2024, and Tartu is the European Capital of Culture, while the Vanemuine Theatre Ballet Company marks an impressive 85th anniversary, so there’s definitely something to celebrate in Estonia’s second city.
Jevgeni Grib’s Ash White, his first full evening ballet, premiered in October last year and makes a welcome return. It is inspired by E. T. A. Hoffmann's nightmarish tale, The Sandman adapted to suit our times. The dramaturg is Siret Campbell, herself a playwright and director. She has done excellent work in making a coherent plot with good dance and drama opportunities.
The plot centres on the child Aale’s fear of fire and loss. She loses her father in a fire and after falling in love and marrying a fireman, he too dies in the flames. Her fear is no fantasy but the mental trauma it brings threatens to take over her life, as it does to many young people today, bringing Hoffmann’s tale right up to date.
The role of Sandman, a brooding Alain Divoux, is effectively interpreted as the fire itself. This brings good opportunities for the ensemble as flames and firefighters battle. They are present too in the afterlife where the interface between living and dead is porous. Aale is drawn into Sandman’s domain to meet her father and husband, but these are empty spirit-less bodies that cannot comfort her.
Aale is a hugely demanding role both technically, dramatically and in stamina as she rarely leaves the stage. Raminta Rudžionyte-Jordan was convincing throughout, as child, adolescent, lover and widow in a powerful performance. She ends the first act holding her beloved Hendrik’s firefighter’s helmet and stands frozen, slowly tilting it to let a rain of ashes fall as the stage darkens. Her slow entrance in silence in the second act before crumbling into a heap on a stage covered with black ash was painfully potent.
As Hendrik, Gus Upchurch ticked all the right boxes as romantic lover and supportive partner. Maria Engel plays a sympathetic mother who is helpless in the face of Aale’s mental distress. Father, Alexander Germain Drew, is also a compassionate figure, despite wearing a frankly ridiculous top hat. Aale’s friends, Selma Strandberg and William Halton join to make a neat quartet, given light-hearted playful choreography in the first act and, after Henrik’s death, a more dramatic trio as they attempt to comfort the deeply disturbed Aale. There is little that friends and mother can do to draw her back to her former confident self and Grib gives powerful expressive choreography to Rudžionyte-Jordan as she struggles through the darkness. The final moments bring hope. To the clear, high voice of Pauline Vähi singing In the Bleak Midwinter she stands as white snow falls on the dark stage.
Choreographer Jevgeni Grib, himself a principal dancer with the Estonian National Ballet, has structured the two acts well, pacing the drama and using the company of very competent dancers to good effect. The style is contemporary ballet and with good use of the floor and athletic male virtuosity, especially in the fight scenes. Most importantly it served its purpose in telling the story. There was a good deal of interesting partnering favouring high lifts executed with confidence and flair.
The Vanemuine Symphony Orchestra, was conducted by Martin Sildos to an arrangement of excerpts from Gustav Holst's The Planets and Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations. While the music is a little problematic for an English listener as it stirs forceful images and memories of period and place, I suspect this problem would not arise for the audience of predominantly Estonians.