Mats Ek & Norrdans - Three-fold Celebration for Swedish Dance

On 20 May, 2015, Stockholm’s Dansens Hus hosted a special triple bill entitled Mats Ek & Norrdans. The programme was created on the occasion of several jubilees in the Swedish dance world: Mats Ek has celebrated his seventieth birthday this year, his principal dancer and wife Ana Laguna her sixtieth birthday and Northern Swedish company Norrdans is remembering two decades of its existence. The first part of the evening belonged entirely to Norrdans, a professional company focusing on contemporary dance, which aims at spreading the dance awareness in Swedish regions, mainly thanks to its top dance repertoire by acclaimed foreign choreographers. The ensemble is international, in eight dancers there are no Swedish but two Czech artists: Anna Jirmanová and Tomáš Červinka. It is necessary to add that the well-known Czech choreographer Lenka Vagnerová is currently cooperating with Norrdans as its “rehearsal director”. The company presented a  fifty-minute choreography Black Fairytale #2 by the famous Danish-Israeli duo Yossi Berg and Oded Graf. The Czech audience had the opportunity to see their work at the Dance Prague festival 2012 where they introduced an elemental choreography Animal Lost. The serio-comic and almost surreal choreography was inspired by the fairy-tale world – a starting point which opened the door to the desire for an ideal, utopic world. The dreamy structure of the piece created a mosaic of seemingly unrelated scenes, in which eight performers were dancing, singing and talking. In the opening scene, the dancers were standing clustered downstage, enthusiastically addressing the audience with questions such as: “Do you believe in love? What do you dream about? Do you want to live happily ever after?” etc. This positive, almost naïve atmosphere was not to last long as it quickly gave way to more serious topics. Fanny Barrouquére told a breath-taking story about an imaginary “journey to Jerusalem” and how evil, bloodthirsty and revengeful people are on both sides (Jewish as well as Arabic). All along her monologue, she remained dependent on her partner who was holding the microphone and at the same time manipulating the dancer herself. The motif of manipulation appeared later on in a scene where one of the performers almost tortured his fellow-dancer, forcing him to answer “Yes” to all his questions, regardless of what his opinion really was. Such a dialogue resulted in a very disconcerting confession.  The piece was full of questions, something the authors aimed for – they saw it as the only way to make the audience reflect upon the topics mentioned. Fear was also one of the strong motifs –  for instance in a scene showing a bizarre, apparently dangerous creature (a dancer hidden in a folding tent) that was threatening everyone – the theme of omnipresent war was implemented in many passages of the piece, either in the form of hints or expressed explicitly through combats or texts. The group dance sequences were very physical: quite early in the choreography, all the performers took off their clothes and remained just in their underwear, letting their natural instincts come to the surface. The dance featured more and more animalistic movements, the “undressing” scene, in which the clothes were cast up and hanged on the other performers, looked downright ecstatic. The dancers faced up very well to the challenging choreography, including also spoken word, and they mesmerized the audience with perfect unison and mutual connection. While the first part of the choreography consisted of a series of diverse scenes and its pace was very fast, the other one looked completely different – it seemed like two distinct works, be it just for the music accompaniment. In the first half of the piece, the music was formed by a collage of songs and sounds, the other half brought Maurice Ravel’s Bolero in its full length. The dancers duct taped their tracks on the floor and one by one made their ways, strange and sinuous, to the above-mentioned tent. Every time they reached the tent, they dived into it and remerged with some “fairy-tale” prop: a crown, red cloak, shoe, long nose, broom etc. The monotonous marching rhythm did not change, not even with the gradation of the music, the stage just got filled with more and more props. An interesting idea but, compared to the first part, too lengthy, expectable, with little action.  Melancholy under the surface The after-break performance provided an apt fusion of both honorees: Mats Ek’s choreography Dans m m/Pas deDanse was performed by Tomáš Červinka, Anna Jirmanová, Javier Perez and Leila Verlinden. This short quartet did not tell any particular story, but the steps perfectly embodied the music. The author of the accompaniment, composer Benny Andersson, was strongly inspired by Swedish folk music – its characteristic melody and rhythm really suits Ek’s choreographic style. The work evolved from a “solo with a handkerchief” dance by Tomáš Červinka, through his duet with Leila Verlinden, to a more complex composition relating all the four dancers. The movement sequences conveyed the choreographer’s original style: large steps and deep positions of legs with the knees bent, arms and legs thrown upwards or to the sides, forward movements of the head and flexed feet, folk dance motifs combined with classical ballet lines and jumps. It did not lack everyday-life gestures and a touch of deadpan humour, as in the “solo with a handkerchief” where the man is wiping his nose on his sleeve until he finds a handkerchief. The costumes were also characteristic: simply-cut dresses and suits in blue and grey undertones. The whole piece resembled a picture from the country where a few characters’ paths intersected and finally they met up at a village feast. Everything gives the impression of joy and lightness, but under the surface we can feel the melancholy, anticipation of problems and sorrow. Though this piece was created in 1990, the music and choreography are truly timeless, comprehensible and fascinating up to these days. Sylvie Guillem’s farewell 

The diverse programme was completed by a twenty-minute dance film called Ajö/Bye from 2012. The author of the choreography, Mats Ek, made the piece on the legendary French dancer Sylvie Guillem and their cooperation has lasted for m any years. Bye is a symbolical farewell and recapitulation: Sylvie Guillem also celebrates an important jubilee – this February she turned fifty and these days she is bidding farewell to her active dancing career at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London. The dancer first appears on a small screen in the middle of the stage, but soon steps out of it and plays for a while with video shots and movement on stage. She is wearing an ordinary skirt, blouse and sweater in yellow and purple, her hair tied in a simple braid. Initially, her moves are simple and casual, yet her ballet history finds its way as well. But the classical steps, for example grand jeté, occur just for a moment and are quickly replaced by some stooped position or a fall. At any rate, the audience must notice Guillem’s perfect, classically trained body. The fast-paced variation is altered by a much slower sequence on the floor, which is see n by the camera from above and projected on the screen where Sylvie’s picture is joined by some other people, looking for her….. and she comes back to them, creeps into the projection and they all leave discreetly. The tempo of the choreography was determined by Ludwig von Beethoven’s sonata Arietta which imbued the piece with optimism and pleasant spirits. So the farewell did not feel so sad. Axe-chops straight to the heart The evening culminated with Ek’s piece YXA (Axe) choreographed as an homage to his long-time muse Ana Laguna. YXA is a moving duet of an elderly couple who try to find a way to each other’s heart after many years of living together. The first what we can hear are boxy strokes. When the curtain goes up, we can see the source of the sounds – an old man (Yvan Auzely) is chopping the wood in the centre of the stage. He has two piles behind him – one with wood chunks to be chopped, the other with neat logs; and he is interested in nothing else. His monotonous yet skilful work is hypnotising enough to captivate the audience during the first minutes. And then, Ana Laguna comes hopping on stage and at first sight she resembles a clumsy puppet. She tries to gain her husband’s attention by dancing and physical contact but he is wholly absorbed in wood-chopping – her attempts at hugging are rejected again and again. She starts taking the logs from him, but her husband always grabs a new one – as if each chop went straight to her heart. The wife’s last possibility is to get hold of the axe and she succeeds as her husband notices her at last.  Yet getting closer to each other is still difficult. Tomaso Albinoni’s suggestive music – the famous Adagio g moll – completes the desperation and sorrow of a woman who longs to get closer to a man. Laguna’s dancing is surprisingly swift: high leg positions, rolling on the floor and small lifts. Yet a much important role is assumed by the expression and gestures that make the choreography look realistic: she is sad and pleading, he is relentless and tough. YXA confirmed once again that Ek is a master of expressing deep emotions in his own crude but convincing way. Moreover – to see Ana Laguna and Yvan Auzely on stage was a truly unforgettable experience.

Written from the performance held on 20 May 2015 at Dansens Hus in Stockholm. Sweden. Black Fairytale #2 Choreography: Yossi Berg & Oded Graf
Lighting design: Omar Sheizaf
Costumes: Mona Schmidt a Ilanti Shamia
Premiere: 2012 Dans m m/Pas de Danse Choreography: Mats Ek
Rehearsal direction: Pompea Santoro
Music: Benny Andersson
Lighting design: Jörgen Jansson
Costumes: Peder Freiij
Premiere: 1990 Ajö/Bye (film, 2012) Choreography and direction: Mats Ek
Music: Ludwig van Beethoven – Piano sonata, Arietta, op. 111
Piano: Ivo Pogorelich
Production: Gunilla Wallin
Sets and costumes: Katrin Brännström
Lighting design: Erik Berglund
Camera: Razmond Wemmenlöv a Andreas Söderberg YXA Choreography: Mats EkMusic: Tomaso Albinoni – Adagio g moll nahrané Fläskkvartetten
Sets and costumes: Katrin Brännström
Lighting design: Jörgen Jansson Premiere: 20 May 2015 Translation: Tereza Cigánková