San Francisco Ballet’s appearance at this year’s Edinburgh Festival was much anticipated. America’s oldest dance company was making its first visit in over twenty years, now under their (relatively new) Artistic Director Tamara Rojo, late of English National Ballet and hugely popular on her former home turf. Mere Mortals was Rojo’s first commission for the company and, in 2024, the first full-length commission from a female choreographer. The Edinburgh date was its European premiere and put Canadian choreographer Aszure Barton – still perhaps better known on the other side of the pond despite a glowing track record – in the spotlight.
There’s also (in the UK at least) a fashion for rehabilitating mythical female characters after aeons of blame – think Emily Wilson’s objection to the ‘slut-shaming’ of Helen of Troy with reference to The Odyssey. So, what to do about the girl who famously let loose all the sorrows of the world on mankind? As a quick recap, Pandora, the first woman created by the gods, was given a jar (not a box) and told never to open it, but when curiosity inevitably got the better of her, she unleashed evil and misery upon the world. Just like Eve and that pesky snake-apple encounter.
However, there’s a longer backstory: Zeus created Pandora as his instrument of revenge on mankind for Prometheus stealing fire from the gods. He then married her to Prometheus’ brother Epimetheus, setting the inevitable tragedy in train. But Barton, like any good creative, knows the drill: do your research, then throw most of its detail away and do your own thing. So although a brief knowledge of all this at least helped to identify the bodies on stage, any expectation of narrative had to be left at the door.
Like her compatriot Crystal Pite, Barton is a whizz at managing crowds on stage. The opening scenes, with everyone in slightly threatening black, had the corps swarming about the stage, moving as one in lines of spot-on gestures. Sins waiting to be released? Humanity before the Fall? Two men in black skirts and cloaks straight out of a Sci-fi movie wrangled with each other in brotherly fashion.
An impossibly pliant Jennifer Stahl, lithe and sleek in skin-tight black body suit and almost spider-like in her bending and stretched extensions, took centre stage. A pas de deux followed (with her husband?), Pandora still innocent and playfully foal-like, then exits and entrances: she confronted images coming at her out of nowhere until in the end she was near collapse. And then suddenly everyone was in gold – because when all the evils had been released, what remained in the jar was…hope.
With its dazzle of exploding background (thank you, Hamill Industries) and breathtaking electronic music/soundscape from Sam Shepherd (aka Floating Points) fighting it out with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra playing live, Mere Mortals was truly an onslaught on the senses. The ending was enigmatic and unexpected, the audience unsure if that was, in fact, the end – and already lamenting its all-too-brief stay. It was only 70 minutes but I wouldn’t have missed a second.
