Translating brush strokes into footwork
Canadian choreographer celebrates Dutch masterwork with onstage interpretation
One of 16th-century Europe’s most mesmerizing and fantastical paintings is coming to life on the stage of Toronto’s Bluma Appel Theatre, thanks to the imaginative genius of Canadian choreographer Marie Chouinard.
Titled Hieronymus Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights, Chouinard’s new work, given its premiere in the Netherlands in August 2016, is a celebration of the Dutch artist’s most famous painting, housed at the Prado Museum in Madrid.
It’s an exuberant, highly theatrical dance that evokes in movement the contrasting human emotions, deep desires and existential fears Bosch captured in paint.
Unusually for the Montreal-based choreographer, the impetus for the new work did not come from Chouinard herself. The year 2016 marked the 500th anniversary of Hieronymus Bosch’s death and, to mark the occasion, she was invited to make a theatrical dance work inspired by the artist’s paintings, to be performed in his birthplace, ’s-Hertogenbosch, or “Den Bosch” as it’s often called.
When it comes to fantastic imagery, Chouinard and Bosch are a match, so it was hardly strange that the Jheronimus Bosch 500 Foundation approached the world-renowned choreographer.
“I was a little surprised but also pleased,” says Chouinard on the phone from Monaco, where at the end of the month she will unveil a new piece for Les Ballets de MonteCarlo, one of the many major international troupes that perform her work. “It took me a month to decide before I settled on The Garden of Earthly Delights.”
Chouinard visited the Prado to see the original and studied other painters of the period.
“You look at it and the spirit is so modern. You see how clever Bosch was, how generous and compassionate in spirit, how very close to understanding of the soul.”
Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights is actually three paintings in one, an oils-on-oak triptych composed of a square central panel and rectangular panels on either side, measuring in total 220 by 390 centimetres. The side panels are hinged. When closed they reveal an image of the world during its biblical creation. Art scholars estimate that it comes from the early 1500s; they still argue its meaning.
The left panel is conventionally considered to depict God presenting Eve to Adam. The right panel is a dark, gruesome and nightmarish hellscape. The central panel is more puzzling; naked figures seemingly frolicking in a surreal landscape also populated by a variety of mammals and fish. The symbolism, assuming it exists, is complex and enigmatic.
As preface to her 75-minute dance, Chouinard writes: “Just as a choreographer can start with a piece of music in order to create, I am starting with the painting by Bosch. And just as a choreographer can choose to ‘stick’ to a musical score (or not), I have chosen to ‘stick’ to Bosch’s painting, its spirit; the joy of bowing before a masterpiece!”
Even so, Chouinard has her own take on Bosch’s famous painting. She proceeds by panels, starting in the middle. For Chouinard it is as if the Original Sin of the Bible has never been committed.
“It is peaceful and loving,” says Chouinard. “There is no sense of shame. It celebrates life.”
Chouinard then moves to the right panel — for her, it is not so much a hell beyond our earthly existence as the hell we’ve made here on Earth. “It is life now,” she says. Chouinard’s left panel is paradise, except she emphatically sees the robed figure presenting Eve to Adam as the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ.
So that audiences will know where’s she’s coming from, Chouinard’s set and video design feature a huge reproduction of the Bosch triptych. Her dancers are near-naked, like the people in the painting. A variety of props can be clearly related to objects in the picture.
This is the third Chouinard work to be presented in Toronto under the auspices of Canadian Stage. Matthew Jocelyn, the company’s artistic and general director, says he’s committed to giving local audiences the chance to see the work of a Canadian choreographer who is arguably better known in Europe than across her homeland.
“Marie is one of the freest artists I know,” says Jocelyn. “She’s driven by adeep kinetic sensitivity to the world around her.”
Even if audiences across Canada don’t get to see Chouinard’s work as often as those in Europe and beyond, the 61-year-old choreographer has certainly garnered the highest national recognition. In addition to the Order of Canada in 2007, last year, Chouinard won a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement, followed by the $50,000 Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts.
And to top off a spectacular 2016, Chouinard was appointed artistic director for dance of the Venice Biennale.
A dance career doesn’t get much more exalted than that. Hieronymus Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights is at the Bluma Appel Theatre, 27 Front St. E., Wednesday to April 23; canadianstage.com or 416-368-3110.