English National Ballet: Akram Khan’s Creature

[Nogoat]

8 minutes ago, LinMM said:

... it’s not a track from Pink Floyd is it ...

 

Not Pink Floyd, but you are in the right era and music genre.

I'll stop there before I give too much away too soon! 🤫

[bridiem]

Tubular Bells/Mike Oldfield?

[LinMM]

I think you should keep us waiting till Sunday anyway even if someone guesses it

we don’t find out who guessed right until Sunday!! 

[Nogoat]

1 hour ago, bridiem said:

Tubular Bells/Mike Oldfield?

 

'Fraid not. But now we've had Frankenstein: The Ballet, and Creature: The Ballet, surely it can only be a matter of time before we get The Exorcist: The Ballet! I guess the dancers wouldn't have any problems rotating their heads... 🤔

[alison]

Oh, please don't.  I'm still slightly traumatised by the time at university when I went to see what was supposed to be Airplane!, only to find someone had left the previous night's film in the projector, and it was the second reel of The Exorcist.  Started just about at that point, too

[LinMM]

A long shot but not David Bowie the Man Who Fell to Earth from the film? 
It’s more the instruments have some similarity and of course the idea of falling as happens in Alice!! 
Not quite the same tune but has some vague similarities lol!! 

[Sim]

Sounds like the Moody Blues from Days of Future Passed.  The album ending of Nights In White Satin. 

[Nogoat]

9 hours ago, Sim said:

Sounds like the Moody Blues from Days of Future Passed.  The album ending of Nights In White Satin. 

 

Good call, Sim! 👏🎉

 

Yes, the uploaded sample was from the Moody Blues' first 'concept album', Days of Future Passed, released way back in 1967. Its most well-known track, Nights in White Satin, was released as a single, but on the album it forms the first part of a longer section called The Night, the latter half of which contains the uploaded sample. To understand why Talbot might have referenced it, we need to consider the context.

 

In The Night, the Moody Blues seem to have used the approach of a loud, falling orchestral score abruptly transitioning to a quiet section to represent falling asleep - the turmoil of the day and the thoughts expressed in Nights in White Satin are replaced by an altered state, a stillness.

 

Here's the relevant 20 seconds or so...

 

 

 

In Alice, the same approach - essentially unchanged from that used by the Moody Blues except for its duration - is used in Act 1 as Alice falls asleep on the bench and abruptly transitions from the real world to the dreamlike, altered state that comprises most of the rest of the ballet.

 

Here's the relevant minute or so...

 

[copyright video removed by Mods]

 

I listened to Days of Future Passed during lockdown - for the first time in perhaps a couple of decades - and was taken aback when I heard that last track, The Night.

I then broke out into a broad smile; Alice had always struck me as a ballet on which a lot of care and attention was lavished, and that chance discovery just added to my appreciation. For me, Talbot's use of The Moody Blues' music is only 'stealing' in the sense Stravinsky used the word - it represents respect, admiration and acknowledgement of the original.

 

[LinMM]

Well done Sim!! I would never have got this as only know a couple of songs of Moody Blues. And amazing Nogoat that you made that link to the Alice score so quickly! 
Ive only seen Alice twice a few years ago now but obviously some things about the score do stick in your mind. 
I remember quite liking the music for Alice and unfortunately I often don’t really like modern scores for ballet that much. 

[Dawnstar]

10 hours ago, alison said:

Oh, please don't.  I'm still slightly traumatised by the time at university when I went to see what was supposed to be Airplane!, only to find someone had left the previous night's film in the projector, and it was the second reel of The Exorcist.  Started just about at that point, too

 

I was traumatised when I saw Airplane years ago (a film about food poisoning is not good when you have emetophobia) so I'm sure it's a good thing I've never seen The Exorcist!

[Sim]

I am a big Moodies fan so recognised the first four notes of the Talbot excerpt immediately!  But I am clearly much more shallow than you are, Nogoat…I thought the correlation was nothing more than white satin, white rabbit!!  😂😂

[Nogoat]

On 09/10/2021 at 08:40, Nogoat said:

Here's the relevant minute or so...

 

[copyright video removed by Mods]

 

Ooops! Sorry, Mods - should've thought about the Royal's copyright before pasting in that link! 

 

The RB don't seem to have an 'official' trailer for that bit, but I guess anyone sufficiently interested in the rather obscure connection I was trying to make will probably have the DVD anyway. 

 

[edited by Mods]

[LinMM]

Well I heard it while it was still posted here and can confirm that the musical bit from Alice and the Moody Blues was more or less identical!! I hadn’t expected it to be that close! 
It was the Moody Blues who did “Go Now” wasn’t it? 
I had a Saturday job when at school still and got into trouble for loitering near a radio to listen to this instead of serving the customers on my counter! 
The Manager successfully predicted that I would not make a successful  business woman 🙃

[Irmgard]

Attending the opening night of “Creature”, I thought how privileged Akram Khan is to be able to work with such prodigious talent both onstage and in the pit. I read the play by Büchner in German studies during high school and I loathed it, not only for its subject matter but also because not one of the characters was sympathetic, not the hapless Woyzeck and certainly not the duplicitous Marie. Similarly, I felt that Macmillan’s “Different Drummer”, based on the play, was one of his lesser works, and my abiding memory is of poor Wayne Eagling submerged in a bathtub full of peas!  It appears that Khan has only taken from Büchner some of the character names and the idea of human experimentation and mangled it with elements from Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and a poem by Lord Byron, and the result is a very muddled, almost incomprehensible storyline. I thought Ruth Little’s synopsis for Khan’s version of “Giselle” was so full of holes that it resembled a piece of Swiss cheese but her synopsis for “Creature” is facile, bordering on the puerile.  The set by Tim Yip is similar to the wall in “Giselle”, only here we have three dilapidated wooden walls with two all-purpose doors - but who would build a wooden structure in the high arctic, where we are told the action takes place? I did not think that the set was particularly effective in the dénouement (and it was only at a later performance that I noticed the walls shaking, like giant wobble-boards), leaving it to the lighting design of Michael Hulls to create the atmosphere of desolation. For all it is meant to be dilapidated, the station is obviously extremely well heated as Marie wears nothing more than a light summer dress and the Creature is bare-chested for almost the entire piece. The Doctor and the Major are dressed in rather elegant coats but the poor ensemble, referred to on the cast sheet as the army, are dressed in a cross between boiler suits and space suits in a bulky, unflattering material which I later discovered is Neoprene!  The score, or soundscape, by  Vincenzo Lamagna, was dangerously loud on opening night, with the beginning noise making the seats in the auditorium vibrate to a very disturbing degree.  Unlike Lamagna’s score for “Giselle”, Maestro Gavin Sutherland did not provide the orchestration for “Creature” and his skill was very much missed. The orchestra spent most of their time accompanying the soundscape, which was mainly an assault on the ears, and being drowned out in the process, which I felt was very insulting to these fine musicians.

 

As to the choreography, I find that Khan has a very limited movement vocabulary for ensembles and it was very easy to spot movements borrowed from “Dust” and “Giselle” as there was no attempt to make them look different.  The opening sequence of slow motion walks was interesting but my neck was soon aching in sympathy with the dancers as they had to flick their heads backwards and forwards.  The step sequence became unintentionally funny in Act II when the platoon entered through the door on the audience’s left and exited through the door on the right, only to appear a few seconds later entering again through the door on the left, rather like a music hall comedy act!  At one point, the female members of the platoon enter like a chorus line and perform a series of quirky hand and body movements for the Creature.  The lovely Angela Wood (and Katja Khaniukova in a later performance – what a waste of a dancer who is a principal in all but title!) imbued the movements with such sensuality that I wondered if this was an attempt by the females to seduce the Creature but, as her companions performed the movements in a matter of fact way, perhaps not.  Apart from the Creature himself, Khan has drawn the named characters very sketchily in terms of movement, and defining their characters appears to be left to the individual dancers to do so through their considerable acting skills. The magnificent Fabian Reimair commands the stage from his first entrance as the Major, who appears to be in charge of the whole set-up.  Reimair plays the Major as a mixture of his arrogant, entitled and brutal Jailer in “Manon” and the ruthless father of Bathilde in Khan’s version of “Giselle”, making him a definite psychopath, culminating in the senseless murder of Marie.  The always watchable Stina Quagebeur, who served Khan so well as Myrtha, does what she can with the muddled character of the Doctor, at times revelling in the inhumane experiments on the Creature, at times showing a conscience and at other times leading the platoon in a merry dance while trying to avoid being one of the objects of the Major’s desire.  Worst served by Khan is the exquisite Erina Takahashi as the (in his conception) downtrodden Marie, who seems to spend most of her time mopping the floor or scrubbing the table with her bare hands (and if the station is soon to be abandoned, why does it need so much cleaning?).  Takahashi does vulnerability extremely well but how I would have loved to see her formidable dancing skills used in a much more imaginative way! It is therefore the extraordinary Creature of Jeffrey Cirio in a tour de force performance who takes all the dancing honours.  Khan has benefitted greatly from Cirio’s huge movement vocabulary and facility and, I imagine, from the fact that Cirio is a choreographer in his own right and is used to exploring movement possibilities.  Such is his strikingly individual way of moving that he appears to be a creature from another world which, for me, explained why Takahashi’s Marie does not always know how to react to his actions although there is most definitely a chemistry between them which makes the rare moments of tenderness very moving.  Amidst the many breath-taking moments of Cirio’s dancing, the one imprinted on my mind is a set of jetés forward with flexed knees and feet (as used by Nijinsky in “L’après-midi d’un faune”) in which his ability to suspend in the air was truly awe-inspiring, much as I imagine Nijinsky’s must have been!  I came away from this performance full of admiration for the dancers and musicians and the intense commitment of their performances but wishing they had been far better served by both choreographer and composer.

 

What a difference a week makes!  I returned to watch both shows on Thursday 30 September so that I could see the other two casts of principals.  I was very relieved that the volume of the soundscape had been reduced to an almost acceptable level, although the noise at the beginning was still intolerable, and I could actually hear the orchestra, even if what they were playing could hardly be described as melodic.  Aitor Arrieta took on the role of the Creature and gave a truly memorable performance.  His Creature was most definitely human and tugged at the heartstrings from beginning to end as he endured all with an infinite sadness and incomprehension.  I have always considered Arrieta to be a true danseur noble and there was indeed a nobility and a pride in the way he performed the sequence of robotic movements at the beginning to the soundtrack of Richard Nixon’s voice.  When these movements were repeated later on, the nobility seemed to be ebbing, as if the cruelty of the experiments were taking their toll on him. I was very aware with Arrieta, as I was with Cirio, that the Creature appears to have something implanted in his brain which is manipulating him and at times causes him great pain, and his silent screams were very harrowing.  His Marie was the fascinating Emily Suzuki who proved her dramatic credentials in Stina Quagebeur’s haunting “Hollow” last season.  She made her eyes almost expressionless in that piece, as if to signal her withdrawal from the world, and she used this again to great effect in the opening duet with the Creature (and I still remain unsure whether this is meant to show us the end of the story first, like “Mayerling”).  Her outstanding dramatic moment in this piece was after her assault by the Major when she tried to scrub herself clean with a ferocity that I found heartbreaking.  There was such an incredibly intense chemistry between Arrieta and Suzuki that their duets became the highlight of the performance for me, and his anguish when he cradled her dead body in his arms as his world crumbled was palpable and almost unbearable.

 

The evening’s performance was almost dominated by Fernanda Oliveira’s mesmerising Marie.  She caught the light almost at the beginning of the piece and it never left her, so that, even when she was at the back of the stage, her luminous beauty was eye-catching.  The fluidity of her movement and the way she used her body in the duets with the Creature was breath-taking.  Even in the final duet, there was a beauty in the limpness of her body which reminded me of her Juliet and Manon and made the choreography look much better than it actually is.  But it was also her incredibly detailed characterisation which was so memorable.  Having to spend so much time cleaning, she even made this look interesting, mopping diligently around the guard’s feet, and there was a wonderful moment when she just stood at the back of the stage and leant against the handle of the mop with a feeling of resignation that was very moving.  Her relationship with the Creature appeared to be more maternal at first, having to constantly guide him, until she suddenly realises he is attracted to her. In the one almost lighthearted duet they have together, her body and face were so expressive that it was obvious she suddenly felt the water when the Creature plunged her feet into the bucket.  The Creature was Isaac Hernandez, almost unrecognisable without his usual head of curls, who seemed to be a child in a man’s body, uncomprehending of all that was going on around him.   There was something about his innocence that reminded me of Johnny Depp’s Edward Scissorhands, especially the final moments when he held Marie’s body in his arms in a way which seemed to indicate that he could not quite understand that she was dead or that everything around him was collapsing, which was extremely touching.    

 

I came away from my third viewing still feeling that this is a deeply flawed piece and, in the hands of lesser artists, would probably have been a dismal failure.  However, although I feel that the dancers and orchestra (and the audience!) deserved much better, I would watch it again (with earplugs on standby) for the sheer brilliance of the dancers’ interpretations and I am so pleased that they received standing ovations at all three performances I attended – richly deserved!!!!