A Night at the Ballet

Went to see the famous Cullberg Ballet on Monday evening. I was a bit sceptical about the whole thing the first ten minutes or so (talking to Peter afterwards he told me that he had been thinking exactly the same) but then it picked up or perhaps we simply got used to the style. For those of you not familiar with Cullberg they put on very modern interpretations of famous ballets or their own very special repertoires.

The second scene (or whatever you call it; there were no proper breaks but you could tell there were different parts to the story...if there was a story) was very dramatic. The music got faster and louder and heavier and the dancing got more hectic and chaos-like. It was very emotional and I felt like my heart was going to beat faster and faster. I was thinking that someone in the audience is going to have a heart attack or a mental breakdown soon. It reminded me of the time I went to see the Kristina från Duvemåla musical and someone in the audience started screaming "help" and "turn the lights on" in the middle of a dramatic scene where Kristina almost dies during child birth. It was a woman screaming so I thought she had perhaps experienced something similar or had a post partum depression or similar, but it turned out to be her husband who had collapsed. They had to stop the show for about 20 minutes while the ambulance came. Fortunately it didn't seem to be life-threatening, as he was conscious when they took him outside.

But back to the ballet. Some of the other scenes were equally interesting but in different ways. While that scene hit my emotional buttons I interpreted the rest of the scenes to be about - though I could be totally wrong of course - modern life. There was one that seemed to show the stress of modern life, how we run everywhere, both in terms of things we want to accomplish, and literally, from work to pre-school to pick up our children. One scene seemed to be a fight between four men (or two against two) and another one about the competition in the work place or in business - about how we either support or fight each other or go it alone.

There was also a interesting snogging (making out for the non-Brits among you) scene where the couple danced and kissed at the same time. It was pretty cool how they were able to dance and stay mouth-to-mouth so-to-speak the whole time (almost). That scene started with each cast member kissing the guy, either on the cheek or the mouth, before the woman he made out with entered the scene. My yet again amateur interpretation of that was that the others were all the people that pass through your life before you meet the right one.

The title of the ballet was "Positions of Elsewhere", which made me think of how we humans sometimes want to be elsewhere or aspire to things, or think the grass is greener. That reinforced my interpretation of it being scenes of modern life.

Walking home I told Peter about all my theories and it was interesting to hear that he hadn't really tried to understand what it was about or interpret anything. He had just enjoyed the movement and the dancers' skills, the art form if you like. But he said that of course I could be right :)

I enjoyed the dancing too of course. I mean, this is one of the best ballets in the world and it's not just because of the modern choreography, etc. The way they moved their bodies and how they interacted with each other was amazing. There were several scenes, or parts of scenes, where they either worked with shadows on the back wall of the stage or had one dancer acting (dancing, I guess) the other person's shadow, which was pretty cool (well, the shadow dancer was not as good as she could have been but the idea was good). I also liked when in one of the scenes two or three people rolled on the floor and another one "walked" over them. It was syncronised so well so that it looked so natural, like floating. It's hard to explain it but hopefully you get an idea of what I mean.

We also loved the ceiling lamp that was the only decor on stage and we want to make a miniature copy for ourselves! I wish I could explain what it looked like...well, I'll try. It was like circles within circles and the circles moved so that sometimes all circles were aligned at the same level but most of the time the circles were all different and sometimes more up on the left side and sometimes on the right side. The lighting came in different colours and strength. We would obviously not be able to have an electronically controlled lamp but we could have cables or strings that we could adjust once in a while. Any lamp designers out there who can help us?!

The Cullberg Ballet is only in town this week so if you want to see them, you'd better hurry up! Tickets from Dansens hus or Ticnet.