Staatsballett Berlin: 2 Chapters Love

Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin
November 30, 2024

The second double-bill of the Staatsballett Berlin’s autumn season brings together another pairing of leading contemporary choreographers. The evening takes its title from Sharon Eyal’s work, but first Stars Like Moths. One of Sol León’s first solo works, although Paul Lightfoot co-designed the set with her, it has an intensely personal feel, but where meaning is sometimes obscure.

It opens suggestively, Polina Semionova walking along the raised front of the stage, sitting, and putting on a pair of black stilettos on. Using dramatic arm gestures and to ‘Don’t Cry Baby’ by Etta James, she starts her story, only for a man to emerge from under the stage, extended over the pit, giving those in the front rows a seriously close-up view. He politely offers her a piece of water melon from a slice. You sense she knows she shouldn’t take it, but she can’t resist, only to then see him devour the rest of it himself. While it’s easy to read the dancer as Léon herself, what it all means is anyone’s guess.

Stars Like Moths is a very personal ballet about memories recalled in a series of dance vignettes, each populated by what appear to be ghosts, dancers drawn to the studio and the stage like moths are drawn to a flame. Thoughts, feelings, moments, all flicker and then vanish as we are shown transient moments from a life.

The music is similarly a collage of eleven pieces. Besides the opening song there’s the Stabat Mater, J.S. Bach, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Ólafur Arnalds, Max Richter, and Jean-Philippe Rameau.

As Ennya Larmit’s rather beautiful tree animation grows on a black backing curtain, people emerge from its leaves and branches. Below is a duet for Martin ten Kortenaar and Loïck Pireaux, which feels like two friends talking.

Larmit’s projection might be impressive but the designs get even better, that curtain rising to reveal a strange ballet studio full of warped perspectives that play tricks with distance and line.

Other duets fascinate too. Danielle Muir ‘flies’ as she is supported by ten Kortenaar, who is to the fore again in dances with Haruka Sassa, and an extended duet towards the end with Semionova. But while dancers might inhabit the same physical space, common to all these sections is a lack of emotional connection. That’s not to say the work does not carry emotion. It does, but from the way transmits atmosphere and mood as it speaks to the viewer.

Those duets sometimes flow, often drawing on ballet technique but Léon constantly introduces moments that disrupt including dancers gesturing powerfully, sticking out their tongues and repeatedly shouting “Mama.”

While one can attach meaning to some scenes, others are rather more obscure. Among the more inaccessible is of Semionova, sitting calmly, being showered with flour by Alexei Orlenco. It is oddly poetic, though.

But that meaning is less than clear is perhaps understandable. As Léon says in the programme, memories are very personal. They often appear not as things actually were, but how they appear to our attention at any given moment.

Created for the Staatsballett in 2023, Sharon Eyal’s 2 Chapters Love is an extension of her Love Chapter 2 from six years previous. It is full of Eyal and co-choreographer Gai Behar’s usual aesthetic but it also references the classical ballet vocabulary and repertory quite heavily.

It opens with a solo by the terrific Danielle Muir, who leads the piece. A living, breathing work of art, she stretches, twists and turns. Her back arches dramatically as she moulds herself into sculptural shape after sculptural shape, her body as pliable as plasticine. The level of detail, right down to her fingertips, is astounding.

Initially alone, she’s eventually shadowed by two dancers bourréeing in the smoky background. When the large ensemble of twenty-plus dancers appears, they march in formation, driven on by Ori Lichtik’s usual techno beats, although here softened a little by a violin.

Eyal makes no distinction between men and women. With everyone in nude skin-tight body suits and tiaras that hint at Ancient Greece, the dancers are androgynous. Just people. Some carry delicate quivers on their backs, which conjures an association with Eros.

As the group pushes on around the stage, they sweep Muir and the other two up. It’s as if individuality is not welcome here. But, determinedly, one always seems to ‘escape’ the massed ranks.

When the dancers get close together, the seem to move as one. There’s an ecstasy as if we are watching a group of ravers. Increasingly, one starts to see nods to other ballets, most notably Swan Lake, however.

As she dances in front of the group, it is impossible not to see Muir as a broken Odette backed by a cohort of unusual swans. Although sometimes shadowed by another dancer, as in the opening, Muir is frequently isolated. If this is love, it seems to be a somewhat lonely place.

Eyal even uses swan arms on several occasions, their delicacy in contrast to the rest of the movement. It is intense and beautiful. Unusual, strange movement and shapes make you want to look. The movement seems to come from deep inside.

It all makes for a fascinating thirty minutes. 2 Chapters Love may be full of ‘classic’ Eyal but, in many ways, it also feels very much an ode to classical ballet.