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The
Paris Opera Ballet
made a rare
appearance in the
States, presenting
the American
premiere of Red Carpet at Cal Performances, Berkeley. I was surprised to learn that the company was touring with only one ballet – a ballet of just one hour and fifteen minutes. A tour with a one-hour show?
Another unexpected feature: Red Carpet was entirely contemporary – no Parisian ballerina wonders on pointe. Red
Carpet presents a spectacular fusion of Disco craze, MTV frenzy, Vogueing runways, Pina Bausch fashions, Broadway glamour and ecstasy-soaked raves (the list could go on). The audience was offered ear plugs at the entrance as the show was performed at rock concert decibels. The original score was composed by the choreographer, Hofesh Shechter.
Shechter, dance master and composer in one, is a native of
Jerusalem and a former member of Israel’s Batsheva Dance
Company. His own Hofesh Shechter Company was founded in
2008, in London. He created Red Carpet for the Paris Opera
Ballet four months ago with the somewhat paradoxical goal to
“celebrate the confusion of glamour and art.”
The set is glamorous indeed: dominated by a gigantic chandelier
that comes sailing down and rises like a UFO with a message from
the rich and famous. It shimmers through red velvet curtains that
open in triangular fashion to allow voyeur peeks into a
mysterious night space, club or ballroom for the beautiful people,
the haute volée. The atmosphere of the partially closed or open
stage is dark and moody. Light-infused ice vapors and powerful
light beams seem borrowed from rock concerts, and Shechter
likes to call his creation a concert as well as a ballet. A band
shines up at times like a floating mirage in the background and
fades out again: the quartet of Shechter’s frequent collaborator
Yaron Engler: cello, brass, double bass and drums.
The piece starts out with alluring North African tunes and
rhythms, expands, and folklore elements merge with free jazz
driven by a constant techno beat. The ensemble of thirteen
dancers is almost constantly on stage as a group, moving in
rapidly shifting propulsive formations, walking and sashaying in
place, hip-thrusting, bouncing and shimmying with an
indefatigable energy that often recalls disco fever. They are all
superb dancers, most of them chosen from the lowest ranks of the
severe hierarchy of the Paris Opera Ballet. They are dressed by
the fashion house Chanel in extravagant, glittering evening
gowns, cool street garb and sexy nude underwear. They move in
repetitive thrusts, sometimes with flashmob-style synchronicity,
punctuated by occasional acrobatic bursts. It quickly transpires
that within the intense group cohesion, everyone is strutting and
gyrating for him or herself.
The temperature is ice-cold, elegant, suave, relentless. Nobody is
touching or coupling, nobody communicates. A few times, a single
male dancer breaks from the group and lunges into an explosive
frenzy that create the illusion of strobe lights on the dark stage.
Once, just once, another male dancer attempts to escape from the
tribe by dragging himself toward the mirage of the band.
Shechter is clearly not afraid of repetition. His loops go on and on
for a very long seventy-five minutes: more than enough for one
night, as it turned out. The energy constantly shifts back and forth
between high octane output and collapse-- deeply bent backs,
heavy pliés and fallen bodies being dragged from the stage. The
show must go on -- propelled by the thumping, bone-vibrating
beat.
Even when the music quiets into a brief contemplative mood, no
warmth or connection arises. The group balls together like a
mingled yarn, then reaches up with arms and hands in a kind of
ecstasy that still looks like a pose. I did not believe a word (so to
speak) of the ending when the band suddenly launches into major
-key harmonies and electronically droning “cosmic tunes” à la
Brian Eno, and the group again reaches upward in “universal
oneness.” I was wondering if this sentimental happy ending was
supposed to illustrate Shechter’s concept of celebrating
confusion?
I savored the more openly paradoxical moments in Red Carpet.
For example, when the group madly dances around the
chandelier as if worshiping the biblical golden calf, the allusion to
castles and French royal glamour ironically meets its kitschy echo
from Broadway’s La Belle et la Bête.
In another paradoxical time-warp, a rare sub-group of five
dancers takes position in front of the curtain. They stand together
seemingly motionless and detached in their nude costumes, but
minuscule shifts of position and limbs get them in close touch
with each other, melting them into a semblance of a decorative
frieze on an antique vase-- a memory of art from an alien tribe of
connected beings, eons ago.
The existential message of Shechter’s dance concert seems to be:
we are all non-stop on show on a red carpet of self-celebration
and imaginary stardom. If Dante had added a tenth circle to his
Inferno, it would have been narcissism, the hell of empty glamour
eternally celebrating itself.
Photos: Chris Hardy
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