A new work by Kim Brandstrup in a double bill with Minotaur
Kim Brandstrup- choreographer
Justin Nardella – set and costume design
Chris Wilkinson – Lighting Design
Ellon Morris – Sound design and pecussionist
Bath Ustinov Studio
Tuesday 6th February 2024, 19.30
CAST – Minotaur
Matthew Ball
Tommy Franzen
Kristin McNally
CAST – Metamorphoses
Matthew Ball
Alina Cojocaru
I don’t know what the thing is withthe Ustinov. It’s tiny. It originates great productions, it gets the very best people playing to an audience just into three figures. Dominic West is there next month in A View From The Bridge. We couldn’t get tickets. It sold out in 40 minutes so it’s not even in the Season Brochure. This ballet has the best in the country.
From the Bath website:
Minotaur recounts the story of Ariadne, her love of Theseus, the death of her brother the Minotaur and her abandonment by her lover. In the depth of her despair the gods intervene and Dionysus carries her away to otherworldly safety and bliss.
In Apuleius’ Metamorphosis Psyche is allowed to meet her lover, Cupid, only in the dark. In three nocturnal encounters they circle each other in the dreamlike shelter of darkness – but ultimately have to face the light – and each other.
Those synopses will do me. There are much longer detailed ones in the programme as well as erudite essays on the myths by Marina Warner. There are two thirty minute pieces and an interval, and they are different tales. I have edited a graded reader on Theseus and The Minotaur, but I lack the capacity to read what the story is in ballet that closely, I let it wash over me. I did note that the programme section on The Minotaur says ‘the creature is absent. Almost a ghost’ but we start with a title COMBAT and Tommy Franzen is waving a bull’s head in front of himself in a balletic fight with Theseus. I thought myself that was the creature, the Minotaur. Titles were used between sections in both pieces.
In the 1970s we were great fans of the London Contemporary Dance Theatre, and this has echoes – climbing walls with barely visible protruding bricks, strobe lighting in the second. The Ustinov has the stage at full extension so it is about half of this tiny studio theatre. Everyone is really close to the dance, and I think the music was using something like surround Dolby Atmos in the way it embraced you. I remember when Bournemouth Art College persuaded four dancers from the London Contemporary company to come down and give a performance on a small stage. This was similar in intimacy.
Both pieces have five or six pieces of hypnotic music, and a slow lithe pace. The music was so hypnotic as to be almost soporific in the first part. However, the use of the walls was incredible. Tommy Franzen was like Spider Man,. gripping the walls, but dancing at the same time.
In the second piece, the interactive movement was stunning as Alina Cojocaru seemed to spend half the piece suspended in the air on Matthew Ball’s arms. I thought it was good. Karen who has bits of paper for dance said it was as good as you can possibly get.
It is a short powerful evening – many companies would have added another interval and a third piece. Still, never mind the width, feel the quality. I don’t have the vocabulary or dance knowledge to judge. However, it is different in its sustained pace. The dancing is sublime.
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