Izadora Weiss is an experienced choreographer who developed her craft initially under the guidance of Jiří Kylián and has subsequently evolved her own distinctive movement language over the past 30 years. The bulk of her fascinating repertoire came when artistic director at Baltic Dance Theatre, based in Gdańsk, creating fifteen works in her eight-year tenure. When the opera house moved to purely classical ballet, Weiss transferred to Warsaw to head a short-lived company, keeping the same initials, Biały Dance Theatre, although lack of funding brought that to a premature end.
Step forward Krzysztof Pastor, Polish National Ballet’s director, who has now commissioned three works from Weiss, the latest of which is Urojenia (Delusions), a two-act ballet that contrasts Roksana’s fictional story with a narrative based on the life of Virginia Woolf. The juxtaposition of these two very different acts is thematically combined in an expression of women’s right to independence.
In this work, the choreographer’s art imitates her life, since Weiss has, as Pastor writes in the programme ‘struggled to secure her rightful place on the Polish choreographic scene’. I would go further and say that the consistent excellence of her work deserves much broader international recognition. She is one of those rare choreographers whose unique style of twisting and stretching classical ballet is immediately recognisable.
In any work by Weiss, one can also expect spectacular imagery and great music and Delusions delivers on both counts. The first act opens with Roksana (Yana Shtanhei) and Roger (Vladimir Yaroshenko) asleep, cuddling on a bed of purple petals that are later swept around by their feet, first in Shtanhei’s solo, danced to Karol Szymanowski’s Pieśń Roksany (Roksana’s song), which is clearly the hook for Weiss’ inspiration; and then in a romantic duet with Yaroshenko to the adagio in Beethoven’s String Quartet in F major. Shtanhei’s yellow dress provides an impactful colour contrast with the purple petals and green carpet.
Shtanhei is virtually ever-present in Roksana’s story, which suggests a woman driven by the need to please others through social media, represented by a corps of people, moving organically and in close harmony who appear from the darkened backstage like an opera chorus. Despite that romantic beginning, Roksana is attracted to another man, identified as Shepherd (Nikodem Bialik) wearing just white trousers. Their duet is more urgent and physical, with strong lifts, danced to more contemporary, but nonetheless still very lyrical, music. The act closes where it began with another impassioned solo by Shtanhei to a repeat of Szymanowski’s Pieśń Roksany.
Virginia’s story opened with a flavour of 1930’s London, in a scene that seemed straight from the pages of Mrs Dalloway. Men and women moved frenetically, the former in bowler hats and all wearing drab raincoats. The only things missing for authenticity were the rain and the women’s hats! Video projections (by Bartek Macias and Stanisław Zaleski), which had featured abstract interpretations of waves in Roksana’s story, switched to blurry images of city life.
A red GPO telephone box stood on the right of the stage, and Daria Majewska stepped out of it, as Virginia Woolf, beginning a whistlestop interpretation of the author’s life in 40 minutes of dance. Yaroshenko returned as husband, Leonard, trying and failing to provide stability in their quirky domestic life; and Shtanhei also returned as Vita, Virginia’s lover. Their duet was sensuously choreographed and beautifully performed. There is always a touch of humour in Weiss’ work and here it came through two maids (Magda Studińska and Eugénie Hecquet), admonished for their titillating gossip about the queerness of their mistress’s relationship with Vita.
Bialik also returned from the first act, performing as Lytton – Weiss eschews surnames in her cast sheet for this biographical narrative – and the core members of the Bloomsbury Set are completed by Eliza Walaszczyk as Virginia’s sister, Vanessa; Adam Huczka as the painter, Duncan; and Ivan Pal as Lytton’s companion, Ralph.
Despite this larger cast, including an excellent corps of thirteen and the medical staff trying to heal Virginia’s mental health (Cormac McDonald as the Doctor, assisted by Cezary Wasik), the act belongs to Majewska, who gave a towering performance as the anguished author, dressed in blue. Key references to aspects of Woolf’s later story included the foreboding presence of the stones that weighed her body down on that suicidal walk into the river; and the last letter to her husband with its coruscating use of words. However, Weiss stops short of making the ballet too literal, allowing her unique movement style to lead.
It takes courage to create a full-length ballet by telling two different women’s stories, one fictional, the other real; one largely abstract, the other biographical. Weiss designed her own sets and armed with her strong design sensibility and musical intelligence she has achieved another significant success. Pastor also wrote in his introduction to the programme, ‘her work is well worth discovering and showcasing to a wider audience’. As a convert from long ago, I wholeheartedly agree!
