I was also excited because I fondly believed it was my first time seeing the Cullberg Ballet. It would be some days before I remembered that I did, in fact, see the Cullberg Ballet in 2002 when they brought Mats Ek's Swan Lake to Perth. Not sure how I could have forgotten this as it is a seminal work. Oh well. On the plus side I felt better when I remembered that I had seen the Cullberg before because I was feeling pretty ripped off that my sole experience of the Cullberg Ballet live should be so... underwhelming.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Deborah Hay was part of the Judson Group - a group of choreographers in New York whose experiments with postmodernism in the 1960s had a massive impact on the evolution of contemporary dance. I'm a fan of the Judson Group and love teaching my first year dance history students about the movement. That said, I was slightly surprised that the Cullberg in combination with Deborah Hay would be part of Tanz im August... after all both are established entities and I kinda imagined Tanz im August would be more about newness. Then I felt like maybe I was being unfair... after all just because a choreographer has been around a while doesn't mean their ideas can't be new.
Well, the ideas were not new. In the 1960s the Judson Group was playing with pedestrian movement, with democracy of movement, with ordinary, everyday movements... the Judson members were about rejecting the idea that dance should be about spectacle or spectacular technique. Figure a Sea is about all those things. It is pedestrian, it is repetitive. The movement is not dancerly. There was little to show off the beautiful dancers of the Cullberg Ballet, just occasional glimpses.
I admit, I would have probably enjoyed it more had I not been hampered by jet-lag. Watching dancers drift about the stage with minimal variation in dynamic, my eyes kept abruptly closing. Perhaps it is the kind of work that in my normal, highly strung state I would have found meditative? Who can say.
Reading the program the next day (it is my practice, when I am not reviewing, to read the program after seeing the show*) I had slightly more empathy for the work. "Within Figure a Sea, the dancer and the stage are considered a sea of endless possibilities," says the program. Nice. An interview with Deborah Hay and an article about Figure a Sea revealed that I find the ideas behind the work far more engaging than the work itself... in particular, the idea of finding new ways of viewing movement, fresh angles of perception.
On the way home I fell fast asleep on the train. It was a liberating experience. I never normally sleep in public places.
*A good work should speak for itself but when I am reviewing I feel it is unfair to the director not to read whatever is provided prior to viewing.