Softer side of Marie Antoinette
Houston Ballet production brings tragic story to life
Like the catastrophe in ancient Pompeii and the sinking of the Titanic, the tragic story of Marie Antoinette continues to fascinate and inspire retelling.
Anyone who’s passed through downtown Montreal in recent months has doubtless seen the glitzy posters advertising the dance version of her story, which Stanton Welch choreographed in 2009 for his 55-member company, Houston Ballet. With powdered wigs and voluminous gowns in tow, this three-act ballet has a gala opening at Place des Arts on Wednesday to start a four-day run.
Welch began working on Marie Antoinette around the time that Houston Ballet last visited Montreal, in 2008 with his ballet about another tragic female heroine, Madame Butterfly. Welch created Madame Butterfly for Australian Ballet in 1995 when he was only 25. He’d been fascinated by Cio-Cio San’s tragic story for years. In contrast, he knew little about Marie Antoinette until he saw a TV documentary about her life.
“What fascinated me was just how much of a misconception I had about her,” Welch said in a recent telephone interview from Houston. “It felt very current in that today so much of what we know about people is how the media choose to portray them. It was interesting to me that all these things about Marie Antoinette like ‘Let them eat cake’ and the way she was so frivolous and thoughtless was all just rumour and gossip. The reality was something quite different.”
Welch found that reality in several recent biographies, including one by Antonia Fraser that served as the inspiration for Sofia Coppola’s flamboyant 2006 movie. Fraser portrayed Marie in a sympathetic light, describing her as a good mother who was warm and friendly to her colleagues.
“That really appealed to me,” Welch said.
The ballet opens on the French border with the trauma of teenage Marie being stripped of her native Austrian garb and forcibly dressed in French clothes to reflect her new station as the fiancée of teenage Louis, heir to France’s throne.
“I felt for her,” Welch said. “As a teen, how must that feel? The expectation of produ- cing a child with a man who wasn’t interested in you. I felt that she was such a human character who had done her best to survive a very awful situation.”
Welch compelled the main cast to research their characters.
“He brought me two huge binders with research about Marie Antoinette and all the characters I interact with,” said principal dancer Melody Mennite, whose face, with powdered hair — her own, not a wig — and figure in a resplendent 18th-century gown are plastered on the posters of Marie Antoinette all over Montreal. “It reminded me of actors when they research for a movie so they can get in the character’s head.”
Mennite said that she needed two hours to get “all of the stuff ” out of her hair after the photo shoot.
“I wear three different wigs in the ballet, but for the photo, they went all out — so much hairspray and powder, I guess they wanted it real.”
Although the women’s gowns are elaborate, Canadian-born designer Kandis Cook used light material that allows for ballet’s expansive movements.
“The only one I had a hard time with is Act 1, the wedding dress,” Mennite said. “It has a lot of layers and it’s heavy. It’s a little hard to manoeuvre, but I got used to it.”
Marie dances six duets in long dresses, three each with Louis and Count Axel von Fersen of Sweden.
“We’ve done it enough so that they know when the dress is going to get stuck around their arms and head. They’ve learned to manoeuvre so that doesn’t happen.”
In Act One, Cook, who also did the costuming for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens’ 2001 major production, Queen of Spades, has decked the French courtiers in cold colours to reflect their haughty attitude toward the young foreign bride. The costumes become warmer and more striking by Act 2, in which Marie already has a child and has found friends who worship her fashion sense. Marie also finds an admirer in Count Fersen.
“I never consummate the relationship, though there was definitely kissing and flirting between them. That’s one of the interesting things about the books — there’s no real proof she strayed, which for the times was quite unusual.”
Marie’s fidelity remains consistent in Act 3, when she stays true to Louis as first he, then she, are led off to the guillotine.
Welch choreographed Marie Antoinette in the same classical ballet spirit used in Madame Butterfly. Nothing radically innovative here — Welch is not Mats Ek turning Sleeping Beauty upside down, nor is he a genre breaker like Israel Galvan, who at his show here last week extended the flamenco vocabulary to the point that he was speaking another language.
Welch is rather a craftsman who knows how to use his tools to construct a well-built narrative.
The ballet uses Shostakovich’s music throughout, regrettably heard in Montreal on a recording, not played live. Shostakovich is not an obvious choice for an 18thcentury period piece, but one that Welch justified.
“Shostakovich lived in a repressed time and there’s an opulence to his music, but also something sinister and sad. (In Marie’s France) there was an imperialism coming to an end, something a little sinister and creepy, but also romantic and lush. Shostakovich has that.”
Three years ago, Houston Ballet moved into the Center for Dance, spacious studios in a new six-storey building next to their performing theatre.
“The move meant a tremendous amount,” Welch said. “The best thing is we have a black box theatre within the building. We do a lot more choreographic workshops and can dress-rehearse our ballets.”
Since the move, Houston Ballet’s affiliated school with its own space in the centre has doubled its enrolment to about 500 students.
Encouraging news for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, which plans to move to new studios near Place des Arts. The opening was recently pushed back, though. The projected opening is early 2016.
Houston Ballet, April 9-11, 8 p.m., April 12, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., in Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, Place des Arts. Tickets, $52.72-$116.91. Call 514842-2112 or www.pda.qc.ca.