Classical music is occasionally terrifying, often thrilling and always charged with risk, but it’s rarely death-defying in a literal sense. Watching the acrobats of Australian troupe Circa hurtling head-first down a 20ft pole towards the floor, only the grip of their thighs between them and a broken neck, inspired all kinds of emotions. But these were less to do with either the erotic tension of Ravel’s myth-inspired ballet Daphnis and Chloé or the doom-laden dancing-on-the-edge-of-the-abyss of the composer’s La Valse and more an overwhelming desire that no one die during the course of the evening.
No clapping, we were instructed, should interrupt the flow of the performance at the Royal Festival Hall, obscuring the music from the London Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Singers and conductor Edward Gardner – Circa’s game collaborators. This, it was made clear, wasn’t circus in any traditional sense; it was art. Thing is, I’m not sure that’s true.
I think Gardner and the LPO revelled in Ravel’s sensuous waves of colours, seized his abrupt slashes of rhythm, conjured one of classical music’s most astonishing dawns with the power only 130 players can muster. But I can’t be certain, because when bodies are flying all over a very hard, very narrow stage (inches from both audience and orchestra), women are tumbling from suspended silks and men trembling with the exertion of supporting three or four colleagues on their shoulders, it’s hard to concentrate on much else.
There may not have been a lion tamer or a big top, but this was good old-fashioned entertainment – trading physical feats for heart-pounding pay-off. Circa’s acrobats are endlessly skilful and strong, but as a conversation with Ravel’s two expressive scores they had little to say.
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Director and designer Yaron Lifschitz has described the plot of Diaghilev’s original ballet as “almost nonsensical”. But whatever you make of the star-crossed Greek lovers, pirates, long-lost parents and gods that supply its action, cutting out narrative altogether leaves a void at the centre of the piece, reducing the score to background music – a dangerous start to the Southbank’s new Multitudes festival, a series of genre-crossing encounters between the venue’s resident orchestras and other art forms.
There were visual nods to themes – the endless sensuous permutation of two partnered human bodies, male rivalry and dominance in Daphnis, disintegrating structures and collapse in La Valse – but they lasted little longer than the contortions that conveyed them. By the end, we were left wrung out by nervous tension, thrilled by daring and extremity, but emotionally under-nourished, maybe even longing for a pirate or two.
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