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(Dance Review) STOCKHOLM/59 DEGREES NORTH
8.4.05
JACOB'S PILLOW DANCE
STOCKHOLM/59 DEGREES NORTH
Ted Shawn Theatre
August 3-7, 2005
STOCKHOLM/59 DEGREES NORTH is an offshoot of the world's oldest ballet company, part of the Royal Swedish Ballet, giving some of its more adventurous dancers the chance to stretch out and exercise their more modern and contemporary inclinations. In a rare appearance in the U.S. this week, the troupe displays what happens when you bottle up these tendencies into the tight discipline of classical ballet, and it gets unleashed all at once.
The result, as seen in the first half of their evening in the Ted Shawn Theatre (near exhaustion prohibited this dancegoer from remaining for the whole evening past intermission), was a spectacular display of virtuosic dance technique applied to highly personalized movements in a light and at times comical bit of choreography.
The first dance, "In My Dream Team" (2003), choreographed by Jorma Elo to music by von Weber, interposed documentary film footage comprised of interviews with the dancers' mothers and how they feel about their sons becoming dancers with loosely related vignettes that seemed to speak to their own personal feelings about the joys of discovering dancers, discovering the opposite sex (a theme of several of their biogrpahies), and becoming dancers. The comedy came in the way in which they used their subtle yet sophisticated ballet technique in the service of dancing about learning about dance. Far from turning inward upon itself, it was a tender and evocative portrait of artists as young men -- and one woman.
Next up was "Pas de Danse" (1991), choreographed by Mats Ek and danced to Swedish folk music. First up was a solo male dancing to a harmonica tune that sounded like the equivalent of a Swedish Delta blues. The character became something of a figure of pathos, almost Chaplinesque, until a girl in a blue dress vied for his attention. Another pair then came out and injected a dose of energy into the dance, which took on a circusy aspect. The movements were very evocative of social folk dancing, their moves and sensibility filtered through the scrim of the classical vocabulary and formalism in order to approach dance's origins in folk culture.
The second half of the program included "By the Painless Arrow of Artemis" (2005), choreographed by Virpi Pakhinen with music by Roger Ludvigsen; "Come Out" (2003), choreographed by Orjan Andersson with music by Steve Reich; and "Carmen?!" (1994), choreographed by Kenneth Kvarnstrom, with music by Rodion Shehederin.
Another terrific weekend of dance at the Pillow.
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