IT’S OK TO LAUGH
Canadian premiere of the ballet Cacti brings ’wonderful, ironical humour,’
It’s not often that a ballet makes people laugh out loud, but that’s what Swedish choreographer Alexander Ekman’s Cacti has been doing since its premiere six years ago.
Cacti was an immediate hit when first performed by Nederlands Dans Theater’s junior company, NDT 2. It’s since been picked up by companies around the world, the latest being our own National Ballet. Cacti is the headline feature of a triple bill opening this week and marks the work’s Canadian premiere.
Interestingly, the fast-rising, 32year-old choreographer says he did not set out to make a funny ballet. He was more concerned with examining the pretensions of critics who claim to see meaning in contemporary dance, even when none exists.
“It came at an early point in my career when I was quite angry with critics,” says Ekman.
It was not just the way they pulled apart his own work that upset Ekman but the pretension of critics in analyzing contemporary dance works that, as Ekman sees it, are too often self-indulgent and vacuous.
It’s unusual for a choreographer to be so critical of his own trade, but Ekman believes contemporary dance is driving potential audiences away by being so self-absorbed and “process oriented.” He admits even he has given up going to see most contemporary dance.
“I believe it’s important to entertain audiences,” say Ekman, who had routine classical training at the Royal Swedish Ballet and was exposed to contemporary dance with NDT 2 and later Sweden’s Cullberg Ballet. “By that I don’t mean necessarily funny or light. But you have to give audiences something that engages and holds their attention. It’s why I always ask myself before starting a new work, ‘Why do we need this piece?’ ”
Ekman’s 30-minute Cacti features an ensemble of 16 dancers and an equal number of low square platforms. These serve variously as restrictive miniature stages, sounding boards and, when upended and rear- ranged, a visually striking set.
First soloist Dylan Tedaldi has never made so much noise onstage.
Compared to the neoclassical style of The Four Temperaments and jazz vibes in “Rubies” — both by George Balanchine and also part of the National Ballet’s mixed program, opening Wednesday — Cacti “is drastically different from the others,” says Tedaldi.
“There’s a quartet of musicians onstage. We play alongside them, hitting ourselves, slapping the floor, creating sound effects with our mouths,” he says.
The movement in Cacti, much of it in unison, covers a physical gamut of fist pounding, flailing arms, running on the spot and evocative gesture. Then there are the actual cacti, one for each dancer, which for safety reasons are artificial.
“I was looking for a random object you can interpret in many ways,” Ekman explains. “A cactus can be mysterious and threatening yet it can store water and produce strange but beautiful flowers.”
The music, made up of excerpts from Joseph Haydn, Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Andy Stein and Gustav Mahler, shifts between the orchestra in its habitual pit to an onstage string quartet that is integral to the action, moving through the piece and improvising along the way.
While it is rare to have musicians onstage, National Ballet music director David Briskin wondered if it was becoming “a new thing” as it also occurred during the National Ballet’s Winter’s Tale in the fall.
“We’re part of the narrative, metaphoric as it is,” says National Ballet Orchestra concertmaster Aaron Schwebel. “It’s a blast being up there onstage for once, getting to see up close what the dancers are doing.”
Beyond the music, there is also a voice-over spoken accompaniment, a kind of running commentary by an anonymous critic that in its flatulent, art-speak way tries to explain what’s going on.
It’s here that Ekman’s intent, to prick the bubble of pretension surrounding much contemporary dance, becomes clear. It’s also hilarious, as too is another spoken section where we get to hear what’s going on in the heads of two dancers as they perform a duet.
Although National Ballet artistic director Karen Kain had heard of Ekman through the ballet grapevine, it was not until Boston Ballet danced the North American premiere of Cacti two years ago that she had a chance to see his work first-hand and decided to introduce him to Canada.
“I was completely taken with it,” says Kain. “It has this strange, ironical humour, very much of today. It’s quite wonderful and indescribable. You just have to see it.”
Cacti is a joint project between the National Ballet, Boston Ballet and Atlanta Ballet. With files from Trish Crawford. Cacti is at the Four Season Centre, 145 Queen St. W., March 9 to 13; national.ballet.ca or 416-345-9595 or 1-866345-9595.