Tag: Saint Matthew Passion

Photo by Gregory Batardon

~ Author: Oberon

Tuesday April 24th, 2018 – Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève have brought Swedish choreographer Pontus Lidberg’s abstract take on Johann Sebastian Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion – UNE AUTRE PASSION – to The Joyce.

Pontus’s trademark flowing – and fluent – choreography is beautifully executed by the Geneva dancers, and – needless to say – the music is sublime. The audience seemed literally enthralled by the production, in which some stunning underwater film segments add a striking visual dimension.

Pontus turns to the classic 1959 Karl Richter recording of the Saint Matthew Passion, featuring the legendary Dietrich Fisher-Dieskau and the no less marvelous Hertha Töpper; the choreographer excludes the recitatives, assembling a soundscape of choruses and arias. He does not attempt a narrative of the story of Christ’s final hours, but rather an abstract essay in movement on the theme of the Passion, full of desire, uncertainty, and consolation.

At curtain-rise, six tall white panels form a wall at the back of the dancing area. Overhead, shadowy clouds hover and moonlight pierces the gloom. The dancers emerge, all in white: their skirts, trousers, shirts, and tank-tops are not gender-specific. They dance en ensemble.

The moveable panels become part of the choreography as the dancers slide them about the space; illusions are conveyed when one dancer vanishes behind a moving panel to be replaced by another as the panel slips away. The wall re-forms and the dancers crash into it.

Now the film begins: white mannequins stand under the water as a nude man swims lyrically among them…could the swimmer be the choreographer himself? From time to time, the film continues throughout the ballet. The mannequins get dis-assembled, and later the ‘lamb of god’ appears to float by in the guise of a stuffed creature.

The panels are transformed into slides, the dancers sliding down while colleagues dance a stylized ritual; solo passages, and a male ensemble, continue the endless fluidity of movement. A luminous passage shows the dancers in silhouette, like a living frieze. This gives way to a walking motif as groups of dancers cross the space – urgently – in regimented order.

At the heart of UNE AUTRE PASSION is a pas de deux performed to the great aria ‘Erbarme dich‘, sung by Ms. Töpper. The couple (I’m sorry to say I am not sure of the dancers’ names) move hypnotically; the woman has a solo and then they are reunited, only to part again. Then the man dances alone, seeking among the moving panels until he finds her again. 

Now one by one the dancers remove their outer garments. The movement is stylized, filled with gestures of supplication. From solo and duet phrases, the dancers slowly assemble, lying in a row upon the floor along the side of the space. The panels are then formed into a wall, enclosing the bodies. A single man now seeks entry into this repository of souls; a second man prevents him, and their duet becomes yet another memorable passage in this deeply moving ballet. 

The dancers re-assemble in a swaying motion; a male solo follows as the music becomes a hymn. The voice of Dietrich Fisher-Dieskau fills the space as we wait breathlessly to see how this Passion will conclude. The wall now stands along stage left, and the dancers approach it – at first walking, then running, then rushing. They pound on the surface, pray before it, collide with it, collapse at its feet: but the wall remains impenetrable.

“We are living through a very hard time, our gift is to be alive,” said Pontus Lidberg in an interview during the creation of UNE AUTRE PASSION. In this ballet, Bach’s immortal music and the poetry of the dance that it has evoked feel like an affirmation of life: a refuge of beauty in a darkening world.

The ballet ends with a naked man standing before the paneled wall. Has he been shut out of heaven, or does his vulnerable presence mark the dawn of a new day, freed of the hypocrisy, hatred, and oppression that have undermined the great religions?

~ Oberon