Sebastian Kloborg:
NOSTOS
Corpus
October 7, 2017
The Underground Carpark
The Drama House
What do you do when you are invited to create a ballet for a company of only six dancers and with limited resources? Well, if you are choreographer and former RDB soloist, Sebastian Kloborg, you chose to go as big as possible.
Instead of using the studio scene Asalen, the home base of Corpus, you asks for the biggest space available, the giant parking house build beside the Royal Theatre Drama House. You also ask for seven new AUDI 5 cars and you ask for 1, 3 kilometer of plastic to dress the parking house and for volunteers to hang it.
Well, Sebastian Kloborg must have persuasive powers, because somehow Corpus managed to supply all of his demands. However, not without some trouble. The culture editors in the Danish press hit on the AUDI component, stating the RDB should not function as a marketing tool for a commercial venture. The editors accepts that the Royal Theatre has commercial sponsors, but they should not gain exposure in the actual productions.
The Classical Journey
Sebastian Kloborg also chosed to link his creation to one of the greatest story ever told, The Odyssey. The first image the audience meet is a serene woman, dressed in an impressive costume consisting of plastic moving slowly down the large carpark towards one of the AUDI’s. When reaching it she will crawl over it and continue her walk. This is actually, what she does for the less of an hour the ballet runs. She can be a siren or another of the Odyssey´s female characters. There are other elements in the performance, which may point to the classic. However, a clear narrative does not manifests itself.
What seems to be Kloborg’s goal is to create space and mystery. There is but little focus on the dancing. The cast spends more time pushing the cars than doing anything that could be labelled as dancing. At the end, the audience is collected and placed lying down in front of one of the cars. One could conclude that we, the audience, were the reel protagonists all along.
Interesting conclusion, but where do that leave the Corpus dancers? The cast was reduced to five instead of six dancers due to an injury. The missing dancer may have had more interesting choreography, but probably not been the game changer.
For such a small company, losing one dancer means losing 16, 6 % of the force. Corpus ballets tends to be on the short side, and with such a small number of dancers, it is difficult to see them reach a sustainable level. The ticket price is low, the bar is cheap, so everything depends on what RDB can offer and on whether sponsors can continue to be found.
Tim Matiakis has pronounced that Corpus will present productions, which will target the real issues of the times. It can be discussed whether NOSTOS suits that strategy.
Having seen several of Sebastian Kloborg’s works, it is easy to conclude that he does not follow a pattern or a pre-defined style. He is very much his own man. Earlier one of the strongest dramatic dancers in RDB, the theatricality comes easy to him, however, I have not yet seen him follow a narrative.
On Facebook, Tim Matiakis ask the potential audience to get in touch. Following the premiere of NOSTROS, the audience were invited to drinks and a talk. I am not sure whether dialog can help Corpus to a secure future. What is needed is to take the first step and show their hands. What is their own contribution, what is their own definition of good contemporary dance, and how and where will they meet an audience? Should they tour rather than focus on a Copenhagen audience? Should they build a repertoire instead of constantly creating small, fast scale productions?
As it is, Corpus remains the poor cousin of RDB. Their longtime future is depending on whether they can find an audience and some good sponsorships. NOSTROS as a work is good copy as the mix of ballet and cars is good press. However, as an advocate for contemporary choreography it did came short.
Photos by Camilla Winther (Copyright(c) Corpus)
Comments