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Yolande Snaith has been based in San Diego as Head of Dance at the University of California for the past couple of years and her homesickness glows through some aspects of this white garden. To emphasize her yearning for home, she specifically asked the composers, Jean-Jacques Palix and David Coulter to include special arrangements of ‘In an English Country Garden’ and ‘Jerusalem’ in their score. Incidentally, the soundscape for ‘Jardin Blanc’, embracing several bespoke texts by US playwright, Adele Edling-Shank, is delightful. If CDs of the score had been on sale after the performance, I would have been first in the queue.

Snaith is clearly the antithesis of Merce Cunningham, whose dance company opened the Dance Umbrella Festival, three weeks ago. Where he eschews collaboration and pre-planning of the elements, Yolande goes overboard on planning and the co-ordination of an integrated team of collaborators. ‘Jardin Blanc’ was researched for two years before a step was choreographed.

Yolande began by selecting Sharon Marston as her visual artist and Marston’s light sculptures form an integral core to the piece: in fact, one light sculpture (like a huge rectangular lampshade) was lowered onto the stage to embody the voice of the narrator like a surrogate sixth dancer. David Coulter was initially selected to compose for the piece but, due to the delay in entering production conflicting with other commitments, Palix was brought in as the lead composer, assisted by Coulter – it was the latter, for example, who arranged ‘Jerusalem’ as the music to a very evocative final scene. Later in the process, Yolande decided that she needed a theatre designer to provide the context for Marston’s work and recruited Miranda Melville (with whom she had previously worked on ‘Very Yellow’). Miranda was uniquely qualified for this particular commission since she also happens to be a medal-winning garden designer at the Chelsea Flower Show. Then there is the writer, lighting designer, sundry production and technical managers, specialist prop makers, narrator and the dancers (whose collaboration in the choreography is graciously acknowledged by Yolande in the programme). The creation and construction of this event certainly had a seriously long supply chain!

Despite two years of research and development, the work was eventually created in just seven weeks, which the choreographer clearly felt was cutting it fine to complete the task as she would have wished. However, she need not worry since, in the best of all possible ways, the meticulous planning and research, the identification and recruitment of specialist skills and the clearly effective co-ordination of the whole team has produced an exceptionally stunning work. Every single element contributes with equal effectiveness towards achieving a memorable event.

Jardin Blanc
© Gillian Cargill

In an early scene, we see the garden being surveyed, set out and constructed. The health & safety inspectors would have been very pleased to see this image enforced by the wearing of a hard hat! The text cleverly introduces different reflections of garden life: ‘The smell of oranges’ evokes the presence of another world in the garden as the fairies steal the orange peel whilst the narrator sleeps, whilst ‘In memory of’ brings us back to the fragility of the real world with a catalogue of memorial dedications for lost loved ones. Later we hear a child describing that a much-loved, departed pet is buried under the snap dragons.

This garden is certainly white, in terms of fabric, materials and light. Snaithe’s initial concept was of a garden covered in snow (another very English concept that one can see appealing to the émigré in California – particularly since, to most of us, it is an evocative image rather better imagined than experienced!). Mostly everything is white but as the garden enters summer, towards the end of the piece, Yolande’s team of designers, composers and dancers very palpably convey the real feeling of heat. One device is a salmon-pink curtain angled across the stage to replicate the hot imagery of the terracotta tiles and walls in a Mediterranean summer landscape. The highest praise one can give to the whole visual feast of this piece is that the contrast between the seasons is very effectively achieved through this collaborative design quality. As with all good design it also appears to achieve the required impact with minimal effort.

It is appropriate to leave any reflections on the choreography or the dancers until now, since this is a visual event in which the dance slips effortlessly into the context that has been created for it. Snaith’s choreography emphasizes the circular, twisting, spiraling movement of plant growth and this is sometimes reinforced by the disciplined, perfectly synchronized movement of all five dancers, representing a precise, horticultural management of the garden.

In contrast, spring was represented by the intensely passionate entwining of dancers in two simultaneous pas de deux based upon the folding, holding, propagating, entangled life of plants. One pair managed to create so much attached movement without shifting from the same spot that it was like time lapse photography of tendrils in human form! Each of the five dancers deserves special mention – Bonita Chan, Christine Devaney, Anouk Llaurens, Jovair Longo and Scott Smith. They were the garden and the garden was the star!

In a post-performance interview, Yolande Snaith modestly said that she was satisfied with the work although she would have liked more than seven weeks to make it. She implied that her preferred method of creating dance is to get to a finished state and then leave the piece, coming back to it with a fresh mind at some later point. From a consumer’s perspective it needs little, if any, further refinement. Anyone would be happy to look out of their window onto a garden like this, every day. I’d be happy just to dream of it now and again!