic ties with William Forsythe, one of the world's most innovative and dynamic choreographers. A little more of his influence would have been very welcome. There is a certain mathematical construction to Miller's choreography that, technically, mirrors the same internal structure of Bach's music. Unfortunately, a scintillating evening of dance is not the natural product of this respectable bonding.