From the archive, here are two reviews from last autumn. First, dance at the Bhavan by Apsaras Arts from Singapore; next, the RSC’s production of King Lear at the Barbican.
Añjasa
Try not to like lots of things; it leads to difficult decisions. As a musical teenager who had decided to go to university before trying for music college, I had to decide which subject, out of music or English, I should study. I loved playing my violin and I loved music. But defined as an academic subject to study, I loved English Literature more. A famous quote from somewhere expressed one of the points of view circling around my head. I felt that devoting words to the study of literature, which is also made of words, made more sense for me than the academic study of music, a medium made of something that was quite mysterious but that seemed to mock and stay out of reach beyond many attempts to complement it with words. The quote in my mind was: ‘Writing about music is like dancing about architecture’. I think the insinuation was that you would be trying to put together two forms, both good in themselves but so unlike each other and incompatible, so unable to be joined by the word ‘about’, that even trying to imagine the pairing would make you laugh. So it was a strange moment when, a few days after seeing Añjasa, about a decade after that time, I realised that I had been utterly compelled by… dancing about architecture.
And it is perfectly sensible. The task of exploring a series of Buddhist monuments united the evening’s dancing, but the novelty of this idea will presumably have allowed the artists to challenge and interrogate their practice, and to find new ways to develop, an important process for an artist. Enabling constantly varied yet consistently beautiful work, the conceit got me to think anew about what Buddhism has to offer, to think about the relationship between ancient monuments and the events they commemorate, and to think about how religion interacts with history and geography, an important topic to ponder at the moment. Unlike music, which relies on musicians’ bodies to create it but is composed of the less tangible medium of sound, the art in dance exists in a physical body, occupying space, making dance an intriguing performance art form to use to explore the human need to create physical monuments. What is the process through which an historical or mythical event is commemorated physically? What is the relationship between the physical and the spiritual? The stories and ideas behind each monument were explored and re-enacted, so that there was a combination of ‘abstract’ architectural dance, and storytelling connected to the events associated with each place. This invited the audience to consider how timeless concepts interact with times and places, a relationship that is important across religions. Allowing the Ultimate to have a relationship with the tangible, even to specific dates and places, is a way to help us to approach it. Musicians and dancers know that we, too, have a potential way towards ‘the point of intersection of the timeless/With time’, as TS Eliot put it, showing again what a good idea it is to dance about religious monuments.
However, like music, dance exists as it is created, the gestures dying as they flow into each other. There was a potential sense of poignancy here, given that Buddhism teaches an awareness of impermanence, and considering the antiquity of the monuments featured. The seemingly jarring idea of ‘dancing about architecture’ thus illuminated a truth about the latter; it changes and decays, like dance, and indeed our physical bodies, though at a much slower rate. Less melancholy reflections came from a more local, literal parallel: the well-rehearsed connection between the dancing body and sculptural representations of the human form. It’s often said that the South Asian dancer becomes a ‘living sculpture’, and in one of the most enjoyable scenes of Añjasa, this idea of metamorphosis was taken gloriously literally.
In this scene, depictions of battles adorning walls were perfectly rendered by dance. A line of dancers, three on each ‘side’ I think, pushed and pulled against each other, their faces valiant, determined and fierce, facing each other down. They took it in turns to prevail, staying in a perfect two-dimensional line like a temple frieze. You got the sense that these scenes are distilled versions of presumably bloody conflicts. Dance and visual art: both tell stories. And it is useful to reflect on the similarities.
Yet the sculptural shapes and often circular formations that this group did so well were perfectly placed to tell intimate, personal stories too. I was moved by the depiction of the birth of the Buddha, whose mother was depicted as a well-loved queen, surrounded by supportive serving women in an atmosphere of fun and happiness. The women went from the everyday attentions of making a bath for her to making an interior space around her in the midst of which her stylised expressiveness told of the struggle of birth condensed into a few seconds. There is a lot in English literature – that subject that I did eventually study – that conflates female space and bodies with circles, nothingness, caves, interiority (think of that famous speech of Lear’s); were it not for the wonderful music I might have had that John Tavener anthem in my head, telling one version of the primary female creation myth in Western Christian culture: ‘Today the Virgin comes to the cave…’. South Asian dance tells wonderful stories, sometimes very directly (when, in a classical recital, an arrow is shot or a flute is played, you definitely know about it) yet always in a refined, stylised way. By presenting an original subject-matter, Añjasa offered an opportunity to notice this storytelling ability anew.
Dance also lends itself to more abstract sculptural group work. Moving circles were perfect for exploring buildings inspired by mandalas; the performance succeeded in its mission to express something of the literal structural presence of buildings as well as the stories inspiring them and depicted on their walls. Structures and shapes, human stories, spiritual inspirations – as in successful architecture, these were fluidly incorporated into a whole.
The music, performed by an extended ensemble and newly composed, was wonderful and essential to the overall project, though of course I wish the budget and logistics had stretched to it being live. I am glad though that it was a live recording (this also meant that we knew when to clap!). The dancing was mainly excellent (although even I noticed some minor technical slips), and interesting in style; whilst there were some tribhangi bends, the sensuous and feminine shape that is characteristic of odissi, my more knowledgable friend told me that an element of this is to be expected in the bharatanatyam practised in South-East Asia. Each dancer’s personality was allowed to shine, and a recognition of individual characters formed part of the enjoyment of the large-scale group work. As in a Gothic cathedral, we were given the noble unity of the whole, whilst at the same time noticing characterful, enjoyable details.
It was all so captivating that I found it easy to look past the (mainly technical) problems that let the evening down. Each ‘site’ was introduced by a recorded spoken commentary with a photograph on a screen; this created unnecessary breaks involving clunky, flow-disrupting, awkwardly-drawn curtains. We could have relied on the dance alone without receiving factual information as part of the performance, as there were programmes to consult; an uninterrupted flow would have been more magical. In any case, the Bhavan’s technical apparatus unfortunately struggled with the technical requirements of the screen, which was also used as a background for some sections. This created some unbelievable naffness, even if we brush past the moment at which it all went wrong and an enormous pixellated icon of a speaker formed the backdrop of the beautiful dancers. One extended section, to do with fending off a terrifying devil of distraction, had a background video image of flowing water, a lotus flower and a Buddha statue. The idea seemed to be that this represented tranquility, standing firm against what was on stage. Unfortunately, the corner of the screen contained words saying something along the lines of ‘RelaxingMeditationMusic.com’. One thinks that with such a large and talented company, alternative ways might have been found to create a picture of a tranquil Buddha unmoved by his fierce adversary.
Embarrassing though it sounds, none of this really mattered because the artistic project was so strong. I loved the journey and I was sorry when it ended. I can unreservedly recommend dancing about architecture to any dance colleagues looking for a new theme. There is in fact quite a lot of mileage to be had in writing about music as well.
King Lear
As AD Nuttall (in Shakespeare the Thinker) pointed out, many students don’t realize when they begin reading – even though the text makes it quite clear – that Lear is a figure from far back in the past, from pagan antiquity long before Christ. This production seemed at pains to make that obvious: actors carried around ceremonial orbs, like the sun and moon, held high on sticks above their heads, rather sanctimoniously bringing out references in the text, and they kept flinging their arms upwards. We knew we were in a vaguely pantheistic, dark pre-Christian world, and the gods were not kind. Yet it was also modern and minimalist; processional lights were in clear Perspex cubes, and cleverly and horribly, Gloucester was relieved of his eyes inside a larger version of one of these. The cave-like space of the Barbican theatre was perfectly suited to this ‘cruel pantheist minimalism’. It was a shame, then, that in the storm scene, such a perfect example of Shakespeare’s ability to layer on words until a situation is precisely and entirely described and felt, words which were brilliantly performed here, things got really complicated. Antony Sher was raised up on a platform underneath a sort of sail that flapped and looked wet. (Maybe he’d stumbled upon the actual Dover Cliff). We’d been wondering what this sail was doing on the floor up to that point. It certainly seemed an odd departure from the rest of the elegant design.
Another odd choice concerned the music. Similar old-new minimalist values could have been achieved with much less fuss than what was there, given that ‘early music’ style, as many academics have discussed, can fit within a modernist, ‘pared-down’ aesthetic and might even be a result of it. There was thus a missed opportunity for continued playing with that relationship between ancient and modern, and what they share in modern practice, which the designer seemed to be enjoying. Instead, we were given a veritable orchestra of brass and horns, being used in a laboured way to deliver over-complicated fanfares and – on occasion – Hollywood-Romantic style ‘doom-laden fantasy backgrounds’. A trumpet for heralds and some strings for intimate music (both called for in the text) would have been enough. They could even have been put amongst the actors on stage. This production didn’t necessarily need a fanfare on the tuba, well-played though it was. (You added a lot, Zands; we’ll definitely keep the percussion).
A grumpy-old-man tone from me is perhaps inevitable given that, to my shame, I’ve read Shakespeare much more than I’ve seen the plays live. So, for instance, I also found myself confused by my fellow audience-members, who laughed in some odd places. Maybe that’s normal, but it seemed odd. For instance, as Sher was coming into Lear’s mad-but-transcendent dignity, wearing a white nightie with flowers on his head, the audience’s response to the line ‘Ay, every inch a king’ was to laugh. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I don’t think that line is actually ironic – or at least the irony is only in the most superficial layer. You could take the view that Lear is raving and thinks he’s still a king and it’s funny because I mean look at him he’s totes lost the game LOL. You could also decide that the line is about his fundamental kingship being unaffected by anything that can be taken away by the daughters or madness or age or his own folly, which is a difficult thing to grasp these days because kingship as understood in Shakespeare’s day isn’t a contemporary concept for us in that sense (I struggle with the history plays for that reason). For me, that line is moving because it shows Lear moving towards a more essential dignity, with ‘every inch’ inviting you to come to terms with his physical existence; this production encouraged me to continue with the ‘stripping away to what is important’ school of reading Lear, despite the audience having the nerve to laugh when I didn’t want them to, damn them… The moment when I really wanted to be alone in the theatre, though, came at the line ‘Come, let’s away to prison’, when I was self-indulgently weeping in my seat. I do not want the loveliest line in Shakespeare, ‘We two will sing like birds in the cage’, to be obscured by laughter… Am I a naive Shakespearean? Probably.
That is the design and the audience done away with. The acting was excellent, Cordelia moving and beautiful, Edmund delivering his lines with terrifying insouciance and contempt. Edgar/Poor Tom was wonderful. The sisters began by holding Cordelia seemingly affectionately and looking nicely discomfited by Lear’s demands in the opening scene. Sadly, the rest of the production did not bear out this early promise of subtlety; I wonder whether they could have been less shouty in their awfulness, whether a more subtle and less indignant persona could have been found, at least in the earlier stages. A vile female character doesn’t have to be a ‘harridan’ of antifeminist stereotype, and there are times when you sympathise with them, early on… Elsewhere, there was a strange nod towards feminism in the form of a cut in one of Lear’s most famous speeches: ‘Her voice was ever soft,/Gentle and low’ – and nothing. Nothing for the rest of the line; perhaps this Lear was ahead of his time and did not think soft speech by default an excellent thing in woman. Given that Shakespeare plans his breaks carefully, and that it’s a very regular, balanced speech, this cut was ill-judged – especially since those highly progressive thoughts about us, ‘But to the girdle do the gods inherit, beneath is all the fiend’s: there’s hell, there’s darkness, there is the sulphurous pit’ were left in in Act 4, Scene 6. So Lear has not quite managed to be reborn as a feminist yet. Keep the line as it is and let him praise his dead daughter for her ‘womanly’ virtues if it makes him happy in his dying moments.
Those moments were beautifully done, with the two raised up on a cart, bathed in white light, a perfect Pietà in reverse. This production reinforced the idea that after all the horrors, this is the one really ‘Christian’ tragedy of Shakespeare; strip away the antique setting, and the good characters have found some essential, transcendent goodness despite (or perhaps because of?) suffering, defeat and death. That final tableau is far more convincing than any talk of flights of angels superseded by drums at the end of Hamlet. It was a moving experience in the ritualistic hollow of the Barbican.