Some works have made not only dance history but also have entered the Western collective unconscious. L’Après-midi d’un faune and Le Sacre du printemps are such works. Choreographed in 1912 and 1913 by Vaslav Nijinsky for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, they revolutionised the way dance was perceived by intellectuals, artists and the broader audience. They made dance modern, glamorous and scandalous. With Sacre, Sasha Waltz & Guests present an evening with modernity as fil rouge. Is it an invitation to question our relationship with this epoch? What does it mean to be modern today?
The evening opens with a reworking for seven dancers of Waltz’s L’Après-midi d’un faune first presented in 2013 in Berlin at the Staatsoper, Schillerstheater. To a symphonic poem (1894) by Claude Debussy, inspired by Stéphane Mallarmé’s symbolist poem (1876), Nijinsky’s ballet caused controversy as it was performed sideways imitating a bas relief and openly depicting sexuality. Waltz’s is less triggering, but not less effective — the vulnerability of naked bodies is gripping. She works with closeup videos of the dancers’ skin to which a soundscape of chirping birds is layered onto Debussy’s music.
The initial blurred bucolic atmosphere is abruptly cut as the lights reveal the naked stage. Still, even with the theatrical apparatus exposed, the dancers (nymphs and fauns) are seen playing catch in the grass in hot summer. In the end, they approach the audience: do they want to include it in their games?
This is followed by Scène d’amour taken from Waltz’s Roméo et Juliette (2007) on music by Hector Berlioz and wonderfully danced by Lorena Justribó Manion (as Juliette) and Joel Suárez Gómez (as Roméo). The dance opens on a bare stage with the two dancers apart, as if sleeping on the floor, forming a diagonal. They then give rise to several lifts in which Justribó Manion, in her long apricot dress, seems to be fluctuating through space sustained by her Romeo in a light grey t-shirt and trousers.
They display the tenderness and passion of a couple newly in love: they play, they run, they twirl, they roll on the floor. Off-balance positions as they fall in each other's arms again and again symbolise trust and complicity of their intimate tenderness. Yet, the happiness is fleeting. She kisses him and leaves. He can but go back to sleep.
The second part of the evening is dedicated to Waltz’s Sacre (2019) with Igor Stravinsky’s music. Highlighted is the tribal aspect of the theme as in Nijinsky’s original that got lost after the riot at its premiere. Waltz’s has some echoes — mostly the division of the group at the beginning — from the reconstruction in 1987 by Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer with the Joffrey Ballet. I might have seen also more trivial references such as Michael Jackson’s hopping zombies with extended arms.
In Sacre’s most famous musical section, Waltz plays with the rhythms having the dancer freeze to rebound in extra quick movements. The movement material varies from abstract to lyric sections always closely knitted to the music: hectic and sharp with moments of fluidity. The dancers wear similar clothing, long dresses and t-shirts with trousers, in different colours giving the impression of variety without being overwhelming. The group dynamics are represented and so are the natural divisions inside the group. A memorable image is a circle formed by the dancers lying on the floor: it becomes a flower in bloom as they reach their hands in the air and come up with the whole torso in a sit-up.
Until the very end it is unclear who is the chosen one. The ambiguous attitude towards the sacrifice is felt by the whole group. It could be anyone, yet it has to be someone. Finally, she is found and clad in burgundy red. The Chosen One, a magnificent Hwanhee Hwang, resists her sort vehemently lunging at the group. She then accepts her fate, strips naked and she dances herself to exhaustion. All along a pointy object — as Damocles’ sword — slowly descends in the middle of the scene until it touches the ground ending the lot of the Chosen One.
To be mentioned is how well the dancers reacted to the false fire alarm that interrupted Sacre. The break lent poignancy and presence to the performance. The evening highlighted yet again Waltz’s attention to the body: the relationship between bodies, the vulnerability of the naked body on stage and its connection with nature. This last, established in the first piece, trickles throughout the evening. Waltz brings contemporary sensibility in these modern classics as she seems to answer to the age old question of our place in the world by saying humanity should not be above nature but is part of it.
