Scottish Ballet, 17/10/2019
Peter Salem : The Crucible
Artists of Scottish Ballet
Scottish Ballet Orchestra
Daniel Parkinson
Scottish Ballet premiered The Crucible in August at the Edinburgh Festival, and they are now reaching the end of their Autumn tour of the ballet around Scotland. I just managed to catch one of the last shows, in Edinburgh, of a work that has been highly praised in the press.
I don't quite know whether it's an advantage, or a disadvantage, that I saw the play live just a couple of years ago, and the memory is still quite fresh. It's an advantage in that the detail of the play is still available to me, making a reading of the dance even easier that it might have been otherwise. It's a disadvantage because of what has more or less had to be done to the piece in order to make it into a ballet. The thing about dance is that, while it can certainly be abstract, in and of itself, it has difficulty expressing abstractions. Because you're working without words, and with bodies, concepts, ideals, have to be anthropomorphised, one way or another, and dance usually functions best at expressing the interaction between characters - I won't say people, because the dancers could be representing animals, or insects, or stars... but they're still characters, they have personalities, and traits that are emphasised so that certain concepts can find a visual expression in the interaction of bodies.
While in Miller's play, the people, the individuals, are certainly important, they are also there to illustrate a socio-political allegory. Miller wasn't really talking about the1692 Salem witch trials, but Helen Pickett, in choreographing this play, really is. Pretty well all of that parallel dimension, whether it's to 1953, or to the present day, is gone, what we're left with is a fictionalised account of a singular event in history, with little or no resonance except for what we know and give it ourselves, but it's not actually on stage.
As a 'whole evening' ballet, the work is on the shortish side, around 70 minutes. A good part of the first act is actually spent showing us scenes Miller refers to, but never shows - Proctor's adultery with Abigail, the scene in the woods where the girls are caught dancing naked by Reverend Parris. Abigail, vividly portrayed by Constance Devernay, benefits from a greater degree of character development. On the other hand, we lose almost completely the significance and the development of Reverend Hale, who is just wallpaper, or almost, here, where in the play it's his view of the proceedings that forms the basis of much of Miller's commentary on events.
We never get all that much sense of Proctor's sense of self, of the importance of his identity, his name, that makes him reject a false confession and accept the gallows at the end, and there's no 'side' to the prosecutor Danforth, who benefits from some splendidly explosive choreography, admirably delivered by Constant Vigier, but remains a purely intractable figure from the moment he steps on stage to the end, where the character in the play can be given so much more depth than that. Elizabeth Proctor, on the other hand, has a dignity that her stage version can sometimes struggle to project - when the words come into play, her self-doubts become almost over-powering, but without them, she keeps a grace that is welcome to her, and was well delivered by Bethany Kingley-Garner.
So we are left with a tale of love, lust and revenge, fairly typical ballet fodder, in truth, and well enough told, in simple period dress, and a stark set dominated by a large panel at the rear, which can be a wall bearing a large cross, or a kind of extended skylight, with basic props - tables and chairs - coming and going as needed. The lighting is very evocative, very well conceived.
The composer might have seemed predestined to write the music for this ballet, given his name, but Peter Salem has already provided Scottish Ballet with a score for a narrative ballet, A Streetcar Named Desire. There's a similar sense of a soundscape, more than a score, here, because there's an electronic component of nature sounds and occasional vocals added, but the orchestral part is more original, with quite a bit of expressive writing for lower strings, cellos and violas, and the debt to Philip Glass is less evident.
This is, on the whole, a strong ballet. Pickett's choreography has an organic quality, it never seems artificial, the dancers move with an easy, natural quality, and with gestures that are explicit without ever falling into the archaic routine of mime. The company as a whole looks excellent, clean, crisp, strong dancing, falling in and out of the required patterns fluidly and effortlessly. Also notable in the cast was Rishan Benjamin's exotic but hapless Tituba, the first blamed, the first doomed, purely because of her colour. However, it's perhaps best not to think too much of Miller's play, except in the broadest sense, because there is a whole dimension missing here, that can only be provided by the viewer's own memory of the play and its significance, and is not actually present in the ballet.
The illicit sexuality, the irrational fear of the paranormal, the paranoia and the overwhelming desire to be part of the group, or the majority, all of that is there, and is relevant. Abigail's trajectory is much clearer, and very welcome, and Tituba, who we barely see in the play, has gained a welcome substance, but the others have not. I enjoyed the evening, but I was not chilled to the bone, the way the play succeeds in doing.
[Next : 20th October]
Artists of Scottish Ballet
Scottish Ballet Orchestra
Daniel Parkinson
Scottish Ballet premiered The Crucible in August at the Edinburgh Festival, and they are now reaching the end of their Autumn tour of the ballet around Scotland. I just managed to catch one of the last shows, in Edinburgh, of a work that has been highly praised in the press.
I don't quite know whether it's an advantage, or a disadvantage, that I saw the play live just a couple of years ago, and the memory is still quite fresh. It's an advantage in that the detail of the play is still available to me, making a reading of the dance even easier that it might have been otherwise. It's a disadvantage because of what has more or less had to be done to the piece in order to make it into a ballet. The thing about dance is that, while it can certainly be abstract, in and of itself, it has difficulty expressing abstractions. Because you're working without words, and with bodies, concepts, ideals, have to be anthropomorphised, one way or another, and dance usually functions best at expressing the interaction between characters - I won't say people, because the dancers could be representing animals, or insects, or stars... but they're still characters, they have personalities, and traits that are emphasised so that certain concepts can find a visual expression in the interaction of bodies.
While in Miller's play, the people, the individuals, are certainly important, they are also there to illustrate a socio-political allegory. Miller wasn't really talking about the1692 Salem witch trials, but Helen Pickett, in choreographing this play, really is. Pretty well all of that parallel dimension, whether it's to 1953, or to the present day, is gone, what we're left with is a fictionalised account of a singular event in history, with little or no resonance except for what we know and give it ourselves, but it's not actually on stage.
As a 'whole evening' ballet, the work is on the shortish side, around 70 minutes. A good part of the first act is actually spent showing us scenes Miller refers to, but never shows - Proctor's adultery with Abigail, the scene in the woods where the girls are caught dancing naked by Reverend Parris. Abigail, vividly portrayed by Constance Devernay, benefits from a greater degree of character development. On the other hand, we lose almost completely the significance and the development of Reverend Hale, who is just wallpaper, or almost, here, where in the play it's his view of the proceedings that forms the basis of much of Miller's commentary on events.
We never get all that much sense of Proctor's sense of self, of the importance of his identity, his name, that makes him reject a false confession and accept the gallows at the end, and there's no 'side' to the prosecutor Danforth, who benefits from some splendidly explosive choreography, admirably delivered by Constant Vigier, but remains a purely intractable figure from the moment he steps on stage to the end, where the character in the play can be given so much more depth than that. Elizabeth Proctor, on the other hand, has a dignity that her stage version can sometimes struggle to project - when the words come into play, her self-doubts become almost over-powering, but without them, she keeps a grace that is welcome to her, and was well delivered by Bethany Kingley-Garner.
So we are left with a tale of love, lust and revenge, fairly typical ballet fodder, in truth, and well enough told, in simple period dress, and a stark set dominated by a large panel at the rear, which can be a wall bearing a large cross, or a kind of extended skylight, with basic props - tables and chairs - coming and going as needed. The lighting is very evocative, very well conceived.
 |
| The Company in The Crucible Scottish Ballet (© Andy Ross, 2019) |
The composer might have seemed predestined to write the music for this ballet, given his name, but Peter Salem has already provided Scottish Ballet with a score for a narrative ballet, A Streetcar Named Desire. There's a similar sense of a soundscape, more than a score, here, because there's an electronic component of nature sounds and occasional vocals added, but the orchestral part is more original, with quite a bit of expressive writing for lower strings, cellos and violas, and the debt to Philip Glass is less evident.
This is, on the whole, a strong ballet. Pickett's choreography has an organic quality, it never seems artificial, the dancers move with an easy, natural quality, and with gestures that are explicit without ever falling into the archaic routine of mime. The company as a whole looks excellent, clean, crisp, strong dancing, falling in and out of the required patterns fluidly and effortlessly. Also notable in the cast was Rishan Benjamin's exotic but hapless Tituba, the first blamed, the first doomed, purely because of her colour. However, it's perhaps best not to think too much of Miller's play, except in the broadest sense, because there is a whole dimension missing here, that can only be provided by the viewer's own memory of the play and its significance, and is not actually present in the ballet.
The illicit sexuality, the irrational fear of the paranormal, the paranoia and the overwhelming desire to be part of the group, or the majority, all of that is there, and is relevant. Abigail's trajectory is much clearer, and very welcome, and Tituba, who we barely see in the play, has gained a welcome substance, but the others have not. I enjoyed the evening, but I was not chilled to the bone, the way the play succeeds in doing.
[Next : 20th October]