"Uropa"
A coproduction by Corpus and Sort/Hvid
By Christian Lollike, Esther Lee Wilkinson, Tim Matiakis and the participants
Royal Theatre Asalen
January 29, 2016
The cooperation of dramatist/director Christian Lollike and Corpus two years ago resulted in the very successful “I Føling”, a ballet on the Danish soldiers, scarred by war. It proved that ballet could be a media for current issues.
Ii is therefore understandable that the trio tried to go down the same route again. This time focusing on asylum seekers and, as in “I Føling” bring the people involved on stage. Unfortunately, the miracle did not happen twice.
Denmark has gained international media attention for making life harder for asylum seekers. A law was passed last week making asylum seeker wait up until three year before they can get their families to Denmark, and if they should bring money and/or valuables with them, it can be confiscated as part of the payment for their stay. The exercise is part of a strategy to change the picture of Denmark as a heaven for real and bogus asylum seekers.
“Uropa” focuses more on the asylum seekers background than on their experiences in Denmark, even though the cast was reduced during rehearsals as three of the cast members was denied asylum in Denmark.
There are some scenes that works very well, for instance a scene illustrating the hesitance of European States on opening the gates, as there is limits for how large an intake each country can handle. Whom do we accept and whom do we leave out? There is also a scene illustrating torture. One of the asylums seekers is standing on a table and pushed repeatedly over the edge by a dancer on the table and catched by another.
The RDB dancers involved takes on the roles as sprectstallmeisters, chorus girls and waiters. They do very little that would be described as choreography. The asylums seekers is telling their stories, or rapping it as one girl does. They are a brave lot, but very little goes beyond what would happen in an amateur workshop. Where “In Føling” could present interesting choreography pairing ballerinas with double amputees, nothing presented here could create a dance movement.
Yes, there was strengths in the personal stories, but also a lot of indignation. Much of the scene time was given to the two asylum seekers, who had to leave their home countries due to their homosexuality. The four others hardly got a word in.
During the performance, we got rap, menuette in rococo costumes, and the cast in the twelve worst costumes in the RDB collection, audience involvement, disco dancing, but very little that would qualify as dance.
Unfortunately, this production is yet another Corpus production not delivering the goods. Over the last year, Corpus has presented very little homegrown choreography and even when inviting guest choreographers struggled to reach an acceptable artistic quality. The RDB itself also have a poor track record in producing new good choreography. It has been such a pleasure to see “I Føling” and the very good choreography done by RDB dancers Gregory Dean and Oliver Starpov outside Corpus. Therefore, it can be done. I do understand that Corpus works on limited resources and limited time, but it does look like that the Corpus leadership is moving the focus from choreography to alternative expression forms and that open the question on whether this is the right format for developing new choreography for the Royal Danish Ballet.
Photo by Søren Solkær (copyright (c) Corpus
Comments