Tue Biering, Marie Rosendahl Chemnitz
and Corpus:
”Sleeping Beauty Must Die”
A-Salen
Royal Theatre
October 28, 2016
The day before Royal Danish Ballet out roll a new and fairly traditional production of “Giselle” with all the trimmings, the in-house company Corpus do their best – or worse – in an attempt to kill “Sleeping Beauty”.
It is not a pretty sight, nor was it meant to be. A production that achieved very little in the core disciplines of ballet, theatre, entertainment or provocation.
The In-house company Corpus has recently has not only been prolonged, but also elevated to be an independent company with fulltime leadership by Tim Matiakis and a staff of six dancers and their own stage.
In so far four seasons Corpus has with very little resources and time, managed to produce the outstanding “I Føling”, a ballet about War Veterans, a series of “PopUps”, where members of the RDB curates and/or show their own choreography and a number of ballets creates by company members, often in collaboration with experienced alternative artists. It is a company that certainly do not aim to please. Corpus tries to break the boundaries of what ballet can be. In all, a few big successes, some interesting attempts and some productions who has failed big time.
This time around, Corpus has cooperated with Tue Biering, one of the enfant terrible’s of the Danish scene. Biering is the man who creates ”Pretty Woman” with real life prostitutes, and take the almost 200 year old national treasure “Elverhøj” to Bangladesh. However, killing “Sleeping Beauty” do not become another notch in reinventing an old classic. It fell flats on its face, and come over more like a high school drama class.
They are actually many examples on clever reinventing of classical concept by modern choreographers like Mark Morris´ “The Hard Nut” and Akram Khan and Mat Ek’s reinterpretations of ”Giselle”.
Where this production fails miserable is primarily the lack of any form of choreography. There are some humor and some pointers, but save the garland waltz and the Lilac fairy, danced and performed by the absolutely charming Eliabe D´Abadia, who really knows his Vaganova, this goes nowhere as dancing or entertainment.
The rest of the evening remains on the level of an in-house staff revue. We do get the point of “Sleeping Beauty” not being than fun to participate in for the corps de ballet. There is more talking than dancing and wrapping Principal Dancer, Susanne Grinder in cling film and disposing her in a deep freezer for her 100 years sleep is just one of many attempted jokes that does not really work.
It will be interesting to see what Corpus can achieve with more focus and resources. I hope that the focus will be on creating good choreography. There is a modern dance environment in Denmark who creates interesting concepts and choreography. Moving the focus from tearing down the classical tradition to real inventive choreography would be a route to identity, audience and success.
Photo by Camilla Winter:
Eliabe D'Abadia (Copyright(c) Corpus)
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