The Australian Ballet: Raymonda by Stephen Baynes
Raymonda by Stephen Baynes. Music by Aleksandr Glazunov. Costume design by Anna French, set design by Richard Roberts, lighting design by Jon Buswell. The Australian Ballet. State Theatre, Melbourne. Performances reviewed: September 19, 20 & 30. Also Adelaide Festival Centre, October 6-11, and Sydney Opera House, December 1-20.
Raymonda (Kirsty Martin) and her Prince (Steven Heathcote)
Production photographs by Jim McFarlane (click to enlarge)
It seems to me that the elements that distinguish Australian ballet and opera from the ballet and opera of the rest of the world are attention to dramatic detail and, most of all, acting finesse.
In opera, they are compensation for not being able to field dream team casts, a function of distance and dollars. But in ballet, where our talent is second to none, these elements make the national company the envy of far bigger nations. The Russians might be able to field a squad of 32 tall disciplined swans, but they covet the verismo of our eight or sixteen. The English, too, envy the heat generated on-stage.
A material girl... Raymonda.
The Australian Opera’s full-time chorus has benefited hugely from years of acting and movement training. They’re uncommonly good when it comes to playing Mediterranean peasants in Cav & Pag, but they’re also equally committed -- even fearless -- when performing more abstract works or in “out there” productions.
By contrast, the Australian Ballet company is visibly better when it has a story to deliver or has the scaffolding of some kind of through-line... from La Sylphide to Nacho Duato’s Por vos Muero. Aside from various productions of Giselle (one in which the leading duo were coached by prima ballerina assoluta Galina Ulanova; another, recently, by former artistic director Maina Gielgud), the company is at its very best when performing renovated classics, especially Graeme Murphy’s rewrites of Nutcracker and Swan Lake.
Murphy’s “gumnutcracker” turned a hoary old Christmas yarn into a celebration of the roots of classical ballet in Australia in the latter half of the last century. His Swan Lake had an emotional complexity that the young dancers related to and then conveyed. Instead of good versus evil, black versus white, Murphy gave us shades of grey.
But the AB’s ability in -- and success with -- the story ballets locks it into something of a time warp. Many of the dancers resist the spine-bending, loose-limbed, modern moves and contemporary repertoire. The company has only just come to terms with Balanchine. Tharp’s In The Upper Room looked bad on the company, even in a reprise season. Cranko? Brilliant. Even Bejart.
But it’s hard to imagine the Australian Ballet delivering choreography by Javier De Frutos or Michael Parmenter as well as the Royal New Zealand Ballet does, say. Let alone the recent work of William Forsythe.
So, there is an undertone of hesitation -- a bat squeak of anxiety for the future of the company -- tempering what is, otherwise, a rave review for this brand new version of Raymonda. What it does, it does brilliantly. There is confidence and sophistication here that deserve acclaim.
Now, it’s not uncommon for a classic story ballet to have three, four or even five different casts, even in a short season. And I’ve noticed, over the years, that differences in interpretation are not only tolerated but encouraged. It’s not solely a matter of ability -- Rachel Rawlins was brilliant in the second act of Giselle, for example, but didn’t quite master the first act -- it’s also about how the key dancers interact with one another. As in theatre, there’s a text (the choreography, mise en scene, whatever) and a performance text. And, yes, it might surprise you to learn that performance text in ballet can be a dynamic and responsive thing.
In the premiere season of Raymonda, I saw all three casts. And the differences were striking.
Stephen Baynes has abandoned virtually everything but the music in his new Raymonda. Instead of a hokey yarn about a crusading knight, a saracen stalker and defended honour in medieval Hungary, Baynes gives us a movie star, Raymonda Grey, about to abandon her career and her rat pack friends to marry a European Prince. Dateline 1955. Sound familiar? Grey. Grace. What’s in a name! (Above: Prince Rainier of Monaco and Grace Kelly on their wedding day, fifty years ago.)
Raymonda has a few doubts and moments of anxiety -- which translate into a bad dream on the eve of her wedding -- but that’s pretty much the entire story of this two-hour story ballet.
But the nuance and detail are photoreal. The sets (2D chandeliers excepted) and costumes would stand up to any close-up shots.
Baynes sets the scene with breathtaking skill and economy. In the first seconds of the performance, we watch Raymonda and her dashing Hollywood co-star Adam Drake on the battlements of a castle in a Hamlet-like encounter. The partially lifted and partially parted curtains forming a cinematic rectangle. Before we have time to frame the thought -- God, how overacted! -- the order to “cut” is issued, and the curtains reveal a film crew, the set is struck, the actors come out of character. Director, dressers and make-up staff, paparazzi and PAs swarm after the take. Then the Prince arrives. Is revealed.
In the first cast, Kirsty Martin is Raymonda: coolly regal and every bit the superstar. Steven Heathcote is her prince. As you’d expect from Heathcote, who is in his 20th year as a principal dancer with the company, he is utterly charming and persuasive in the role. Not wooden, not forced. And Damien Welch makes a wonderful Adam Drake: pushy, impertinent, dastardly. Hellishly charming.
In the first cast, the Prince’s devotion is utterly solid. We believe it. Raymonda believes it. More, she believes she’s entitled to it. Worthy of it.
In the second cast, intriguingly, Lisa Bolte’s Raymonda is visibly more doubting of her Prince’s devotion. Bolte is resident guest principal (another of those oxymorons we’ve been encountering of late!) and quite a bit older than Martin. Robert Curran plays her Prince. He’s less Princely than Heathcote, less comfortable with the trappings of his position, but his devotion -- his power -- is made visible through his dance and, especially, his powerful lifts.
Prince Jean de Brienne (Steven Heathcote)
declares his love to Raymonda (Kirsty Martin)
Now, it might seem like I am drawing a long bow, here. Over reading. But dance has a very strong metaphorical role in Baynes’s ballet. Especially in the first act and a half. Dance as attention, dance as an enactment of love. It’s even a euphemism for sex.
We sense that Raymonda fears that her Prince won’t have enough time for her. (Much of Raymonda’s dance in the first act is done on her own. ) Her Prince doesn’t partner her as often as she’d like. Adam and the other members of the “Rat Pack” are the epitome of oily charm. They’re all too willing to dance with her. But they put it about a bit too much for Raymonda’s liking.
Raymonda knows what she wants, but will she get enough of it?
By way of contrast, in the second cast (Bolte and Curran and with Matthew Lawrence as Adam Drake) and even more so in the third cast (Rachel Rawlins and Tristan Message with Welch reprising his ratpacker role), Raymonda doubts her worthiness and, perhaps, her desirability.
Rawlins is more girlish as Raymonda, and her prince is the youngest of the lot. (Message is a soloist with the company, all other key roles are taken by AB principal artists.) And, correspondingly, this Raymonda is the least convinced of her Prince’s love. Indeed, in the late night scene where the Prince suddenly declares his adoration for Raymonda, Message’s protestation looked a little like the backlash of guilt, as if he had done something he was ashamed of.
The other variable in the equation is the Prince’s old flame, a princess in her own right, Arabella, played by Olivia Bell, Lynette Wills and Danielle Rowe. When Kirsty Martin meets Olivia Bell, Raymonda -- still a commoner -- goes to curtsey before the Princess Arabella. Bell stops Martin before she bobs down. But, in the second cast, Wills fails to stop Bolte from bowing. In the third cast, Rowe even goes as far as placing a patronising hand on the shoulder of Rawlins.
These differences might appear minor, but the fit between pieces of these separate puzzles is too tight to be incidental.
Another illustration. The second scene of the first act is set in Europe, in the palace, the day before the wedding. Raymonda’s friends are visiting while she has a veil fitting. The four friends crowd around Raymonda as she scrutinises herself in a mirror. The lights change and Raymonda apparently steps out of the picture. As performed by Martin, Raymonda does a small circle of her friends. We feel her sense of unreality. Of dissociation. But there’s also a distinct feeling that Raymonda is somehow above it all.
When Bolte steps out of the scene in the second cast, it has an entirely different significance. She’s thinking: “They don’t see me...” She steps out and back.
Likewise, in the ‘nightmare’ sequence, Raymonda dreams that the Prince’s family rejects her and that he marries Arabella instead. (In her dream, the Prince is ‘played’ by her Hollywood co-star, Adam Drake! Such are the idle thoughts of people who impersonate others for a living!) In the first cast, Kirsty Martin looks on with puzzlement. Bolte, however, seems fearful of the possibility. Again, there’s this sense that Bolte doesn’t believe her good fortune. Doesn’t believe that the royal family could possibly accept her. With Martin, the choice apparently remains with her.
As you’ve possibly guessed by now, this Raymonda is not a choreographic masterpiece. The dance is very much at the service of the scenario. It’s discreet rather than flashy. Modest even. It gives the dancers an opportunity to execute it brilliantly rather than being brilliant in its own right. But, at every point, the dance advances the action. (I wonder how long it will be before Baynes is snapped up to choreograph -- or even direct -- a full-blown musical?)
Bucks and hens
Martin is an exquisite Raymonda. She is, far and away, the one to see, if you have that choice. (Thanks to a minor ankle injury, she won’t be performing at all during the brief Adelaide season. Fingers crossed if you are in Sydney.) She carves the air, shapes it, with the easy swish of her limbs.
Matthew Lawrence is less of a cad than Damien Martin as Raymonda’s co-star, Adam Drake, but he makes the role more dancerly.
Lucinda Dunn as Phyllis in Raymonda
Each cast has its riches. I’d hate to have to choose between Lucinda Dunn and Madeleine Eastoe as Raymonda’s girlfriend Phyllis. Gaylene Cummerfield and Camilla Vergotis are excellent, too, as Lucille.
Above all, this is a romance for grown-ups. It’s a fantasia for lovers of beauty and style. It’s escapism from the ugly reality of skanky 21st century stars and starlets. It’s a myth, a beautiful illusion, a dream, for those who need to believe in a world of gods and goddesses. In a sense, it is the perfect ballet: all form, no function.
OTHER AUSTRALIAN BALLET REVIEWS:
bodytorque 3 -- face the music (June 2006)
Raymonda (Kirsty Martin) and her Prince (Steven Heathcote)
Production photographs by Jim McFarlane (click to enlarge)
It seems to me that the elements that distinguish Australian ballet and opera from the ballet and opera of the rest of the world are attention to dramatic detail and, most of all, acting finesse.
In opera, they are compensation for not being able to field dream team casts, a function of distance and dollars. But in ballet, where our talent is second to none, these elements make the national company the envy of far bigger nations. The Russians might be able to field a squad of 32 tall disciplined swans, but they covet the verismo of our eight or sixteen. The English, too, envy the heat generated on-stage.
A material girl... Raymonda.
The Australian Opera’s full-time chorus has benefited hugely from years of acting and movement training. They’re uncommonly good when it comes to playing Mediterranean peasants in Cav & Pag, but they’re also equally committed -- even fearless -- when performing more abstract works or in “out there” productions.
By contrast, the Australian Ballet company is visibly better when it has a story to deliver or has the scaffolding of some kind of through-line... from La Sylphide to Nacho Duato’s Por vos Muero. Aside from various productions of Giselle (one in which the leading duo were coached by prima ballerina assoluta Galina Ulanova; another, recently, by former artistic director Maina Gielgud), the company is at its very best when performing renovated classics, especially Graeme Murphy’s rewrites of Nutcracker and Swan Lake.
Murphy’s “gumnutcracker” turned a hoary old Christmas yarn into a celebration of the roots of classical ballet in Australia in the latter half of the last century. His Swan Lake had an emotional complexity that the young dancers related to and then conveyed. Instead of good versus evil, black versus white, Murphy gave us shades of grey.
But the AB’s ability in -- and success with -- the story ballets locks it into something of a time warp. Many of the dancers resist the spine-bending, loose-limbed, modern moves and contemporary repertoire. The company has only just come to terms with Balanchine. Tharp’s In The Upper Room looked bad on the company, even in a reprise season. Cranko? Brilliant. Even Bejart.
But it’s hard to imagine the Australian Ballet delivering choreography by Javier De Frutos or Michael Parmenter as well as the Royal New Zealand Ballet does, say. Let alone the recent work of William Forsythe.
So, there is an undertone of hesitation -- a bat squeak of anxiety for the future of the company -- tempering what is, otherwise, a rave review for this brand new version of Raymonda. What it does, it does brilliantly. There is confidence and sophistication here that deserve acclaim.
Now, it’s not uncommon for a classic story ballet to have three, four or even five different casts, even in a short season. And I’ve noticed, over the years, that differences in interpretation are not only tolerated but encouraged. It’s not solely a matter of ability -- Rachel Rawlins was brilliant in the second act of Giselle, for example, but didn’t quite master the first act -- it’s also about how the key dancers interact with one another. As in theatre, there’s a text (the choreography, mise en scene, whatever) and a performance text. And, yes, it might surprise you to learn that performance text in ballet can be a dynamic and responsive thing.
In the premiere season of Raymonda, I saw all three casts. And the differences were striking.
Stephen Baynes has abandoned virtually everything but the music in his new Raymonda. Instead of a hokey yarn about a crusading knight, a saracen stalker and defended honour in medieval Hungary, Baynes gives us a movie star, Raymonda Grey, about to abandon her career and her rat pack friends to marry a European Prince. Dateline 1955. Sound familiar? Grey. Grace. What’s in a name! (Above: Prince Rainier of Monaco and Grace Kelly on their wedding day, fifty years ago.)Raymonda has a few doubts and moments of anxiety -- which translate into a bad dream on the eve of her wedding -- but that’s pretty much the entire story of this two-hour story ballet.
But the nuance and detail are photoreal. The sets (2D chandeliers excepted) and costumes would stand up to any close-up shots.
Baynes sets the scene with breathtaking skill and economy. In the first seconds of the performance, we watch Raymonda and her dashing Hollywood co-star Adam Drake on the battlements of a castle in a Hamlet-like encounter. The partially lifted and partially parted curtains forming a cinematic rectangle. Before we have time to frame the thought -- God, how overacted! -- the order to “cut” is issued, and the curtains reveal a film crew, the set is struck, the actors come out of character. Director, dressers and make-up staff, paparazzi and PAs swarm after the take. Then the Prince arrives. Is revealed.
In the first cast, Kirsty Martin is Raymonda: coolly regal and every bit the superstar. Steven Heathcote is her prince. As you’d expect from Heathcote, who is in his 20th year as a principal dancer with the company, he is utterly charming and persuasive in the role. Not wooden, not forced. And Damien Welch makes a wonderful Adam Drake: pushy, impertinent, dastardly. Hellishly charming.
In the first cast, the Prince’s devotion is utterly solid. We believe it. Raymonda believes it. More, she believes she’s entitled to it. Worthy of it.
In the second cast, intriguingly, Lisa Bolte’s Raymonda is visibly more doubting of her Prince’s devotion. Bolte is resident guest principal (another of those oxymorons we’ve been encountering of late!) and quite a bit older than Martin. Robert Curran plays her Prince. He’s less Princely than Heathcote, less comfortable with the trappings of his position, but his devotion -- his power -- is made visible through his dance and, especially, his powerful lifts.
Prince Jean de Brienne (Steven Heathcote)
declares his love to Raymonda (Kirsty Martin)
Now, it might seem like I am drawing a long bow, here. Over reading. But dance has a very strong metaphorical role in Baynes’s ballet. Especially in the first act and a half. Dance as attention, dance as an enactment of love. It’s even a euphemism for sex.
We sense that Raymonda fears that her Prince won’t have enough time for her. (Much of Raymonda’s dance in the first act is done on her own. ) Her Prince doesn’t partner her as often as she’d like. Adam and the other members of the “Rat Pack” are the epitome of oily charm. They’re all too willing to dance with her. But they put it about a bit too much for Raymonda’s liking.
Raymonda knows what she wants, but will she get enough of it?
By way of contrast, in the second cast (Bolte and Curran and with Matthew Lawrence as Adam Drake) and even more so in the third cast (Rachel Rawlins and Tristan Message with Welch reprising his ratpacker role), Raymonda doubts her worthiness and, perhaps, her desirability.
Rawlins is more girlish as Raymonda, and her prince is the youngest of the lot. (Message is a soloist with the company, all other key roles are taken by AB principal artists.) And, correspondingly, this Raymonda is the least convinced of her Prince’s love. Indeed, in the late night scene where the Prince suddenly declares his adoration for Raymonda, Message’s protestation looked a little like the backlash of guilt, as if he had done something he was ashamed of.
The other variable in the equation is the Prince’s old flame, a princess in her own right, Arabella, played by Olivia Bell, Lynette Wills and Danielle Rowe. When Kirsty Martin meets Olivia Bell, Raymonda -- still a commoner -- goes to curtsey before the Princess Arabella. Bell stops Martin before she bobs down. But, in the second cast, Wills fails to stop Bolte from bowing. In the third cast, Rowe even goes as far as placing a patronising hand on the shoulder of Rawlins.
These differences might appear minor, but the fit between pieces of these separate puzzles is too tight to be incidental.
Another illustration. The second scene of the first act is set in Europe, in the palace, the day before the wedding. Raymonda’s friends are visiting while she has a veil fitting. The four friends crowd around Raymonda as she scrutinises herself in a mirror. The lights change and Raymonda apparently steps out of the picture. As performed by Martin, Raymonda does a small circle of her friends. We feel her sense of unreality. Of dissociation. But there’s also a distinct feeling that Raymonda is somehow above it all.
When Bolte steps out of the scene in the second cast, it has an entirely different significance. She’s thinking: “They don’t see me...” She steps out and back.
Likewise, in the ‘nightmare’ sequence, Raymonda dreams that the Prince’s family rejects her and that he marries Arabella instead. (In her dream, the Prince is ‘played’ by her Hollywood co-star, Adam Drake! Such are the idle thoughts of people who impersonate others for a living!) In the first cast, Kirsty Martin looks on with puzzlement. Bolte, however, seems fearful of the possibility. Again, there’s this sense that Bolte doesn’t believe her good fortune. Doesn’t believe that the royal family could possibly accept her. With Martin, the choice apparently remains with her.
As you’ve possibly guessed by now, this Raymonda is not a choreographic masterpiece. The dance is very much at the service of the scenario. It’s discreet rather than flashy. Modest even. It gives the dancers an opportunity to execute it brilliantly rather than being brilliant in its own right. But, at every point, the dance advances the action. (I wonder how long it will be before Baynes is snapped up to choreograph -- or even direct -- a full-blown musical?)
Bucks and hens
Martin is an exquisite Raymonda. She is, far and away, the one to see, if you have that choice. (Thanks to a minor ankle injury, she won’t be performing at all during the brief Adelaide season. Fingers crossed if you are in Sydney.) She carves the air, shapes it, with the easy swish of her limbs.
Matthew Lawrence is less of a cad than Damien Martin as Raymonda’s co-star, Adam Drake, but he makes the role more dancerly.
Lucinda Dunn as Phyllis in Raymonda
Each cast has its riches. I’d hate to have to choose between Lucinda Dunn and Madeleine Eastoe as Raymonda’s girlfriend Phyllis. Gaylene Cummerfield and Camilla Vergotis are excellent, too, as Lucille.
Above all, this is a romance for grown-ups. It’s a fantasia for lovers of beauty and style. It’s escapism from the ugly reality of skanky 21st century stars and starlets. It’s a myth, a beautiful illusion, a dream, for those who need to believe in a world of gods and goddesses. In a sense, it is the perfect ballet: all form, no function.
OTHER AUSTRALIAN BALLET REVIEWS:
bodytorque 3 -- face the music (June 2006)
Labels: Australian Ballet, ballet, Graeme Murphy, Melbourne, opera, Stephen Baynes
posted by Chris Boyd at 5:23 PM
9 Comments:
nice one Boyd. I've not watched the AB as closely as you so I was interested in what you said about the AB's lack of flair when in contemporary mode. My only experience of Jiri Kylian (apols for spelling) has been through the AB and I have to admit it was his work that reignited my interest in dance. Do you think between the contemporary and classical modes its a bad fit or perhaps more an example of conservative artistic direction? Another question that you might have a bit of dope on is that when the AB announced the premiere of Raymonda they used Amber Scott as the face of the production...it sort of led me to believe that she'd be dancing Raymonda as well but alas no which frankly leaves me as ever
DISGUSTED
Sorry this is completely off-topic:
I'm in the UK and I'm trying to get hold of a play by Karen Mainwaring called The Rain Dancers. Do you know her agent or publisher?
Thanks.
In response to the off-topic chris in the UK, Karen Mainwaring's agency is the Sydney-based Cameron Creswell Agency: try info(at)cameronsmanagement(dot)com(dot)au
Good luck.
Thanks Ben.
Chris
Off topic OFF TOPIC OFF THE 'KEN PLANET. Listen quill boy you're pushing your luck
Disgusted
When Raymonda was launched, Kirsty Martin was pregnant I think. (Might have made the advance press more interesting... shotgun wedding between star and prince.)
Not sure if there's any scuttlebutt to be found about Amber. I'll ask the company! (Not sure if I'll get a straight answer if there is!)
In the absence of Martin, maybe Scott was deemed to have The Look.
Even when she was in the back row, Scott looked like a star in the making. But there's many a slip between corps and star. It's probably worth pointing out that all three Raymondas were/are principal artists. Scott is a soloist.
Martin has not been replaced for the Adelaide season. Bolte and Rawlins are divvying up her performances.
As for Jiri Kylian... the AB's performances of his works were part of the reason I got fired up about ballet in the 80s. They do his stuff very well mostly. (There's a tendency to moon about and emote to the max.) (And maybe my tolerance of mooning is waning.)
Next year's AB subscription series is very conservative. That's a disappointment.
I get the feeling that there's only a small core of dancers in the company that really enjoy the challenge of contemporary choreography.
Shame, really, as there's not much this company couldn't do if it put its mind to it.
P.S. Don't bully the quillies Disgusto! (I step out of the room for five minutes and I find the Euros and the expats scratching out each others eyes!)
And thanks Ben for passing on that contact for OTC.
Thanks for the new bit. I'm not a bully I'm just disgusted and that makes me cruel. However if I were in sackcloth and being cruel to consenting adults in warm theatrical spaces I would be, if not avant garde at least besides garde. As ever
Disgusted
I saw Raymonda last night in Sydney. The leads were Lisa Bolte, Robert Curran and Matthew Lawrence. The dancing was brilliant but I felt the small stage of the Sydney Opera House limited some of the jumps from the various dancers. The costumes are stunningly beautiful. I was a little disappointed in some aspects of the choreography. In a few places I felt we [the audience] were left waiting for the next dance action to take place. However there was some beautiful, sensitive pas de deux. Some of the minor dance roles were most enjoyable.
Thanks for the update, Dreamer. I'm curious to hear if ballet fans are as forgiving of this piece as I've been here. (Judging it on its own terms.) Not that it's a bad piece, by any means... tho it can hardly be said to 'advance' ballet or ballet choreography in Australia.
I read a horror story, recently, about the company performing on the Opera Theatre stage... something about the need for there to be stage hands to (literally) catch the dancers as they leapt off. Talk about death defying.
Now, the proscenium width of the Opera Theatre is fully four metres smaller than the State Theatre, in Melbourne, where the ballet premiered. (11.5 metres, versus 15.5) But the actual stage width at the opera house is 19.5 metres, so there's roughly four metres in the wings, each side.
The State Theatre's stage width (I'm not making this up!) is 45.4 metres!!! That gives the dancers around 15 metres in which to pull up!
So, no wonder things can look a bit cramped at Bennelong Point. :)
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