![\"Marie-Agn\u00e8s](\"https:\/\/www.jampole.com\/OpEdgy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/PARISOPERABALLET_BER5128-2-300x199.jpg\" "\\"PINA")
It is unique in itself to see a Bausch work set on a company other than her own.\u00a0 Her work has always been crafted, developed and meticulously honed on her own tightly-knit, though large, group of performers, many of whom have worked together for decades.\u00a0 Since her early creations in Wuppertal in the 1970\u2019s, Bausch enjoyed a close relationship with France (and Italy), where her work was acclaimed by the 1980\u2019s even while in the face of early criticism at home.\u00a0 After reviving its 1975 production of Orpheus and Eurydice in 1991, Tanztheater Wuppertal was invited to perform it in 1993 at the Palais Garnier, the home of the Paris Opera Ballet.\u00a0 Bausch stated that she found the French dancers to be hungry for her work and eventually decided to set her piece on the Paris Opera Ballet.\u00a0 Although most of Bausch\u2019s early dancers were first and foremost trained in ballet, and she continued to bring in ballet masters to give company class, her way of moving dancers on stage does not dwell in the category particular to the technique or style of classical ballet.\u00a0 What the two companies have in common is that despite their different movement genres they both work in exclusively homogenous environments.\u00a0 Unlike most ballet companies today, the Paris Opera Ballet dancers almost all come directly from the strict and specific training of the Paris Opera style that they\u2019ve been reared in at the\u00a0Paris Opera School, or in some cases by licensed Paris Opera technique teachers in conservatories throughout France.\u00a0 The Tanztheater Wuppertal has had the support to allow them an almost commune-like living\/working setting in Wuppertal.\u00a0 Both companies have used government subsidy to create their own highly recognizable signature way of moving.\u00a0 Another important factor supporting their success in working together is the high bar each company has been able to set in their staging of theater spectacle.\u00a0 The Paris Opera Ballet is the national company of France and has long made its reputation on the grandness of its production values. Bausch\u2019s works almost always take place in elaborate physical \u201cenvironments\u201d whose production values are equally, if differently, spectacular.<\/p>\n Orpheus and Eurydice is a dance-opera, which runs two hours.\u00a0 It requires an orchestral ensemble, choir, and soloists (The Balthasar-Neumann Ensemble und Chor) and large groups of male and female dancers.\u00a0 Set, costume and lighting designer Rolf Borzik, envisioned the four scenes– Mourning, Violence, Peace, Death — as an exquisite conceptual world encompassing diverse allusions to religious painting, earthworks, contemporary furniture, post-modern mixings, and even bareness. This is a world for dancers and the three vocal soloists (the orchestra and choir remain in the orchestra pit). Everything from bouquets of dried roses, thin string dividing and crossing the stage, hugely tall wooden chairs piled in a corner, a full-size tree laying on its side, roots exposed, feels strange and beautiful, even death. Each scene develops a mood inherent to the mythological story as infused with allegory. In this way, Borzik\u2019s scenography complements Bausch\u2019s dramaturgy. Bausch chooses to tell this story through three dancer and three singer soloists who intermingle and shadow one another, effectively doubling the three main roles: Love\/Orpheus, Death\/Eurydice, and Youth\/Love. The piece resides in a tremendously satisfying balance of dance and opera.\u00a0<\/p>\n Remarkably, the singers and dancers blend aesthetically and harmoniously, a rarity within today\u2019s clear divisions between the training and staging of dance and opera. Despite the ancient story and early music, (Christoph Willibald Gluck premiered his opera in Vienna in 1762), the overall visual aesthetic is clean, linear and sparse.\u00a0\u00a0 Scene IV: Death, takes place in a near empty space whose rectangular feel suggests a coffin or crypt.\u00a0 In this scene, only four bodies appear- two singers and two dancers.\u00a0 Orpheus is sung by Maria Riccarda Wesseling and danced by Nicolas Paul.\u00a0\u00a0 Euyrdice is sung by Yun Jung Choi and danced by Alice Renavand.\u00a0 At first the two singers sing only to each other, and the two dancers dance only to each other, while Orpheus tries desperately to fulfill the intimacy of their journey without ever looking directly at Eurydice, as the story dictates.\u00a0 Soon the singers and dancers acknowledge one another as their bodies begin to cross pathways but when Orpheus can no longer avoid the pleas of Eurydice and proffers the fateful glance, it is then that dancers and singers meld as the body of the dead dancer Eurydice is carefully draped over the body of the dead singer Eurydice now wedded finally, in death.<\/p>\n In this production (July 21, 2012), I found the powerful expressivity of the Gluck to be most reliably communicated by the female corps of dancers.\u00a0 Their ensemble work was mesmerizing in its sheer mass of beautiful, elongated women flowing and pulsating sinuously in Bauschian movement, which accentuates the length of arms and legs.\u00a0 Their long, brown silky dresses often looking sheer under the stage lights, paralleled the naked torso of Orpheus.\u00a0 And in \u201cDance of the Furies\u201d (Scene II), the angularity and explosiveness of the group choreography which included both male and female bodies, traversed the stage in thrilling frenzy.\u00a0 Eurydice (Renavand) was garbed in striking white and later in blood red.\u00a0 Her overall physicality was long and extended- sometimes still, sometimes coursing, yet at times, she left the Bauschian flow for an interlude of patently innocent flirtatiousness.\u00a0 In those cases, she seemingly reverted to something out of stylistic character as her way to drive the narrative.\u00a0\u00a0 (Based on a video viewing, I was drawn more to the Eurydice performed by Marie-Agnes Gillot, who danced the role in its Paris Opera inception and also performed in this festival on July 20th<\/sup> & 22.)\u00a0\u00a0 Mr. Paul, as Orpheus, worked himself quite hard, really pushing to fill the stage, especially when he danced alone.\u00a0 His body was strong and aesthetic and his shapes were complete, but his choice to work with force and crisp tension that reverberated inwardly didn\u2019t allow for the raw, pained expressiveness that is more synonymous with Bausch\u2019s theater and her performers.\u00a0 Within the context of operatic tragedy, arresting ensemble work, and the emotional rendition of the music, these two dance soloists often missed their chance to cause goose bumps.\u00a0\u00a0 On the other hand, the singer soloists present on stage, could always be relied upon as expressive vehicles.\u00a0 Nevertheless, the brilliant crafting of the whole production, the hard to forget visual grandiosity of the sets, the electrifying musical interpretation, beauty and glamour of the dancers, costumes and lighting, created a powerful and memorable unique experiential journey of the senses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Juliet Neidish New York City dancegoers just about devoured tickets to see the Paris Opera Ballet\u2019s twelve-day run this summer (July 11-22, 2012). After a nearly sixteen-year absence from New York, Lincoln Center Festival should be commended for presenting this legendary ballet company in three versatile programs. The Paris Opera Ballet dates back to […]<\/p>\n![\"St\u00e9phane](\"https:\/\/www.jampole.com\/OpEdgy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/PARISOPERABALLET_BER5905-2-300x162.jpg\" "\\"PINA")
![\"Marie-Agn\u00e8s](\"https:\/\/www.jampole.com\/OpEdgy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/PARISOPERABALLET_BER6003-2-300x198.jpg\" "\\"PINA")