Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

At Swim, Two Boys

We went to the local theatre last night. We had tickets to see "At Swim, Two Boys" – a dance work produced by Earthfall, in collaboration with Jamie O’Neill, who wrote the book of the same name. The book is huge and complex. It is set around the time of the Easter Uprising in Ireland (1916), and concerns the love emerging between two teenage boys, while reflecting that through the society, and in particular the character of Anthony MacMurrough, who is a less than disinterested observer.
 
With such a scope, it was inevitable that the dance piece had to cleave to the central image of the book – two boys meeting on the shore and swimming – and ditch practically all of the rest. With just two dancers, how could it be otherwise. The Uprising was hinted at through the use of film, and formed the mainspring of the dance’s climax.
 
The staging was very well done – there was real water, and plenty of it. We were in the front row, and got sprayed a number of times by the dancers. Music was provided by two musicians who created a sound palette worthy of an orchestra.
 
This was not classical dance – this was grittily physical, acrobatic choreography, in the style of DV8. I enjoyed it, although it was less to Martin’s taste.
 
The subject matter seemed to have attracted the attention of the local gay male population as well, I don’t think I’ve ever seen quite so many gay male couples sitting in an audience in Gouda before…
 
After the performance, we got chatting to the director of the theatre (Martin knows her quite well, since he has had a number of performances of his ballet school held in the theatre). She invited us into the main auditorium of the theatre where the Nederlands Dans Theater were just about to perform their final piece in their programme: Chapeau. This was much more to Martin’s taste – a witty ballet celebrating Queen Beatrix’s well-known love of hats. I enjoyed it as well, the choreographer Jiri Kilian has produced a sugar and spice bonbon fit for a queen (and queens).

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2 responses to “At Swim, Two Boys”

  1. Michael Avatar
    Michael

    Okay, I’ll bite. How does a ballet become "witty"? I ask quite seriuosly and in total ignorance, having never actually been to a ballet. (Opera, yes. Plays, yes. Dances, no.) I understood ballet to be largely instrumental accompaniment to dance – how is wit conveyed?

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  2. Geoff Avatar
    Geoff

    Hmm, OK, here’s my attempt at replying… First, let’s define the word. Thus: wit is defined as e.g. (a) "a message whose ingenuity or verbal skill or incongruity has the power to evoke laughter" or (b) "Wit is a form of intellectual humour based on manipulation of concepts, a wit is someone who excels in witty remarks".OK, Kilian’s choreography is, in effect a message (you must have heard the expression "the language of dance"?) and Chapeau is an ingeniously-choreographed ballet, stuffed full of incongruity (both the men and the women are wearing flouncy gold dresses, for a start). Kilian’s skill as a choreographer allowed him to construct a series of dance statements that were both pleasing to the eye, ingenious and incongruous – with the result that Chapeau was judged by the audience to be a witty ballet, and Kilian is a wit.. How’s that?Really, though, the best way to appreciate it is to see it. I feel that I’m trying to describe colour to a blind man…I see that Matthew Bourne’s version of "The Nutcracker" is available on DVD from Amazon in the US. You could do worse than buying or renting that. Bourne is another choreographer who is capable of wit, and it’s displayed to great effect in his version of the ballet.

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