Anarchic Moves From British Choreographer Michael Clark

On a darkened stage set with a row of mirrored doors, a dancer lying in a square of light lifted her head at the sound of the first, stirring notes of Stravinsky’s “Apollo.” Stretching out, she arched her torso like an animal waking from sleep. Two male dancers rushed from the wings, their arms turning like windmills, and the female dancer rose to her feet, joining them to encircle a pale blue, mirrored glass cube in which another dancer performed handstands.While the music may have evoked a classic work — Balanchine’s landmark ballet “Apollo” — this was instead a haunting, anarchic dance called “O” created by the maverick British choreographer Michael Clark, the first of three in his “Stravinsky Project,” which will have its American premiere, accompanied by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and the Concert Chorale of New York, on Wednesday at the Rose Theater as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. The other two ballets of the “Stravinsky Project” — “Mmm” (“The Rite of Spring”) and “I Do” (“Les Noces”) — will be performed on alternate evenings.Mr. Clark became fascinated with the Stravinsky scores long before he began using them in the early 1990s. “Like many choreographers, I couldn’t resist,” he said recently by phone from London. “It’s fantastic music to make dance to and to dance to. It’s a challenge to meet the music. Part of the attraction was, ‘Dare I do it? Do I have the stomach for it? Could I up the ante?'”Called “the most extraordinary and extraordinarily well connected dancer in modern Britain” by the Daily Telegraph, Mr. Clark, a Scot, had a lot going for him when he started on “Mmm” in 1992. Trained in Scottish dance and at the Royal Ballet School, he quickly drew attention as a member of Ballet Rambert and began winning over critics and audiences soon after establishing the Michael Clark Company in 1984.They were bowled over by his shimmering classicism, idiosyncratic modernism, hip costumes and sets, pounding punk music, and sexually explicit imagery. But the enfant terrible also had a lot going against him, including recurrent bouts of depression and addiction to heroin and methadone. In 1994, he dropped dance and went to live with his mother in his native Scotland, in order to recover, not re-emerging for four years.With that painful period behind him, Mr. Clark enthusiastically returned to Stravinsky three years ago, thanks largely to the generous support of London’s Barbican Centre. “I never really feel I’m finished with a ballet,” he said. “I like to fine-tune. These are all pretty big subjects, with major themes and all sorts of possibilities.”The trilogy’s autobiographical overtones are not lost on him. “I started the dance to ‘Rite of Spring’ in what could only be called my most Dionysian period,” the 46-year-old choreographer said. “There’s a time in life when one would do anything, even physical damage to oneself, in pursuit of one’s art. You almost feel that it’s part of your job as an artist. Only later do you realize, you might not live very long if you continue that way. To somehow match the passions stirred up by the music, I choreographed movement that originates in the pelvis, as if the energy is coming up through the earth. I push all the possibilities.”Given the demands of his choreography, his company members must be incredibly strong and flexible. “Michael’s dances are almost impossible at times,” a dancer, Melissa Hetherington, said. “We all are ballet trained. You couldn’t do them without the strength and stamina you get from ballet. But we also train in Cunningham. It has the same importance as ballet. It gives us strength in a different way, in our core and arms and torso. In ‘O,’ you see us at our most classical. Of course, that’s where Michael started, as a classical ballet dancer.”The concept behind “O” is a striking contrast to “Mmm.” Apollo is the sun god, a god of clarity, who is very much in control, and aware of his destiny. The next step, if one is lucky, after a chaotic and abandoned youth, is alluded to in “Mmm.” “Stravinsky spoke of that return to order, to the clear light of day,” Mr. Clark said. “I see his Apollo as an exercise in restraint. It wasn’t originally in my nature and I didn’t feel entirely comfortable with the theme when I first took it on. I kept thinking of the Balanchine ballet, so stripped-down. I’d react against it and then it would pull me back.”For the culminating ballet “I Do,” he turned to Stravinsky’s “Les Noces,” a monumental choral evocation of a Russian village wedding that is often considered one of the composer’s most Russian works. The choreographer Bronislava Nijinska first used the music, which is scored for voices, percussion, and four pianos, for her 1923 ballet for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Her version continues to be performed by the Royal and Kirov ballets.“I was able to choreograph this ballet more slowly,” Mr. Clark said. “Because I had support from the Barbican, I could make a little bit every day. I wanted to get rid of everything unnecessary and be very clear. It’s very dense, rich music. I guess if you want to look at the trilogy as autobiographical that the marriage in ‘I Do’ might mean that after going through those earlier stages, one could unite with another person, or it could simply be a celebration of community. But I’m never literal.”That’s an understatement. For “Mmm,” Mr. Clark dresses his cast in plastic skirts with bits of tinsel stuck on their noses. In “I Do,” he puts the choir’s 40 singers on the either side of the stage, and sets the dance in front of the two halves. The English critic Debra Craine described the bride, danced by Kate Coyne, as emerging “from a giant matryoshka doll,” who when prepared for marriage appears as if “she’s encased like a sausage in what looks a giant knitted condom with bows.”Ms. Coyne has been with the company for 11 years, and takes what Mr. Clark creates in stride. “Michael is very disciplined,” she said. “Even when he’s joking, he’s very serious. A costume like this is a lot about confinement, and that’s an undercurrent in this ballet. He has a very specific vision for every piece, like a visual artist. His mind keeps evolving. He opens to change. It’s our job to keep up with him.”

Anarchic Moves From British Choreographer Michael Clark

Anarchic Moves From British Choreographer Michael Clark

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