THE PLACE TO PURSUE LIFE'S PASSIONS - Sarasota Ballet

TCHAIKOVSKY’S BALLET
FANTASY
We are told the way to hell is paved with
good intentions, and we know the often
unintentionally disastrous consequences
of well-meant interference. With tongue
in cheek and a knowing affection for the
great story ballets, Mr Hart has let loose
his imagination and sent Tchaikovsky’s
fictional alter ego and good intentions
to run amusingly amok through the composer’s
three famous ballets, naughtily
subverting the characters and narratives
of ballet’s great warhorses. If this is lése
majesté, at least we know the real-life
Tchaikovsky thought The Nutcracker‘s
plot downright silly, as he struggled to
give it musical expression.
Mr Hart’s fictional Tchaikovsky intervenes
with predictably chaotic results, to try and
force his ballet’s characters into a rational
happy ending. The cast enters formally to
a Polonaise, in traditional Russian Imperial
court style, and we are in The Sleeping
Beauty, where we see Tchaikovsky’s
efforts to prevent the vengeful christening
guest Carabosse from causing Aurora
to prick her finger on the spindle and fall
into her enchanted sleep. This has surprising
and disconcerting consequences,
with Prince Florimund reacting most unexpectedly,
and the composer being chased unceremoniously
out of his own ballet.
His next intervention is to manoeuvre Swan Lake’s
Prince Siegfried into accepting the bewitched heroine
Odette, instead of the wicked von Rothbart’s
black swan Odile; and here he is no more successful,
as his characters again assert their own personalities, dancing out
of his control once more.
Finally, Tchaikovsky leaves tragedy and enters The Nutcracker – but
as usual he causes comic mayhem, after “helping” Clara by knocking
the Nutcracker senseless and setting the Mouse King loose, to
indulge what one can only describe as a “consuming appetite” for
the Sugar Plum Fairy.
And now events lurch entirely out of poor Tchaikovsky’s control,
as his characters rush in and out of each others’ ballets and plots,
with almost farcical energy, and the situation becomes impossibly
fraught. Fortunately, this is Ballet, Mr Hart knows the rules, and everything
comes out all right in the end, to Tchaikovsky’s great relief
and everyone’s mutual satisfaction. Czardas finale; Prince gets Princess;
Prince gets Swan; Prince gets Fairy… and so, Happy Ever After!
PYOTR ILYICh TChAIkOvSkY
Tchaikovsky’s
Ballet Fantasy
28–30 October 2011
FSU Center for the Performing Arts
choreography Matthew Hart
music Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
first Performed by Images of dance
14 June 2011
Born in 1840, Tchaikovsky was the son of an engineer in Imperial
Russia’s mines and his second wife, who died of cholera in 1854, an
event that devastated the 14-year-old and inspired his first musical
composition. The musically precocious Pyotr started piano lessons
at 5 years old but his father was persuaded that his son had no
musical future, so Pyotr joined the civil service in the Ministry of
Justice, starting to study music from 1862-1865.
Like his brother Modest (a dramatist and writer), Pyotr was homosexual,
a fact of some importance to his life and music, as a result
of which he made an ill-considered, hasty marriage in 1877, within
two weeks of which he attempted suicide and the failure of which
brought on a nervous breakdown, although the creative result
first Performed by The Sarasota Ballet
28 October 2011
was the opera Eugene Onegin and his 4th
Symphony. From this point onwards, his
Russian contemporaries compared him
with the novelist Dostoevsky, detecting
an ambivalent and suffering identity in
the composer’s work.
Tchaikovsky’s creative career developed
with the patronage of a railway tycoon’s
widow, Nadezhda von Meck, who gave him
an annual subsidy for 13 years from 1877.
Tchaikovsky wrote 10 operas as well as
his famous 3 ballets: Swan Lake (1876),
The Sleeping Beauty (1889) and The Nutcracker
(1892). He also composed 7 symphonies,
4 orchestral suites and many
concerti, including his famous Violin Concerto
(1878) and three Piano Concerti.
In 1885 the Tsar ennobled Tchaikovsky for
his services to music, the composer settled
again in Russia after years of travel,
and there followed a triumphant international
conducting tour (1891-2) including
America, where the composer conducted
the opening concert at Carnegie Hall in
New York. In 1893 Cambridge University
awarded Tchaikovsky an honorary doctorate
and he died on 6 November,
shortly after the premiere of his 6th Symphony,
officially from cholera-infected
water, but possibly by suicide.
MATThEW hART
Dancer, actor, singer and choreographer, Matthew
Hart was born in Bedfordshire (UK) and trained at
Arts Educational School and the Royal Ballet School,
winning the Cosmopolitan/C & A Dance Award
(1988) and both Ursula Moreton and Frederick Ashton
Awards (1991 & 1994), as well as the 1996 Jerwood Foundation
Award for Choreography.
After five successful years with the Royal Ballet, dancing roles in
ballets by Fokine, Nijinska, de Valois, Ashton, Balanchine, MacMillan,
Tharp, Forsythe and Bintley, Matthew joined Rambert Dance
Company, where he continued choreographing and dancing roles
for Jiri Kylian, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, Didy Veldman, Ohad Naharin
and especially Christopher Bruce. Matthew has also danced
with Tetsuya Kumakawa’s K-Ballet, George Piper Dances, Arc Dance
Company, William Tuckett (Wind in the Willows, The Soldier’s Tale,
Pinocchio, The Thief of Baghdad and Pleasure’s Progress), Cathy Marston
(Asyla, Ghosts), New Adventures, playing The Prince in Matthew
Bourne’s Swan Lake and Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream
at Regent’s Park Theatre.
His film credits include Mrs Henderson Presents, Riot at the Rite and
Margot. His musical theatre appearances include On Your Toes with
Adam Cooper, and Babes in Arms (Chichester Festival) and he has
been a panellist on BBC TV’s Strictly Dance Fever.
Matthew’s choreographic credits are manifold and include: Peter
and the Wolf (Royal Ballet School and BBC TV), Fanfare, Cry Baby
Kreisler, Highly Strung and Dances with Death (Royal Ballet), Street
(Birmingham Royal Ballet), Blitz (English National Ballet), Meet in the
Middle (K-Ballet) and two full-length ballets, Cinderella (London City
Ballet) and Mulan (Hong Kong Ballet). More recently he has choreographed
Young Person’s Guide To The Orchestra and Tchaikovsky’s
Ballet Fantasy (Images of Dance), Whodunnit? (Ballet Central) and
Ballet Shoes (London Children’s Ballet).
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