ABT Firebird/AfteRite

[Vanartus]

My first experience of ABT in New York. The actual building of the Metropolitan Opera is amazing - the starburst chandeliers were incredible. It is a mid-century Modernist dream come true. The Ratmansky Firebird was a surprise - it was far jokier and humorous than I was expecting. It threw me initially but in the end I embraced the fun, and also appreciated the tenderness in the story too. He’s such an inventive choreographer there’s always something to see, and the pas de deux always surprise, a quirk, a twist or an element of danger. Yes, I sort of prefer the Fokine, but this is a great alternative.

 

But do I prefer MacMillan’s Rite to McGregor’s Afterite? Prefer doesn’t come into it. Rite is a difficult if impossible piece - the music is so much of a challenge. I truly respect MacMillan’s choreography and the amazing Nolan designs, but even his ideas can fall into the obvious world of “tribal” at times. The Tetley leaves me cold, the Royal Danish used to have a strange Rite set at a cocktail party that goes very wrong....but Afterwrite is something else. I’m no critic but I totally agree with the New York Times and Financial Times’ reviews. They nail it far better than me. What I will say is that McGregor is moving into far more emotional territory. The ABT dancers were incredible, and Alessandra Ferri wove her special spell as she did in Woolf Works. His response to the music was incredible. The violence was ugly, the feeling of danger throughout. And yet there was a chill - a feeling of cold bleak scientific inhumanity slicing through the music. The Royal Danish are doing it next season. Worth the trip.

 

Edited May 23, 2018 by Vanartus
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[Bruce Wall]

Thanks for your review, Vanartus.  Don't have time to really write a response - always on the run nowadays.  The Met is an incredible monster - with that opening lobby a bit like a whale's mouth I have always thought.  

One question though, vis a vis AFTERITE - How did you feel about the explicit gassing of the child at the end of it?  I'm still struggling to understand from the reviews/comments I have read as to whether this was an intrinsic part of McGregor's ballet or a rather chilling add on.  Certainly in New York - indeed for surely a considerable number of ABT's audience - generations now would have had a relative or relatives who suffered a similar fate during the last world war.  Did this action have/play a significant through line in McGregor's artistic work itself?  I sincerely pray so.  From the sources you quote I am unclear as I say but genuinely fear were it not to be the case.  Grateful for your kind advice.  I wonder too - given the acute sensitivity involved here - was there any advance notice given to the audience of this occurrence?  Surely - with Firebird - many families/children might well be attending.  So wonderful to get an account from someone who was actually there and who BcoF members know.  So pleased you felt the dancing of a pleasing standard.  

 

Edited May 24, 2018 by Bruce Wall

[Vanartus]

I understand your point. The death is cool, clinical, unseen (in the sense of no writhing body), in the corner of the stage, still, contained in the clinical greenhouse, like mist descending, enveloping. The horror comes from the detachment. And then from the paradoxical numb anger of the final duet. The emotion comes again paradoxically from a non-demonstrative anguish at the end. Loss, waste yet obedience to a scientific imperative. Death is rarely beautiful, and the death of a child horrendous. The subject matter of Rite itself is horrendous. I did have a flashback to Ferri in Valley of Shadows, the MacMillan work which depicted scenes in a concentration camp and again featured Ferri. Then as a child, but now as a mother. In Aferite her role had elements of the film Sophie’s Choice, but an actual choice I think was not quite clear in Afterite. I think the actual choice was made by others. Could he have used another means of death? Could the death have happened off stage? Could a lifeless corpse been carried back on? All pose problems, and yes the use of gas resonates horribly with the past. Perhaps that’s why. The set and sci-Fi feel also links to those tv shows  of the 60’s where gassing victims was often used in pods...so there are other links. Should there have been an explicit warning? I don’t think so. If death can be quasi-abstracted on stage then this was done. And there was so much thought put into the choreography that any disturbance felt at the end was part of the resulting shock and emotion from the theme, the music, the performers, and the process itself.

Edited May 24, 2018 by Vanartus
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