LIFE IN PROGRESS · 29/05/2015 

SYLVIE GUILLEM (Akram Kahn, Russell Maliphant, William Forsythe & Mats Ek)

In November 2014 Sylvie Guillem announced her retirement form stages. this news struck the dancing community but at least she got together four of the most influential contemporary choreographers to come up with a way to properly say goodbye to her audience.

Sylvie Guillem is one of the most important ballet dancers of this century and part of the previous one. It's not hard to see that she was first trained as a gymnast in her early years, given her physical features and skills. Her mum instructed her in that discipline and it wasn't until she had the chance to participate in a training exchange, where ballet and gymnastic students were invited to try the other techniques that she had her first contact with classical ballet. At first she disliked the experience but it was when she jumped on stage for the first time that her opinion drastically changed, she felt so comfortable and enjoyed it so much that she decided to stay at the Paris Opera Ballet School where Claude Bessy soon noticed her potential and at age 16 she offered Guillem a place at the corp de ballet at the Paris Opera.

With the Paris Opera Ballet, image by Sipe Press/REX

Guillem is well-known for her stubborn character which made her collide in opinion with Rudolf Nureyev, choreographer at the Paris Opera at the time, and so she shortly decided to move to London to dance as a guest principal at the Royal Ballet. Her career hasn't been only going in the path of classical ballet but she has also explored other dancing styles and disciplines. She has worked with many contemporary choreographers, whom I presume have been delighted to have been able to exploit Guillem's skills and features.

Life in Progress is a big goodbye to her audience, who where not so concerned about the choreographies, music or settings but rather about seeing her in action for the last time. This multiple bill is composed of four parts of which Guillem dances three. The last piece of the four really felt as a farewell, it was choreographed by Mats Ek, director of the Netherlands Ballet, for her in 2011, which makes me think Guillem had been thinking about her retirement ever since. 

Bye, by Mats Ek, image by Tristam Kenton

The piece has the charm of Ek's style aswell as clearly portraying a middle-aged woman looking back into her past in a healthy nostalgia. It was easy to understand and it even made the audience laugh and smile at certain moments. She felt the closet to the audience in this piece, it felt like we were saying our farewells as we would have to a friend. The set was simple, a vertical screen in the middle of the stage that would act both as a mirror to look into her image and her memories and a door through where her loved ones would call her with them. The music was extremely moving and I think it suited not only the choreography but also the moment and the topic.

Techne, by Akram Kahn, image by Bill Cooper

In my opinion, and only in my opinion, the other pieces didn't appeal to me that much, still people applauded her with all her might, and so did I, for regardless of her age or her health complaints, she was still in full shape and she performed beautifully. She has an innate elegance and I just regret not having seen her dance earlier.

We all hope she doesn't abandon the dance world and that her charity duties still allow her to delight us with her genius and her strong character, one way or another, from a different position to the one she has been holding till the moment of her retirement, maybe as a director of a ballet company or a school.

AFTERNOON OF A FAUN · 30/05/2015 

JEROME ROBBINS

When I first saw on the Royal Opera House's program that they were going to stage Afternoon of a Faun I thought I shouldn't miss the chance to see it. I knew it was a revival of Nijinsky's original ballet for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, but I didn't realise it was a Jerome Robbin's choreography. Some of you will know straight away who I'm talking about, some of you won't but I'm pretty sure you will as soon as I tell you that he was the choreographer for many popular Hollywood musical films such as West Side Story or Peter Pan. 

Jerome Robbins rehearsing for West Side Story

Robbins was a theatre producer and a choreographer who worked mostly for the industry in Broadway, but who occasionally produced and supervised musical films and TV programs. He was ballet master at the New York City Ballet when he produced this choreography to Claude Debussy's score Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune based on a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé. This ballet was first created by Vaslav Nijisnky in 1912, again with Debussy's score which inspired a drowsy atmosphere that was the general feel given in both Nijinsky's and Jerome's versions. 

Nijinsky's Afternoon of a Faun, Image by Drew Milne 

The settings in both ballets do change a lot though, while Nijisnky's version is a more literal one, picturing an actual faun, played by himself, seducing a nymph; Robbin's version takes us to a more realistic set where he presents us with a male dancer lying on the floor, later joined by a female dancer in a three walled studio, where the third wall is the mirror through which the audience seems to be beholding the scene.

Muntagirov and Hamilton, image by Emma Kauldhar

Robbin's ballet was premièred in 1953 and the set and costumes were designed by Jean Rosenthal and Irene Sharaff respectively. I was glad to see that the Royal Ballet had stayed faithful to these original designs from that time, therefore we were able to enjoy this beautiful choreography as those who had the chance to see it on it's first staging.

Muntagirov and Hamilton, image by Emma Kauldhar

Vadim Muntaguirov and Melissa Hamilton danced beautifully with an extremely polished technique that brought nothing but purity to the stage, it all felt so ethereal despite being set in such a earthly scenario, probably unlike Nijinsky's version, which in spite of having a mythological background was way less spiritual. The soothing music, the smooth mid-day lighting and the unblemished set design along with the immaculate performances of these two very talented dancers took the audience to the neatest production imaginable. It only lasted for 11 minutes but it was the absolute star show of the triple bill that night.