TWO BLU-RAY DANCE REVIEWS

posted by James Reel

Here are two reviews of dance productions on video I wrote last year for Fanfare. I recommend both, but they will appeal to different tastes.

MORETTI-MONTEVERDI Caravaggio • Paul Connelly, cond; Staatsballet Berlin; Staatskapelle Berlin • ARTHAUS 101 464 (Blu-ray disc: 122:00) Live: Berlin 2008

Artist Caravaggio (real name: Michelangelo Merisi, 1571–1610) is the subject of choreographer Mauro Bigonzetti’s new two-act ballet, but the subject in only a general, even metaphorical sense. If you open the booklet and look at the section titles—things like “Journey to Rome,” “The Tooth Extraction,” “Dispute and Duel”—you’ll expect this to be a story ballet recounting the volatile artist’s sudden rise to celebrity, his various conflicts and disputes, and his sudden, early death, apparently from fever rather than violence. But then you’ll start watching the performance, and become completely lost. Nothing on stage corresponds to the section titles, and it seems that Bigonzetti is indulging in a bit of postmodern misdirection.

The central dancer does seem to correspond to Caravaggio. We first see him, Vladimir Malakhov, alone on stage: a muscular, thick-lipped, shaggy Slavic blond in his underwear, Malakhov looks more like a Spartacus than a Caravaggio. His movements are beautiful, controlled, masculine, motivated by some inner spark, or inner torture. At various times in the course of the ballet, Malakhov will be partnered with two superb female dancers, Polina Semionova and Beatrice Knop, who seem to suggest the contrasts in Caravaggio’s work and life: light and dark, purity and carnality, the private mind (or soul) and the public body. Another important partner in the second act is the commanding, beautiful young Leonard Jakovina, who embodies both tenderness and violence, and brings to the proceedings a bisexual sensuality. The first act also involves other soloists and the corps de ballet in a series of athletic Roman street scenes.

So what are all these figures up to? And what is Bigonzetti up to, for that matter? He seems to be trying to translate the sheer physicality of Caravaggio’s paintings into dance, and he certainly succeeds at this, even if identifiable allusions to actual paintings are few and far between. The lighting design of Carlo Cerri is critical to all this; it defines space and adds texture to the bodies.

Bigonzetti’s choreography is dynamic, fusing some elements of classical ballet to what is essentially modern dance. The duets are arresting and innovative, yet not quite as unusual as some of the dancers seem to think. In the accompanying interview feature, one of the ballerinas exclaims that making a dancer stand on her seated partner’s swiveling knees has never been done before; well, she’s apparently never seen Pilobolus, or acrobats, for that matter. It would have been interesting to see how she managed to slide off those knees and rejoin the floor on pointe, but unfortunately video director Andreas Morell cuts away at that point. Morell is a bit of a problem here; especially in the lively group scenes in the first act, his quick cutting, emulating the dynamics of the movement, makes the action almost unintelligible. Otherwise, though, he seems more sensible, and his choice of medium shots and closeups usually helps illuminate the dancers’ gestures, which is very important in this choreography. He also makes good occasional use of overhead shots.

Bruno Moretti assembled the score from various works by Caravaggio’s close contemporary Claudio Monteverdi. Moretti’s treatment of the originals is initially light and Beechamesque, but gradually becomes darker and always varied in texture. It’s Romanticized Monteverdi, but it fits the stage action perfectly.

The Blu-ray release delivers superb visual detail—you can tell who shaves which body parts and who does not—and two audio options: PCM stereo and dts-HD 7.1 surround. The DVD’s audio formats are PCM stereo, DD 5.1, and DTS 5.1. The DVD apparently is a gateway to some online bonus material, but because it requires a Windows operating system and I’m a Mac user, I couldn’t investigate it; I suspect it’s essentially the same collection of still photos from rehearsal and production that are included on the Blu-ray.

Bigonzetti’s Caravaggio is a puzzling work, but it’s beautifully performed; for both reasons, it invites multiple viewings. James Reel

CHOPIN La Dame aux camélias • Michael Schmidtsdorff, cond; Paris Opera Ballet & O • OPUS ARTE (2 blu-ray discs: 191:00) Live: Paris 2008

Choreographer John Neumeier’s setting of the same story that inspired La Traviata is beginning to take hold in companies beyond Neumeier’s own Hamburg Ballet, and with good reason. The choreography is challenging but graceful, and the entire presentation—at least when under Neumeier’s direct supervision—abounds in natural psychological nuance that’s more sophisticated than what Verdi could muster in his opera. The music, perfectly integrated with the story and stage action, is by Chopin, and the story itself, however familiar it may be, remains touching and has been particularly humanized in Neumeier’s treatment.

That story originated with the younger Alexandre Dumas; it’s a fictionalized account of his affair with Marie Duplessis, a consumptive courtesan who died at age 23. Dumas called his lovers Marguerite Gautier and Armand Duval, and he drew parallels between their story and that of the ill-fated Manon Lescaut. The novel, La Dame aux camélias (The Lady of the Camelias, after the heroine’s signature flower), was an instant success and within a week of its publication had been adapted for the stage. Verdi’s simplified operatic treatment, La Traviata, was premiered about five years later, and there ensued a long series of new stage adaptations and film treatments up through our own time.

In many ways, Neumeier’s ballet is the most faithful to Dumas, despite—or perhaps because of—its absolute lack of language. Neumeier employs the author’s flashback structure, opening the story as the late Marguerite’s estate is being sold off. Daringly, he also denies his lovers a grand pas de deux as a finale; their last big moment together, during a very brief interruption in their estrangement, comes a couple of scenes before the ballet’s end. As in the book, Armand reads about Marguerite’s demise in her diary.

On this new Blu-ray and DVD of a recent Paris Opera Ballet production, Neumeier is credited as both choreographer and stage director. Most obviously, that’s because there’s almost no choreography in the opening scene; it’s a presentation of Marguerite’s friends and lovers milling around her apartment as her estate is being liquidated. In other words, the dancers here must perform as silent actors. But, importantly, they continue to do so once the choreography begins. As Marguerite, Agnès Letestu is superb at this; for example, just watch for the variety of her highly nuanced smiles in the early scenes. The rest of the cast is almost as adept at this; Letestu’s interactions with Stéphane Bullion are full of subtleties, as are the gestures and glances among the secondary characters. Video director Thomas Grimm emphasizes that this is much more than an display of bodies in motion with well-chosen, brief reaction shots intercut with the primary action. Not every moment is entirely successful; an early pas de trois that develops when Armand enters the fantasy world of Manon and Des Grieux looks awkward and effortful, but when the dancers are less entangled, the choreography is fluid and psychologically precise.

The music is by Chopin, the original pieces (not Sylphided for orchestra), almost all of them presented intact. The whole of the Piano Concerto No. 2 supports the first act; it’s mostly solo items in the second, and a mixture of solo works and compositions with orchestra in the third. The taxing keyboard duties are traded off with sensitivity and security between Emmanuel Strosser and Frédéric Vaysse-Knitter; in the concerto, support from the Paris Opera Orchestra under Michael Schmidtsdorff could occasionally be more incisive, but it serves its purpose. Jürgen Rose’s costumes are superb, suggesting the authentic garb of 1840s Paris while also lending themselves to movement (except that Letestu often has to pull her long skirts away from Bullion’s face during the lifts), and reinforcing through color and drape the emotions of each scene. Rose also does a fine job of visually distinguishing the fantasy world of Manon from the “real” world of Marguerite in their few but critical scenes together.

The main difference between the Blu-ray and DVD editions is, as usual, the audio choices; on Blu-ray it’s PCM stereo versus PCM 5.0, while on DVD it’s either LPCM stereo or dts surround. Both formats include a nearly hour-long documentary, illustrated synopsis, and cast gallery. The Blu-ray video is sharper and richer, and, in principle, a Blu-ray player really is worth your investment if you have a big enough screen to show it off.

I haven’t seen the competing DVD issued a couple of years ago by DG, derived from a 20-year-old performance at Neumeier’s home base, Hamburg Opera. A consumer review at one retail Web site complains that the transfer was made at a slightly accelerated speed, so there’s reason for caution. But Neumeier was present for this Paris production, and the dancers are models of contemporary French ballet style, so I have no qualms about adopting this as a reference version. Neumeier’s La Dame aux camélias is an exquisite unity of music, motion and emotion. James Reel