Butterfly takes wing with emotional edge
Madame Butterfly Company: Alberta Ballet When: Friday night, continues Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Where: Jubilee Auditorium
Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly has a truly tragic storyline and it felt all the more unsettling Friday when viewed through a contemporary lens, as interpreted by choreographer Stanton Welch through the Alberta Ballet company.
For those unfamiliar with the plot, the show synopsis printed in the program is worth a good read before the curtain rises, as the first act’s narrative does not unfold clearly in Welsh’s dance version.
Madame Butterfly is a turn of the 20th century story of Cio-Cio-San, a Japanese Geisha who sacrifices everything for a marriage to an American Naval Officer named Pinkerton. The marriage is little more than a distraction for him while he serves his time overseas, but she adopts her husband’s Christian God and is renounced by her family for it, and after waiting faithfully for years for Pinkerton to return to her, Cio-Cio-San later relinquishes custody of her son to the American’s white wife, taking her own life in the final tragic scene.
Although the dramatic costumes of brocade and silk with cherry blossom scrims and cascading fire flies make for a beautiful spectacle designed by Peter Farmer, my mind never really could rest still taking in that imagery.
I just wasn’t able to locate any Zen about the loaded questions that kept swimming up throughout Act 1. How do the many Japanese dancers in the company feel about performing what felt like to me a whole lot of clichéd “Asian” movements like head bobs and “Samurai” wide jumps and shuffles? Are we all supposed to be fine with stereotyped characterizations because Puccini’s score is a classic? These are things I wrestled with uncomfortably.
Pinkerton danced by Kelley McKinlay was appropriately shiny, glowing with naivety, looking to his buddies for approval throughout the ceremony, happily handing over cash to the matchmaker Goro, danced by Yukichi Hattori.
McKinlay’s solo work felt a bit restricted in his range of movement. His extensions didn’t hit their highest heights and his jumps didn’t quite top their highest peaks. But the ballet isn’t called Pinkerton — it is Madame Butterfly after all.
Mariko Kondo brought her exquisite classical technique and musicality to the title role. The pas de deux work between McKinlay and Kondo saves the first Act. Kondo is a stunner Cio-Cio-San. She floats. She flutters. And she dares to take her performance to an emotional edge in Act II in a way that will crush your heart.