Bringing a monster ballet to life
Choreographer Liam Scarlett, designer John Macfarlane describe how ‘Frankenstein’ came to be
With the North American premiere of Liam Scarlett’s “Frankenstein” fast approaching, the pressure is high at San Francisco Ballet. But fortunately, the two key artists behind the creation of this dance work –the U.K. choreographer and scenic designer John Macfarlane — have found time to squeeze in a joint interview before a meeting with the entire production team.
These two are a formidable duo in the dance world — filling stages with memorable movement, sets and costumes, as seen in their previous joint effort for the San Francisco company — “Hummingbird” in 2014. Scarlett, who had studied at London’s Royal Ballet School and then danced with that company, went on to pursue choreography full-time. In 2010, at just 25, he got his first opportunity to make a piece for the Royal Ballet, “Ashphodel Meadows.”
Since Scarlett was familiar with Macfarlane’s creations for Jirí Kylián, choreographer and director of Nederlands Dans Theater, he was eager to enlist the stagecraft magician for that initial splash. As Macfarlane tells it, “One day the phone rang, and it was Kevin (O’Hare, company manager of the Royal Ballet), asking if I had heard of Liam Scarlett. Because I’m also a painter, I do have a habit of sealing myself off hermetically in the studio, so I don’t go to see a lot of things. I said no, of course I’ve never heard of him. ‘Well, we’re giving him his big main-stage break, and we’ve asked who he wants to design it, and he said you.’ I was pretty touched at that.
“The Royal Ballet sent me two discs of his work,” Macfarlane continues. “One night I couldn’t sleep, and I watched them at 2 o’clock in the morning. I thought it was absolutely breathtaking work. It made me think I want a part of that.”
When Scarlett was approached by the Royal Ballet to choreograph an evening-length piece — a co-production with another company, because of the financial climate — “I jumped at the chance and said it has to be San Francisco Ballet or no one,” he recalls. “It’s a company large enough to be able to do it, and has an opera house that John loves to design for. Having just worked with them, I knew there were dancers who sparked my interest. Kevin (by then artistic director at the Royal Ballet) picked up the phone and called (San Francisco Ballet’s) Helgi (Tomasson). Helgi said yes.
“I insisted that with every stage of the creative process — in the studio, with music, with designs — both companies were kept up to date all the time, so that it wasn’t a question of doing it in London, and then we box it up and send it to San Francisco. The dancers here that I was inspired to create lead roles for would come over to London and work sideby-side with the leads there.”
The Royal Ballet presented the world premiere of “Frankenstein” in May 2016. San Francisco’s North American premiere runs Feb. 17-26 at the War Memorial Opera House.
About why he chose the 1818 Mary Shelley story for the co-production, Scarlett says, “Frankenstein had been ... niggling away at me for a while. And when that one thought kept coming back no matter what other stories I went through, and that one kept knocking, I felt I should just go with it.”
The creative process involved close collaboration with Macfarlane. The designer says, “First of all, I need to know how many people are going to be in the piece and then, primarily, the space that (Scarlett) needs on the stage. Does he see it as a very enclosed space or a space that can open up or extend during the piece? But mostly, Liam wants the dancers to appear from nowhere.
“The other issue is color,” he continues. “Frankenstein was, in my eyes, always a colorless piece. I had this idea that was almost one of those early photographs that people take of arctic exploration. The light bleeds — it’s sepia or that blueish tinge. You don’t see a strong color.”
Scarlett says, “For both of us, the music was a big jumping-off point. John said ‘Frankenstein’ was one of the hardest ones, because we didn’t have the score yet when he started designing.” The music Scarlett decided upon is a commissioned score by American composer Lowell Liebermann, whose First Piano Concerto he had used for his ballet “Viscera” (2012).
Scarlett says, “The first thing we normally do is sit down with the music and listen. Then we listen again, and then we’ll go up to the studio and have a play-around with the model box. We create an atmosphere so that the visual will go with what we’re hearing.”
Though he could have reset the tale in a different era, Scarlett was adamant about preserving the original early 19th-century setting. He says, “I did so much back reading on the book itself and on Shelley and her life. The amount of stigma and popularity the book gained in its time was because it was published in that era. The true fear and horror of the story is the possibility that it could have been real — especially at that time, when scientific discoveries weren’t as forward thinking as they are nowadays. If you move it, you neglect what she was trying to say about the times.
“There is a moral implication, as well,” he continues, “that humans discovering ideas, pushing boundaries were crossing borders that maybe shouldn’t be crossed. That was the real fear in it, as opposed to the revulsion to the physicality of the creature Frankenstein made.”
Macfarlane says, “It’s also still a world of mythology, but at the point where mythology meets medical science. In ‘Frankenstein’ you see the electrical charge activating a hand like this (he jerks his hand). Electricity, what’s this? — an amazing magical thing to 90 percent of the people (then). I think also that you’ve got to put it in a world where medical science was absolutely primitive.
“We tried to show that in the anatomy theater. They were digging up bodies to do anatomy work. They had body parts in jars to show people. You could never do ‘Frankenstein’ in a modern mode. I suppose you could, but it would be very difficult, because people believed things then that we don’t believe now.”
If you’re hoping for a Hollywood horror-story treatment, stay home and watch one on Netflix. But if you want to experience a deeper, richer story of love and abandonment, that’s what you’ll get at San Francisco Ballet’s “Frankenstein.”