(Curtain call at Othello, with Gillian Murphy and David Hallberg, center, as Desdemona and Othello, with, left to right, Kristi Boone as Bianca/Tarantella dancer, Blaine Hoven as Cassio, Marian Butler as Emelia and Maxim Beloserkovsky as Iago)
American Ballet Theatre: Othello (chor. Lar Lubovitch)
Saturday, July 14, 2007, 2pm
Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles
Lar Lubovitch's Othello certainly isn't the happiest of full-evening ballets. In the opening tableau, the curtain rises on a dimly lit set dominated by broken glass panels while the orchestra plays Elliot Goldenthal's brooding, film-score introduction to the ballet. A somber ceremony is taking place, with a giant white cross leading a procession up the church aisle towards Othello, kneeling at the front of the stage. This looks like a funeral, but it's not. No, it's Othello's wedding to Desdemona. And so the mood is set - we're in for full evening of darkness.
There was a lot that I liked about yesterday afternoon's performance (the ABT dancers, especially). Lubovitch's choreography is best when it is is intimate, focused on two or three dancers. The second half of Act 2 and the whole of Act , which involve only about five or so characters and pushed the plot along quickly, came off the best. Othello and Desdemona's pas de deux, which progress from tender and respectful to brutal and controlling, are also particularly effective.
But the ballet can still feel like a a decent one-act ballet stretched thinly over three long acts; there is a bunch of filler ensemble dancing that didn't seem to do much more except lengthen the running time, and lengthy intermissions lasted nearly as long as the acts themselves. Narrative is somewhat muddled (one has to read the program notes to follow the action), and the characters are over simplified. Plus, that dark mood set at the beginning hangs over the entire piece, becoming opressive, both for the characters and for the audience.
When I first saw this ballet about five years ago (with San Francisco Ballet in Orange County), I wasn't a big fan - I thought it was overlong and depressing. In the intervening years, I've had a lot more experience watching modern and contemporary dance, and also revisited Othello watching the PBS broadcast, also with SF Ballet. So I was more prepared for what I was going to get going this time around, and did actually appreciate more.
American Ballet Theatre puts Othello over really fantastically (dancers in general seem to just love doing it - it's included as one of the "great" ballets in the book Ballet for Dummies, written by former SFB principal Evelyn Cisneros, even though many newspaper critics would never let it near a best-of list). I've never seen ABT look as alive as it did yesterday afternoon, with every dancer on stage totally committed to his or her role, and producing impressive individual results. The corps looked engaged and appropriately directed, and the women threw themselves in their Act 2 'sea storm' dance with abandon (usually they look like they are thinking so hard in the classical stuff, so it was nice to see them dance full out).
David Hallberg and Maxim Beloserkovsky, as Othello and Iago respectively, were virtually unrecognizable from their usual noble, blonde princely selves. It was particularly fun to see Beloserkovsky in be evil and menacing. Hallberg cut an imposing figure with his very tall frame, scowling with dark makeup caked all over his body. The role doesn't provide him with much to do except scowl and stalk about the stage, but it was impressive to see him own the stage so completely. Blaine Hoven as Cassio showed an impressive classicism in his dancing, though the role is a bland good-guy type role. Gillian Murphy is normally such a strong, Amazonian dancer, so seeing her as Desdemona, conceived in this ballet as a waifish figure, was a bit disjointing. Even just standing still, Murphy communicates strength - so it was actually interesting to see a Desdemona that didn't completely succumb to Othello.
The program notes take care to state that Lubovitch's Othello is not directly based on Shakespeare's famous play of the same name, but rather on the play's source material, a story from 1566 by Giraldo Cinto. It's basically the same story, about the Moor Othello, a military general, who marries a Desdemona, a noble woman of Venetian society. His jealous subordinate Iago, angry that lower-ranking officer Cassio has been promoted above him, concocts a plan to bring down Othello by tricking him to kill Desdemona in jealousy. The narrative, though, is largely muddy unless you've read the program notes; Lubovitch, in his own note to the audience, says "Othello (the dance) does not seek to create a precise telling in pictures... but rather to relate the legend of the Moore through a passage of images in movment, which, over time accumulate to capture the essence of the characters and their story, through the domain of dance." Which I get, certainly, but a long series of passing images does not fully sustain itself over two and a half hours.
I've seen evidence that the piece can actually work in a more swift format: The PBS broadcast I mentioned earlier (which is also out on DVD) is a 90-minute stage recording that moves along much more quickly - it's amazing how much time is cut when the intermissions are gone, and also how much more focused the thing feels when the camera zooms in on the principals and cuts out the extraneous ensemble stuff. I was much more taken with ballet on the small screen than in the theatre.
Characterizations are worth mentioning - I feel that Lubovitch oversimplified. We see Othello as a mere hulk on stage, stomping around and glaring hungrily after Desdemona like an animal - he holds onto her brutally and reacts with animalistic rage when jealousy consumes him. Desdemona is a waif that gets physically controlled by Othello; it was interesting to see a strong Desdemona with Murphy, who was more resistant to this manhandling. The program notes themselves indicate that these characters are supposed to be more than what we see on stage: Othello more intelligent, etc. But that isn't what we see, and I think a more textured characterization could have made us care more about those 'passing images' we saw on stage. Again, it's because the ballet is presented as a full-length that I make these criticisms - one can perhaps get away with more if it is shorter.
An element of the production that I really did like were the contemporary sets by Gregory Tsypin. The dominant visual element was large panels of broken glass; the presence of all this eerie, icy glass made for a chilling contrast to the hot air below. The backdrop was made of projections that shifted and moved. During the Act 2 storm scene, they storm raged in the background, and the graphics were pretty great on them, so it was spectacular to watch.
Despite my criticisms, I did actually enjoy myself yesterday afternoon - the dancers were great, and as I said there was much to like in the ballet. The swift moving Acts 2 and 3 were very dramatic and great to watch. Despite the flaws, the ballet is evidently interesting enough for me to pick apart again, even when my first reaction a few years ago was apathetic.
On Tuesday, the ABT SoCal season continues with The Sleeping Beauty in Orange County.
More photos from curtain call, including Evil Maxim in the second photo:
3 comments:
i was there that evening! :) I think I liked Othello more than you did; but I agree with you, it's difficult to get the nuances of the story without reading the book. I didn't, and the first time I watched it, a few months ago, I was completely confused. There was no synopsis in the program at the Kennedy Center so I was doubly confused. Why is Iago so angry? Why does he hate Othello? Then...I talked with my friend who had read the book, and things began to make a little more sense. I saw it again last night, and talked to some of the dancers about it afterwards, and got a little more insight into the story.
Again...this piece isn't really to get the nuances of the story, but more to set a mood, which I think it was successful in doing.
You make a valid point - but I think that if it was a 'mood' ballet, perhaps it should have been shorter. Like Jose Limon's Moor's Pavane. Just having us there for two and a half hours, I think more shading would have made the piece much more interesting.
i especially loved the pas de deux work; lubovitch has always been so great at choreographing twos and threes, like you mentioned.
the first act was waaay too long, i had wished that if lubovitch insisted on the comedienne dancers, give them something fun and exciting to do (like the pas de trois in Swan Lake). but other than that, I didn't mind the length that much.
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