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Le Songe de Médée

Angelin Preljocaj’s 2004 ballet Medea's Dream is a dream because it is his own slant on this character, about whom there are so many varied stories. It takes place in an anonymous, timeless location, and does not follow the myths in every detail. Her two children, for example, are a boy and a girl, rather than the usual two boys. This is to give a parallel to the man/woman relationship, a nuclear family.

The original music by Mauro Lanza is a combination of electronic, computerised music (IRCAM/Serge Lemouton) and live instruments (Ensemble Court-circuit) directed by Fabrice Pierre. It is divided into five sections relating to the action. At the beginning there is an almost imperceptible high-pitched note - is it electronic or a high violin note? A feeling of a barren, sandy, endless space. The set, by Thierry Leproust, initially reveals some 40 or 50 silver buckets suspended from above, with another 20 on the stage. These are proxies for the traditional Greek storage jars. The suspended buckets rise up to a higher level. The music becomes a gentle tinkling, bell-like sound. To the right lies a large fallen branch of a tree. Then we notice a boy stretched out above the ground asleep on the branch with his arms and legs dangling to either side. Lower down the branch is a girl (Madeleine Thompson). She wakes up, touches her brother’s leg and moves away towards the centre, stretches, performs some habitual movements and plays with the buckets, standing in them, moving from one to another, trying one on her head. The boy (Carl Van Godtsenhoven) jumps down, stretches and also starts to play.

Presently their mother Medea arrives (Delphine Moussin) and we have a loving family scene. Medea performs some sequences of movement, just like those the children had practised on their own, and the children copy her. She fills two buckets with milk which they drink like cats, and hugs them. Then Jason arrives (Yann Bridard) and the children run to him. Jason and Medea dance affectionately, both wearing long robes, Medea’s dark red, Jason’s black. Medea then falls asleep near the tree and Jason carries the children to sleep next to her, covering them with his cloak.

As he does so, Creuse (Muriel Zusperreguy) arrives. She and Jason perform a very erotic dance, trying every which way to entangle their bodies together, including using the tree. Medea wakes and tries to separate them in a passionate pas de trois. The music has become much more noisy, with loud bangs every time Medea strikes Creuse, who is at last sent packing. Jason no longer notices Medea and departs.

Left alone with the children, Medea at first tries to return to the earlier family mood. Then she moves some of the buckets and gets the children to sit on a white cloth. She removes her outer red robe. Then the murder takes place as she splashes blood all over them and herself, killing herself too. Buckets are placed over the children’s heads. She attempts in vain, like Lady Macbeth, to wash the blood from her hands. In a final horror stricken solo she holds her red robe in her teeth and dies.

The story itself is quite straightforward, the dancing varied, skilful and expressive, the final impact on the audience shocking.

40 minutes

Genus

Wayne McGregor’s new creation, [I]Genus[/I], is based on the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin, expressed in his book The Origin of Species. The ballet has an ‘onomatopoeiac’ quality, itself forming part of the evolutionary process in ballet, right at the cutting edge of modern ballet, mildly ‘mixed media’ and experimenting by mixing together elements which may or may not synthesise into something new and valuable.

The music, on tape, shortly to be released as a CD, was composed by Joby Talbot and Deru in collaboration with McGregor and is a combination of electronic and acoustic music. The acoustic part, recorded in St Michael’s church, London, is performed by the chamber choir Tenebrae, directed by Nigel Short, and the string quartet, The Duke Quartet, with Luisa Fuller solo violin.

Set design and costumes are by Vicki Mortimer. Costumes are black, tight-fitting with bare arms and legs. Panels on the backs and fronts, different for each dancer, give the impression that one can see inside or right through the body with patterns that might be internal organs or developing life forms. The dancers wear dance shoes, and in some instances pointe shoes.

Lighting is by Lucy Carter and there are two video sequences by Ravi Deepres assisted by Luke Unsworth.

The ballet begins with the first video on a panaromic screen above the dancers’ heads, a speeded-up time lapse sequence of fourteen hours from sunrise to moonrise filmed at the Bardanas Desert in Spain. Three male dancers appear – Stéphane Phavorin, Simon Valastro and Benjamin Pech. Throughout this work the spectators, knowing a little about the subject matter, have to use their own imaginations to interpret, rightly or wrongly, what is happening. The dancers move their arms and legs at all angles, stretching them to the full extent, bending them at different angles, flapping their hands. They watch each other, compare, imitate. One imagines they are experimenting with all the possibilities, will their arms become wings, fins, flippers, powerful arms, long arms for swinging on, delicate manipulative arms or superfluous stumps? This is an idea one has throughout, how will they evolve? Later the number of dancers increases, couples interact, change partners. Some fall out, just as species either survive, develop or become extinct. Subsequently the two leading couples were Emilie Cozette with Phavarin and Marie-Agnès Gillot with Pech, but unfortunately I don’t know them well enough to identify which was which in a ballet with nameless roles.

The scene changes, revealing a large hollow box-shaped frame, well lit inside, slightly tilted, with strange grass-like material growing horizontally from one side. A couple inhabit this specialised environment and dance, yes, a pas de deux. Eventually the girl tires, her strength fails and she sits disconsolately in a corner. Her partner leaves her there – the unfeeling brutality of survival of the fittest. Two screens descend enclosing the open front and rear of the frame, leaving the girl inside. Her partner leaves the stage and we see the second video, without dancers. This sequence was filmed at the Natural History Museum in London (Darwin Centre) and the Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris (Paleontology Gallery). It consists of a quick-fire mixture of natural history samples and collections, bones, skeletons. Thousands of specimens of moths or butterflies (can one see the infinite variations or changes?) flash past. Scientific illustrations, diagrams, letters, pages of books fill the screen. The front screen rises and the film continues on the rear screen. The girl in the box revives and comes out onto the stage.

The next phase is accompanied by the string quartet. A pas de deux is danced to three movements, with the dancers returning to stand in front of the box between movements. Other dancers then join in. One couple now have a more developed costume – the black area now finishes just below the arms and at the hips, with narrow red lines separating the black area from the pale blue/grey of the shoulders and thighs. The number of dancers has increased to around 22. The music, with choir, sounds rather spiritual or religious even, leading towards a sudden end.

My general impression was that I liked this more than I had expected. It is well constructed and the various elements of design, music, video and dance work well together. The dance is well done, demanding, and could stand on its own. There is no sense that one is being compelled to study evolution, but yet one’s mind is drawn into the underlying ideas. I saw it again the next night and it would stand even more viewings.

44minutes