Ballet Review: An audiovisual ballet performance masterclass

★★★★★★

Jessica Cavallaro

I show my ticket and am brought to a room that seems to be part of the costumes and set design space.

We are then led to a service elevator; there are about 100 of us in it.

I see a woman wearing ballet slippers and some sweats in the elevator and I think: “Hm. That’s strange and interesting!” But I don’t think too much about it.

Space
We then all walk into this large open room with white floors and gray walls and no seating. Most people look around trying to decide what to do.

Should I sit? Should I stand? Should we all form a circle?

It was unclear to everyone, so some stood and some sat and naturally we all formed a circle-like shape with a few outliers.

Body
Then, all of a sudden, some of the audience members took their shoes off and revealed their ballet slippers, making it obvious that the woman I saw in the elevator was, in fact, one of the performers. They all started doing stretches and individual poses.

The crowd still did not know how to approach this. I personally did not know how interactive and intimate the performance was going to be.

With that being said, I absolutely loved it.  While the six dancers were performing the piece, the set was constantly changing around us.  The performers were interacting with each other in pairs and would then join together as a unit of six, only to then separate within the crowd.

Image
The dancers were all extremely well trained and in sync throughout the 90-minute performance.  About halfway through, images and videos started being projected onto the bare, white walls.

Including abstract images and more concrete ballet images, the visuals really added to the performance.

Sound
Ex-Sonic Youth-bassist Kim Gordon provided all of the audio for the piece.  Mixed with whispers of “come here” and a music box displayed within the floor of the performance space, the audio enhanced the entire performance.

The performance was part of the CPH:DOX festival, showing an “intersection between body, scenography, space, image and sound. The performance examines the boundaries and hierarchies between the spheres of the real and the virtual, which are normally taken for granted.”

The mix of all of the different performance aspects truly made for an amazing dance piece.

Even though this performance is not running, this new audiovisual ballet genre is one to definitely keep an eye out for.

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