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REVIEWS CONCERTO - TOUR
De Telegraaf:
Rush hour in the dance world
(6 November 2009)
It’s rush hour in the dance world. The Holland Dance Festival’s policy is to provide a wide selection, and many dance companies are presenting new productions at the same time as the festival in The Hague. Audiences, therefore, are thinly spread, and even an audience favourite like the Batsheva Dance Company from Israel had to cope with a quite a few empty seats in the Danstheater.
Fortunately, the Dutch National Ballet had a reasonably well-filled house in the Stadsschouwburg in Amsterdam for the premiere of its touring programme. The new work on the programme is Dumbarton Dances, by Krzysztof Pastor. In it, he tips his hat to Hans van Manen and Jerome Robbins, who also created ballets to Stravinsky’s concerto with the epithet Dumbarton Oaks. Eight bare-footed men measure one another up in a light-hearted atmosphere of rivalry.read moreAfter an ensemble, in which they each have a solo watched by the others, the central section has two exciting and expressive duets. In the dynamic finale, Pastor juxtaposes two challenging quartets, until they form the initial ensemble once again. The eight dancers get a wonderful opportunity to show what they are worth in this unpretentious and attractive piece of choreography.
Pastor’s work is nicely embedded in a programme that has been compiled with care. It forms the counterpart to Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco, which is still exciting after a hundred times, for its inventive movements. The programme also contains revivals of Hans van Manen’s intensely charged Concertante and Balanchine’s Stravinsky Violin Concerto, with good accompaniment from Holland Symfonia, conducted by Ermanno Florio. With its delightfully strong performances, the Dutch National Ballet shows that ballet with a neo-classical touch is still alive and kicking.
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Eddie Vetter hide
NRC Handelsblad:
Krysztof Pastor lets his dancers shine
(6 November 2009)
For those who want to see classical or neo-classical ballet outside the big cities, but don’t like fairytales, there is not a lot of choice. Fortunately, the Dutch National Ballet is meeting its touring obligations by presenting a programme that ‘dances attendance’ on lovers of music ballets. Concerto is a wonderful bill of four ballets that, despite the differences between its sections, still shows a nice unity of approach. They are all works that respond to the musical composition while still retaining their autonomy. Music and dance – that’s all you need.read moreCornerstones of the evening are the works of Balanchine. Concerto Barocco(1941) is set to Bach’s famousDouble Violin Concerto in D minorand is high-spirited in nature. The second, to Stravinsky's Violin Concerto in D, is wilful and provocative. The story goes that Balanchine created Violin Concerto in 1972 practically overnight, along with a couple of other works. To mere mortals, this is incomprehensible, in view of the complexity of the ballet.
Concertante , by Hans van Manen, was premiered in 1994 by Nederlands Dans Theater. The Dutch National Ballet perform the restrained, tense choreography with their own brand of expressiveness; slightly lighter in tone. The dancers appear less ‘stuck’ to the floor than their colleagues in The Hague. Larissa Lezhnina, in particular, succeeds in interpreting the taut accents well.
Alongside these older works danced by new casts is the premiere by resident choreographer Krzysztof Pastor, Dumbarton Dances. This is a light-hearted, friendly encounter between eight men (boys, actually). They challenge one another, circle each other in two groups and size each other up in short confrontations. The atmosphere, however, remains good-humoured and relaxed. Although Pastor’s style is flowing with long lines, there is undoubtedly something masculine and tough about his choreography. The jumps are powerful, fists are clenched here and there, and the partnering is sometimes almost nonchalant, with one push against a raised leg causing a turning movement and a shove against a chest changing the direction.
In the meantime, Pastor uses criss-cross movements to hint at Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco, and outstretched fingers and typical Van Manen arabesques to refer to one of his direct choreographic masters. Moreover, the tension between the two groups makes a connection with West Side Story, by Jerome Robbins, who also (like Van Manen) created an idyllic ballet to Stravinsky's Dumbarton Oaks. Dumbarton Dances thus links up perfectly with the other parts of the programme, as it does with the talents of the dancers, who include Juanjo Arques, Steven Etienne and Koen Havenith. It is obvious that they are enjoying this ballet, as Pastor gives them all a chance to shine for quarter of an hour or so.
Francien van der Wiel hide
De Volkskrant:
Self-evident musicality
(7 November 2009)
You can see from the dancers how much fun George Balanchine had while choreographing.
It is good to see the dancers of the Dutch National Ballet from close up again. To see just how human they are, actually, with the sweat running down their backs. And how awful it is if someone has a fake smile (for which dancers have something of a tendency).
But quite apart from that, the new touring programme – which is made for more intimate theatres than the large-scale Muziektheater in Amsterdam – is simply very beautiful. Concerto consists entirely of pieces made to concertos; music for orchestra and soloists.read moreThe master of the music ballet, George Balanchine, embraces music in all its glory – whether exciting, lyrical or light-hearted. He begins and ends the programme with Concerto Barocco (to the
Double Violin Concerto by Bach) and Stravinsky Violin
Concerto. The company have got these two neo-classical works down to a fine art by now, but new panache was provided by the powerful, stately Vera Tsyganova, the vulnerable, lyrical Anu Viheriäranta and the assured, supple Cédric Ygnace.
You can see from the dancers how much fun George Balanchine must have had while thinking up all those ingenious patterns, criss-cross games interwoven in arm and leg lines, and super-fast pointe work. Symmetry plays an extremely important role, with two soloists in front of two groups of four dancers, four couples turning around like weather vanes, and four women and one man following in the footsteps of four men and one woman. But the musicality is so self-evident and the diversity of movement material so great that it never becomes rigid.
The new Dumbarton Dances by resident choreographer Krzysztof Pastor is a piece for men, and in that respect is an asset for the company. The ballet is set to the chamber concerto Dumbarton Oaks by Stravinsky; a composer who wrote many works for dance.
Full of energy, eight boys enter a carefree dance game, as if they are lounging around on a beautiful summer’s day in the garden of a country estate. They perform their solos as if in a battle, and here and there some small variations break free of the group.
It is a great shame that Pastor does not set up some resistance to his flowing style, as everything ripples along in friendly fashion. Moreover, the old-fashioned mime scenes, in which the youngsters try to push each other around realistically and laugh at one another, make the piece unnecessarily mawkish.
Fortunately, Hans van Manen shows once again that dance can also contain tension and underlying stories alongside energy. His Concertante to music by Frank Martin is one big bout of fending off – with arms that signal ‘no’, hands that say ‘stop’ and bodies that stretch away from one another. In that respect, the two duets take the cake, with shoulders reacting to each touch as if they’ve been stabbed, and a hand reaching out for a neck.
Mirjam van der Linden hide
Trouw:
Female whirlwind and male energy
(8 November 2009)
Outside, it’s pouring down and the wind is chasing the leaves off the trees, but a lovely spring breeze wafts through the Stadsschouwburg in Amsterdam. The Dutch National Ballet’s neo-classical touring programme Concerto is playful and light-hearted, with works by George Balanchine and
resident choreographers Hans van Manen and Krzysztof Pastor.read moreAlthough maestro Van Manen was not too happy about it – “You can’t swing a cat in here” – it is always good to see the Dutch National Ballet back in its old haunt, which was exchanged for the much more spacious Muziektheater in 1986. And especially so when the ballets are accompanied with such radiance and competence by Holland Symfonia, conducted by Ermanno Florio. When you are so close to the orchestra pit, you can almost pluck the notes from the air. And that is a good match for Balanchine (for whom the Dutch National Ballet acts as custodian), who once said: "See the music, hear the dance."
"Ballet is a woman" is another of those Balanchine quotes that has taken root. In Concerto Barocco, from 1941, one of his earlier abstract works, an ensemble of eight women are continually dancing at full tempo on stage. In an architectural interplay of lines, Bach’s Concerto for double violin and string quartet becomes clear, contrasting or concurrent, while two soloists, one of whom is the delightfully airy Anu Viheriäranta, ‘interpret’ the violins. In this female whirlwind of movement composition, Alexander Zhembrovskyy provides a masculine counter-strength. His somewhat aloof charisma and gallantry make him an ideal Balanchine chap.
This male energy is present eightfold in Krzysztof Pastor’s Dumbarton Dances. Eight male dancers devote themselves to brotherly competition, getting the better of each other like playful young dogs. Stravinsky's chamber concerto Dumbarton Oaks, commissioned by the owner of the estate of the same name near Washington, was an exploration of the Third Brandenburg Concerto by Bach. Pastor adds to this by giving his lyrical style a transparent musical structure. With regard to the choreography, the ballet is nicely cyclic. The group opening also forms the ending, and in between, each dancer has his own solo and is part of a strong duet. Dumbarton Dances is a light touch in Pastor’s oeuvre; an uncomplicated and beautiful ballet, which allows ‘the men’ to show off their dance strengths to good advantage.
Stravinsky Violin Concerto by Balanchine, which was recently performed in the Muziektheater, and Concertante by Hans van Manen are old stalwarts. The first ballet links up well musically with Pastor’s new work, while Petite Symphonie Concertante by
Frank Martin forms a good ally for the tension and suspense always to be found in Van Manen’s choreography. All in all, a well-composed evening – and let winter commence!
Sander Hiskemuller hide
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