Dance EIF 2013

WORLDS OF DANCE FESTIVAL 2013 A NOVEL TAKE JOSÉ MONTALVO BLURS CREATIVE BOUNDARIES STAR ATTRACTION BENJAMIN MILLEPIED’S L.A. DANCE PROJECT COMES TO EDINBURGH ACROSS DANCE SPECTRUMS CHRISTOPHER HAMPSON ON THE INSPIRATIONS BEHIND HIS DANCE ODYSSEYS FESTIVAL

Journeys Across the Spectrum D

Royal New Zealand Ballet dancers in Silhouette Photo Stephen A’Court

ance Odysseys... If the title hints at epic events, that’s because Scottish Ballet’s four-day residency at this year’s Edinburgh International Festival is thrillingly bold in its ambitions and range of experiences.

Morning, noon and night the watchword on this shared journey is “to dance should be an awfully big adventure!” It’s clearly a terrific adventure for Scottish Ballet as

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they take over an entire building, filling even some unexpected areas of Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre with dance-related activity. But the project is also intended as an adventure for audiences, a shift away from familiar protocols as they encounter different perspectives on dance, and dancers – up close, maybe, in the studio theatre. Or on-screen, with the film programme.

And not forgetting, on the main

stage itself where each busy day will end with a stand-alone showing of a visionary piece – and even the chance to join in and get grooving when Scottish Dance Theatre is “in da house” with Fleur Darkin’s audience participation work, SisGo. For Christopher Hampson, who came into post as Scottish Ballet’s artistic director last September, the sheer scale and variety of the programme is ‘the most tremendous gift to this company. I’ve said from the start that I wanted us to do new things in new ways – and Jonathan Mills’s vision for our programme has allowed us to pack what might have taken us three or four years to commission and stage into these four consecutive days in August.

Being able to bring in so much new work at the same time, to walk into our building in recent weeks and realise that every bit of studio space is taken up with visiting choreographers creating work on Scottish Ballet dancers – it is, yes,

a “pinch me! I must be dreaming!” moment.’

Not everything, however, has gone according to plan. Opening night should have featured a new commission by that master of bravura speed, precision and bodies in flight, Canadian choreographer Édouard Lock. Family illness prevented Lock from travelling to the company’s Glasgow base and so, rather than risk last-minute disappointments, Hampson opted to re-jig that evening slot, coming up with a double bill that effectively draws together many of the themes that underpin the entire programme.

Kenneth MacMillan’s Sea of Troubles, a tautly dramatic evocation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet set to music by Webern and Martinu, was in fact part of a Scottish Ballet small-scale tour some twenty years ago. Hampson loves this connection.

Elsewhere, in the Duets strand of the programme, he brings in works by the company’s founder-

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Cheri Photo Alan Peebles

choreographer, the late Peter Darrell, saying ‘this is a part of our heritage. Darrell’s ballets are where we come from, and I think it’s very important for us and for our audiences to know him as more than just a name in our history. That history also features choreographies by Kenneth MacMillan, and Sea of Troubles fitted nicely into Jonathan’s brief to us of doing ‘chamber ballets’ – it has a cast of six – so I’m happy to include it.’

His own work, Silhouette – made in 2010 for Royal New Zealand Ballet – rounds out the evening with an exuberant celebration of ballet at its most timelessly classic. Hampson laughs. ‘It’s not actually small-scale – it has almost three times the number of dancers as Sea of Troubles – but I think that the image of the tutu on-stage really sums up what ballet is to most people. Our four-day programme, like Scottish Ballet itself, is grounded in classical ballet – but then, in the new work we’ve commissioned and in some of what we’ve labelled Contemporary Classics, we’re saying look, those old boundaries that divided dance into strictly classical or otherwise have broken down. Dance is dance is dance. And whether we’re showing it on the main stage, or in the studio, or elsewhere – and we have some surprises lined up in the New Voices programme! – we’re embracing that vision as fully as we can, with the film screenings and the talks linking into that.’

So where does the notion of “chamber ballets” come into play? Hampson harks back to early discussions with Jonathan Mills, when the EIF director mused on how his festivals showcased chamber music, but not ballet. “Why not?” became “let’s go for

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it”. Hampson soon runs out of fingers and thumbs as he lists the positive outcomes of that chamber ballet gambit. There’s the chance for audiences to savour an iconic work like Tetley’s Pierrot Lunaire, or watch the mesmerising Catalan dancer Cesc Gelabert without the impact of either being diluted in a mixed bill. This is certainly true of Hampson’s own uncompromising Rite of Spring a stark three-hander where the pulverising physicality drives folk-lore myth into a brutal reality we can’t pretend doesn’t exist today.

‘What’s best of all’, says Hampson, ‘is what Dance Odysseys allows us to do not just now, but for the future. We have been able to bring in works that will challenge, inspire and feed our dancers for seasons to come. We have such amazing dancers.

Not all of them get to come centre-stage in our other programmes. But in August, they are the stars. They get to shine. And I’m so proud that audiences will get to see that for themselves’. Mary Brennan

Dance Odysseys Friday 16 – Monday 19 August Festival Theatre eif.co.uk/dance-odysseys for full programme Supported through the Scottish Government’s Edinburgh Festivals Expo Fund With additional support from Gavin and Kate Gemmell

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Contemporary Classics Photo Graham Wylie

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Photo Ryan Schude

Star Attraction Eclectic and exciting former New York City Ballet star Benjamin Millepied brings his L.A. Dance Project to the UK for the first time to perform a trio of works Small and experimental, L.A. Dance Project couldn’t be further from the legendary Paris troupe which Millepied will lead from next year so this is your chance to see what the outgoing director of the Paris Opera Ballet, Brigitte Lefevre, describes as Millepied’s ‘artistic sensibility and admirable curiosity’.

Claire Black

L.A. Dance Project Saturday 24 – Monday 26 August 7.30pm The Edinburgh Playhouse eif.co.uk/ladance £10- £30 Supported by Dunard Fund Sponsored by

Photo Alexander Wagner

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nfluenced by Jerome Robbins, compared to Mikhail Baryshnikov, the husband of an Oscar-winning actress, and the face of an Yves Saint Laurent fragrance. Choreographers don’t come any more A-list than Benjamin Millepied.

The Bordeaux-born Los Angeles dweller only retired from dancing in 2011, but he was already a prolific choreographer, having created works for American Ballet Theatre, City Ballet and Paris Opera Ballet, where from September 2014 he is to take over as director.

Millepied brings L.A. Dance Project, the artist collective he created, to the UK for the first time to perform a programme including works by William Forsythe, Merce Cunningham, as well as a piece choreographed by Millepied himself to a commissioned score

by Nico Muhly with costumes by Rodarte (the same designers who created the clothes for Darren Aronofsky’s film Black Swan, in which the choreographer starred with his now wife, Natalie Portman).

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A Novel Take Maverick choreographer José Montalvo transfers Cervantes’s iconic tale of Don Quixote to the dancehalls of Europe, complete with live performance, film projections, and slapstick comedy

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hen José Montalvo pulls together a group of dancers, you can be sure it will be the complete antithesis to a typical corps de ballet. Even when they’re dancing in unison, the unique qualities of his performers shine through.

At any given moment during Don Quichotte du Trocadéro you could be watching a break-dancer, flamenco artist, tap dancer, ballerina, contemporary dancer – or all five styles at once.

Inspired by Cervantes’ 17th century novel Don Quixote, the show also

benefits from the considerable humour of comic actor Patrice Thibaud in the title role.

Updated to the present day, Montalvo’s version finds Quixote travelling on the Paris metro, where he meets a myriad of colourful characters. Despite the modern setting and use of hi-tech video technology in the piece, Montalvo pays homage not just to the original novel, but to Marius Petipa’s 1869 ballet of the same name.

‘If you want to create something new, then tradition is very important,’ says Montalvo. ‘So we took Petipa’s steps from the classical ballet, taught them to the dancers – and from there we could go elsewhere with the movement. But we had to have the same roots.’ Kelly Apter

Don Quichotte du Trocadéro Thursday 29 – Saturday 31 August 7.30pm Festival Theatre eif.co.uk/montalvo £12-£30

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Photos Patrick Berger

Future Perfect Fusion 10

In Madame Freedom, Korean performance troupe YMAP bring their 21st century take on a classic 1950s film suffusing themes of identity, myth and the dream of a different life

Photo YMAP

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n old film about new ideas. A fifties classic about women, lust, infidelity and Korea itself. Han Hyeong-mo’s black and white melodrama returns us to a time when the country was going through massive change. The Korean war had ended, South Korea was looking to the west, and its women were demanding greater independence. Now Madame Freedom, which in telling the story of one woman’s social, political, and sexual struggle tells the story of an entire nation, embraces the new again. This time, by metamorphosing into a sensual piece of contemporary dance spliced with digital technology.

In the background, iconic scenes from the film – smoking, parties, and flirtations – are projected on to a vast screen. In the foreground, two dancers intertwine with Madame Freedom’s journey through dance, the film playing across their bodies, writing its story on their limbs.

Pioneering performance troupe Your Media Arts Project have built a reputation on their groundbreaking ‘media performances’. Here they bring this intriguing piece choreographed, directed and performed by Hyo Jin Kim, whose work is renowned for its visual sophistication and digital trickery. Expect a challenging and ultra-modern work about the intersections between the past and the present, the old and the new, the east and the west. Chitra Ramaswamy

Madame Freedom

Supported by

Tuesday 20 & Wednesday 21 August 8.00pm King’s Theatre eif.co.uk/madamefreedom £12-£30

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Fiery Festival Finale!

Festival 2013 ends with a spectacular concert. Dazzling fireworks are launched from Edinburgh’s iconic castle as the Scottish Chamber Orchestra plays Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition complete with barnstorming brass fanfares.

Virgin Money Fireworks Concert Sunday 1 September 9.00pm eif.co.uk/virginmoneyfireworks

Photo Rob McDougall

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