What is the
appeal of Ballet Under The Stars? Am I the only one who would
rather view proscenium-framed theatrical dancing indoors? Yes, apparently,
because every year, Singapore Dance Theatre’s outdoor performance
season draws the kind of numbers that its main house programme doesn’t
get. Me, I put up with the mozzies and thoughtless crowds only to see
the new works, which so far seem to have no stage life beyond Fort Canning
Green. Shouldn't BUTS be a platform for sustainable choreography?
This year, the SDT gave pre-show stage time to three homegrown dance
groups and dancers from 21 primary and secondary schools. Most of the
juvenilia on opening night was decent, a few of them too dreadful to
remember. The audience also thrilled to the pageantry and wushu acrobatics
in Dance Ensemble Singapore’s Beauty of Tradition, one-third
of a 30-minute showcase that included a piece each by Sri Warisan Som
Said Performing Arts and Bhaskar’s Arts Academy. These guest performances
by the local groups, billed collectively as Roots of Asia’s
Rhythm, were, however, basically trifles: pleasant but serviceable
arrangements of classical and folk numbers. They did little beyond giving
the dancers something to do, as if the SDT needed them on the programme
to fill some sort of ethnic-dance quota. A shame, surely, even if BUTS
is usually not the occasion to present more demanding fare because of
the mainstream crowd it usually attracts.
The host company remained the troupe to watch. Among the trio of premieres,
none of which were plot-based, the most convincing piece was resident
choreographer Jeffrey Tan’s Breath of Love, a lyric ode
in the early style of Czech master Jirí Kylián. Tan was
likely inspired by his one-month stint in Madrid at the Compañia
Nacional de Danza, whose artistic director Nacho Duato used to dance
under Kylián’s direction in the Netherlands. I felt, however,
that there was a little too much that bore the Kylián stamp,
from the solemn procession that began the ballet, which left behind
one couple staring upstage, to the spacious physicality and the push-pull
tensions of the dancers’ close partnering. We’d seen more
of the same in the few Kylián creations that the SDT had acquired
in recent years. Nonetheless, the dancers thrived in this modern-balletic
mode, as well they should have.
Bookending the evening were contributions by former and current ballet
masters of the SDT. Edmund Stripe, now with the Alberta Ballet in Calgary,
set his Piano Concerto No. 2 to Shostakovich’s score
of the same name. Thirteen black-clad dancers echoed the brisk musical
passages with fast, beating footwork and quick shifts in direction,
although at times they fudged a few steps. On this occasion, the ensemble
had suffered injuries and so, unfortunately, had to omit the middle
duet segment of this three-part work. Paul de Masson’s La
Rose Malade, the shortest SDT offering of the night, completed
the line-up. Four couples, clustered together like a bouquet, unravelled
from the group in slow reverie. Long, lingering lifts suggested romantic
longing and heartbreak in turn, the women arching back or hanging limp
in their partners’ arms. It was compact, to the point - and, sadly,
unlikely to be seen again.
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"I put up with the mozzies and thoughtless crowds only to see the
new works, which so far seem to have no stage life beyond Fort Canning
Green."
Credits
Choreography: Paul de Masson (La Rose Malade),
Jeffrey Tan (Breath of Love), Edmund Stripe (Piano Concerto
No. 2, Opus 102)
Dancers: Alexandra Sklavos, Chihiro Uchida, Jin Shuyi, Kellie van der
Ploeg, Lee Pei Nee, Liu Xiaomi, Natalie Clarke, Sakura Shimizu, Xia
Haiying, Zhou Lin, Bryan Chan, Chen Peng, Chen Wei, Robert Mills, Toru
Okada, Zhang Jun
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