WAVES AND CIRCLES

Whether we think of the word ‘wave’ in relation to a shoreline, a radio or a football stadium, the idea of energy is always involved. An energy that seeks its own path and creates an impression of vitality. Waves often spread out in circles, radiating outwards from a centre in all directions. In the Waves and Circles triple bill, waves and circles play a role in different ways – they are sung about, visible or tangible.

William Forsythe's ballet Blake Works I, created in 2016, is based on seven songs by British singer James Blake. While the lyrics of the songs are introverted and the sounds are fragile and playful, Forsythe's choreography, informed by classical French dance technique, provides a sophisticated counterpoint, featuring speed, brilliance and virtuosity.

Canadian choreographer Emma Portner is creating for a German company for the first time. Her creation Megahertz is based on a 22-minute song by British musician Paddy McAloon. The song presents the account of a woman's life, in which the boundary between reality and fiction is blurred. The female solo part in Portner's new piece is a choreographic counterpart to the narrating voice, alongside six other characters – strangers, figures and ghosts – that pass through this iteration of the woman’s story.

Maurice Ravel's orchestral piece Boléro (1928) may be best known today from the concert hall, but it originally accompanied a ballet. In 1961, Maurice Béjart presented a choreography that set new standards. Béjart's version takes up the structure of Ravel's music: the person dancing in the middle on a table embodies the melody, while the others forming a circle around the centre embody the rhythm. Béjart said: ‘I wanted to bring out the melody that keeps coming to the fore and rolls in tirelessly like a wave.’

James Blake’s third album, The Colour in Anything, was released in May 2016. In July that very year William Forsythe had already produced his piece Blake Works I at the Ballet de l’Opéra national de Paris, choreographed around seven of the album’s songs.  Forsythe was therefore truly working with absolutely brand new music. And the fascination with Blake’s voice and the ethereal sounds of his songs continued. Forsythe has since created four more pieces set to music by James Blake, either for dancers and audiences in a venue or for the digital sphere.

A further album of importance for Waves and Circles appeared in 2003, entitled, I trawl the Megahertz. Behind this album is the British musician Paddy McAloon, who, with the album’s re-release in 2019 took on the name of his old band, Prefab Sprout. Due to an eye disease McAloon simply had to listen to the radio for a good while. The sounds on the airwaves and turning the tuner on the radio with snippets of music and snatches of sentences in many ways left their mark on the album and also explain the title. The opening track blows away conventions on several levels. It is 22 minutes long, and instead of singing delivers instrumental sounds with an “overvoicing” in English on a text by McAloon. This exceptional musical creation is the motor for Emma Portner for her new choreography with the Bayerisches Staatsballett.

Maurice Ravel wrote his world famous Boléro in 1928, and actually due to an emergency, as the dancer Ida Rubinstein had asked him for a piece of ballet music, so the original plan had to be abandoned due to no fault of his own. Bronislava Nijinska, Vaslav Nijinsky’s sister, created the choreography set to Ravel’s unique music, with which a two-piece melody is constantly repeated for an entire quarter of an hour over an evenly drummed rhythm.   A magnificent crescendo is produced by changing the instrumentation and increasing the volume. Driven by Ravel’s unstoppable rising music, in his own words, Maurice Béjart relates a “story of desire”. Originally, a single woman danced in the centre on a table, surrounded by a horde of men. The gender relations can also be turned around since 1979.