Compania Nacional de Danza presents: Mixed Repertory Program
Nov 27, 2002
By
ALLAN ULRICH
allan@voiceofdance.com
Compania Nacional de Danza in Homage to Bach Photo courtesy of Mondaviarts.org
Please, oh, please, can we declare a moratorium on dances about castrati? Two in one season are more than enough. If, as George Balanchine once averred, there are no mothers-in-law in ballet, there are no eunuchs, either. First, we had the Oakland Ballet a few months back in a muddled number about these "white voices." Now it is the turn of Spain's Nacho Duato, whose nearly new Castratti (the Spanish spelling) headlined the debut visit of the Compa'ia Nacional de Danza to Northern California Tuesday (Nov. 26) at the new Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts at the University of California, Davis. The audience, judging from the cheers and applause, was duly impressed.
We are not, however, out of the forest of clich's just yet. Another
shopworn idea that should be banished from the dance stage immediately is dressing men in corsets. Jiri Kylian, erstwhile director of Nederlands Dans Theater, used these undergarments in one piece, and the American modernist, Stephen Petronio, relished them when he was undergoing a gender confusion period, which he happily survived. These days, corsets come with the territory so frequently you search the fine print in the program for an underwriting credit from Victoria's Secret.
This questionable bit of costuming was almost ubiquitous in Castratti and it surfaced also in Duato's Por Vos Muero, the finest work on this calling-card program and the one that made the evening come alive in a special artistic way. Duato's work is scarcely a guarded secret any longer. Small American companies, like Chicago's Hubbard Street (Jardi Tancat), dance his creations and the international big boys (American Ballet Theatre, San Francisco Ballet, the Royal Ballet) have incorporated them, too. Duato's artistic identity is strong enough to provide a focus for a chamber ballet company, and Compa'ia Nacional de Danza, which Duato joined as artistic director in 1990 has already acquired a global reputation, which does not, I'll wager, rest on pieces like Castratti, which is homoerotic Grand Guignol to the max. Most of the cities on the current American and Canadian tour will see a program of dances, all set to Bach scores. The Davis menu, which ranged from Duato's early piece, Arenal (1988), to this latest, is probably more representative of his range.
Even without reading the program biography, you might guess that Duato spent time, both as dancer and choreographer, at Kylian's NDT. Arenal, arranged to folk songs from the Mediterranean arranged by Maria del Mar Bonet, reveals a plethora of Kylian fingerprints - the huddled ensembles turned upstage, the long skirts, the sudden, violent, sweeping extensions, the odd lifts that seem inserted simply to make an audience gasp.
Nevertheless, in Castratti, Duato is very much his own man. Eight males in black skirts and fetchingly tailored corsets menace a youth in white (Fabrice Edelmann) before he is surrounded and mutilated (the blood on his costume leaves no room for ambiguity) and that is where the ballet ends. We are shocked, but is that the only purpose? The castrated man has spent most of the work hugging the floor, so why are we supposed to care? The music is drawn from Vivaldi, mostly excerpts from choral works (Nisi Dominus, Stabat Mater), rendered on tape by a countertenor (essentially a male alto, who has not been altered). It's a pointless and ugly (if not repellent) tale, relieved for spells by some energetic ensembles, with the men twisting in air to sharply accented Vivaldi string music. Males really do dominate in this troupe; they're muscular, sultry and versatile.
But since Duato offers a program note on castrati, let me amend his essay. The abuse, intended to generate great singing voices possessed of the timbre of women and the power of men, was only inflicted on prepubescent children. And, belying the corsets, castrati did not have reputations for effeminacy; quite the opposite, if we can believe the music histories. The practice was banned by the church in the 19th century, so what was Duato's point? If he is telling us that beauty is rooted in extreme ugliness, I think we have been there before - at least a couple of times.
Por vos Muero is obsessed with the past, but this, however, is one of the Duato pieces that has travelled the world, and it seemed the most assured number on Tuesday's program. The poetry of Garcilaso de la Vega and the music, traditional 15th and 16th century material, performed on tape by an ensemble led by the great Jordi Savall, melds courtliness and sensuality in these mock-Renaissance dances. They blossom into sensual exchanges; simulating nudity, with dancers in flesh-colored wear is another Duato trademark, and he does not disappoint here.
The 12 dancers seem caught up in a ritual of Renaissance decorum (the
men's doublets are a giveaway) from which they break away to express their true feeling in flurries of unison leaps, over the back lifts and unambiguous couplings. The striking decor (signed by Duato) includes an embossed paneled wall and a red swag curtain from which the dancers, alone and in pairs, emerge. The purpose of the stage fog, with its lingering aroma, escapes me.
A word about Jackson Hall in the Mondavi Center. The proscenium is wide and high, the stage is deep, the sound system is state of the art and the sightlines from mid-orchestra are splendid and ease of entry and egress is topnotch. The refreshment stands in the lobby dispense good coffee and wine from you-know-which vineyard. But the folks in Davis needs do something about traffic control, specifically about moving automobiles out of the adjoining parking structure after a performance. Fifteen minutes of idling in your car is simply not good enough.
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