Since Saturday 10 October, you can watch the ballet for 2.95 euros Live of the National Ballet online. I did it. It was worth it.
Live dates back to when Rudi van Dantzig, Toer van Schayk and Hans van Manen were storming the Dutch stages. All three were rebellious and highly idiosyncratic, and on the theme of 'life' they created the performance Live/Life, a dance event that took place at Theater Carré in Amsterdam as part of the 1979 Holland Festival. Live by Hans van Manen, a beautiful classical choreography on pointe, has stood the test of time and survived as an independent part. Now, 41 years later, after several editions over the years, it has been revived at the Dutch National Ballet.
Other chemistry
This time starring Maia Makhateli and Artur Shesterikov and cameraman Mathieu Gremillet. The original cast included Coleen Davis and Henny Jurriëns, and cameraman Henk van Dijk. The contrast was stark. Coleen Davis was thin, had gigantic long arms and legs and was only 19 years old. She danced with the then 30-year-old dance hero Henny Jurriëns. Maia is 34, small and compact, and is the consummate ballerina. She dances with her partner and father of their child Luka. So the chemistry has a very different make-up.
Still, the duet, with a video man as a witness, is impressive even in 2020.
Live is not a story. It's a relationship. A flashback in the middle, with a skirmish in the studio getting out of hand, shows that this relationship doesn't really work. As so often, there can be struggles over who has power or control. At first, Maia, a dancer who literally commands everything to perfection, seems to lose that control only to take the initiative at the end and leave the room, indeed the theatre building.
Introspection of appearance
Plenty of associations are made between this first video ballet in the Netherlands and the influence of image and screen now. Van Manen is a pioneer and the change between live recorded black-and-white images on canvas and the dancer wearing a bright red suit with blue ribbons on stage, is fascinating. From zooming in on a simple hand floating and snapping its wrist, to the playing of the camera by the roguishly smiling leading lady: everything falls into place here.
But not without the subdued drama of Olga Khoziainova's piano playing, five pieces by Liszt, that Live gives extra weight. The tragedy of the duet, the loneliness in the relationship and the film-noir-like walk through an abandoned building out into the darkness, has the feel of an in memoriam. A farewell to a temporal image now? Or the timeless transience of life? The dancer stepping out into the world, a scene of yellow-lit street lamps, gleaming wet cobblestones and houseboats in the canal, with a trolley from the city cleaning department staggering past, guides the viewer into real life. Live/Life.
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