Thomas Ades / composer and conductor; Wayne McGregor/choreography; designs/Tacita Dean; lighting designer/ Lucy Carter; dramaturg/ Uzma Hameed
I am not a balletomane, and I have never been to the ballet at Covent Garden before. My reason for going to this performance was mainly to hear the music for The Dante Project, composed, and, on this occasion, conducted by Thomas Ades (he’s conducting for the first 5 performances of its run) – and receiving only its 3rd ever performance. It is one of his most substantial pieces, running for nearly 2 hours of music, and the orchestra is huge – what looked quadruple woodwind, lots of percussion and brass.
I really enjoyed Ades’ music, and the visuals for the ballet for the most part were stunning. I’m afraid – and I am sure the fault is mine, so that should be borne in mind in all that follows – I still find, as I always have done, that the actual dancing and choreography is quite confusing, in terms of what’s going on. There is clearly a code of signifying movements I have yet to crack, but I could make little of what was happening in terms of working out what the dancers were thinking and feeling, and what their movements were designed to be expressing. Part of this in Act 1 may have been the difficulty of conveying some of the Hellish cameos in dance-form, possibly….
The Dante Project is – as one might expect – split into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. Inferno is much the longest – about 50 minutes – and Purgatorio and Paradiso are each about 30 minutes. Each ‘act’ has a very different visual feel – Act 1 is dark and lowering, Act 2 is green, bright and penitential, while Act 3 is a blaze of colour and whirring rings and globes
I found the music gripping and absorbing. Inferno has lots of pastiche – Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and others; it has marvellously strong rhythms, whooping horns, sliding trombones, stomping drums and is immensely – one can feel – danceable; there are lots of downwards glissandi at various points, appropriate to Hell, I guess. At times it is frightening in its dramatic energy. Act 2, Purgatorio, starts with extraordinary recorded synagogue chanting, and the orchestra then builds on the tunes the cantors sing – this fits well with the penitential feel. I thought the Act 3 music was wonderful – I had assumed Paradiso would involve high soft strings, but in fact the music reflects the film of rolling spheres that is central to the visual imaging of the act – a lovely spiralling upwards sort of music that is neither quiet nor minimalistic but in its way quite hypnotic and utterly suited to the subject matter. The act ends in a blazing light, signifying, I suppose, the pure light of the divine gaze (there’s also contribution of female voices from the London Symphony chorus near the end too!) .
My only real criticism was that the first Act was I thought just too dark, and it was sometimes difficult to see what was happening
I am sure Ades will make an orchestra suite from the ballet – I shall look forward to hearing it. I see the Artsdesk critic is stating that the work has “ a serious claim to being the greatest music composed this century”. We shall see, but I wouldn’t immediately disagree after today’s performance
John's musical journey 