Staatstheater Nürnberg Ballett: Maillot/León-Lightfoot

Staatstheater, Nuremberg
July 17, 2024

The double-bill of Jean-Christophe Maillot’s Les Noces, and Sol León and Paul Lightfoot’s Stop-Motion, may only contain around an hour’s dance, but it proved an evening laden with emotion and intensity. And a lot of fine dancing.

Originally made Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo in 2003, where he is director, then reworked in 2022, Maillot’s Les Noces focuses on the emotionality of the marriage vows, amidst a theme of joy and youth. The pace of the work, the sense of occasion and the power of Stravinsky’s Stravinsky’s large-scale orchestrated cantata make the work extremely expressive. It drives, it hammers along, rarely letting up.

While the work shifts from meeting through celebration to the wedding bed, there is no ceremony as such and the narrative is misty. There are clear characters, however. Leading matters, almost ever-present, are the bride and groom, danced terrifically by Lisa Van Cauwenbergh and Luca Branca, who convince as a young couple full of lust. Alongside them are the two sets of parents, and a supporting ensemble of six men and six women.

Jean-Michel Lainé’s costumes are unobtrusive. The bride and groom are in simple white, their parents in grey, and the others in black then white, all of which helps make the characters clear.

At first, there’s a distinct air of tension and curiosity, from the two leads and their parents, the latter especially coming with a distinct sense of uncertainty, of push and pull. But increasingly there’s a mood of celebration and joy. Great use is made of set designer Dominique Drillot’s huge table on rockers that becomes a wonderful prop, the performers leaping and dancing on it, sliding down it and more.

Maillot’s choreography is neoclassical-rooted and intensely physical. Company artistic director Goyo Montero reckoned it was an enormous challenge for his dancers to do justice to it. They succeed brilliantly.

Structurally, the work is a combination of powerful group numbers, full of symmetric patterns and from which the bride and groom frequently detach themselves, and marvellous family trios and duets. The choreography has a power and accent that matches the Stravinsky all the way.

The work builds and builds towards the end of the party before an atmospheric calm descends for the beautiful, quite poetic ending. Maillot never spares the intimacy of marriage, and the end sees the on-stage walls close in on the bride and groom as if they are those of their bedroom. She is raised high on a S-shaped wedding bed that reaches upwards, before we leave them in intimate embrace on the floor.

Stop-Motion by Sol León and Paul Lightfoot, best known for their work with Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT) is a very personal, very emotionally charged piece. Set to eleven musical selections from the oeuvre of Max Richter and backed by incredibly expressive video projections, the cast of eight lead us through an process of farewell.

The work is multi-layered. At the time of its creation in 2014, disputes among The Hague’s city politicians meant that NDT found its home set to be demolished, meaning the loss of all production facilities. That the situation affected the artistic mood and process was inevitable.

On top of that, León and Lightfoot’s teenage daughter, Saura, was at the age when the innocence of childhood was giving way to the realities of adult life. She had accompanied her parents frequently to the studio and theatre but they knew the time was fast coming when they would have to let go.

And, for all the Nuremberg company’s fabulous dancing, it is Saura who dominates the work. For long periods, the choreography and the way it is perceived is influenced by a huge projection of her dressed in a black robe on a screen hanging above. She frequently appears to be looking down at the action below. At one point, a tear is clearly visible rolling down a cheek as she fiddles with a necklace. On stage, Alisa Unzunova wears a similar dress with a long train until she frees herself from it. The metaphor is clear.

Also shaping the work is Max Richter’s intensely emotional music. Full of beauty and depth, it’s warm yet melancholic. León and Lightfoot use the compositions skilfully to create expressive, emotional solos and duets. The refined and delicate choreography itself comes with an enigmatic hue, the combination of contemporary and neoclassical movement invariably symbolic rather than literal. Stop-Motion enthrals totally.

There are so many gorgeous moments. In the third section, to ‘He is Here’ and under the gaze of Saura, Lisa van Cauwenbergh and Lucas Axel seem especially melancholic. Intended or not, there is a deep sense of looking back, as if the dancers below are from the past.

‘November’ features a duet for the ever-outstanding van Cawenbergh and Mackenzie Meldrum, full of complex lifts and supports but all so smoothly performed they seem as natural as the breath. In the accompanying projection of a man falling through water, the air bubbles created look like tears.

A surprise comes when part of the dance floor is removed to reveal a chalky white powder that swirls and flies in clouds as Edward Nunes and then the other performers dance.

Among it all, Uzunova and Óscar Alonso repeatedly come together, including in a long, what feels more hopeful duet at the end, and that is accompanies by a projection of a hawk in flight. As the wings and walls slide away and the light comes up, it has to be read as a sign of freedom. In a way for all, perhaps.