In Sasha Waltz’s production of Henry Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas, the plot is essentially impenetrable. Being familiar with the original opera, or reading the synopsis provided, will possibly serve only to confuse. How can a plot be followed if the characters – here, each played by up to three people – are themselves indistinguishable?
To watch and analyse this work as either an opera or a piece of contemporary dance, it feels to me, will lead only to disappointment: the opera’s plot is obscured by the dance, and yet the staging of the work as an opera with the singers of Vocalconsort Berlin joining the dancers from Sasha Waltz and Guests doesn’t allow the full investment in the dance.
But perhaps, then, to categorise the work is to approach it in entirely the wrong way. On opening night, over a musicless scene with the cast prancing around in a confused clash of costumes and decidedly odd props, a booming voice was heard across the theatre: “What’s this got to do with the opera, tell me?”
It was this question that opened up the world of Waltz’s production to me. No longer constrained by feeling the work she was showing should make sense, I was able to take in the elements of her production as they came.
Taken like this, moments range from the sublime opening water sequence, to the awkwardly terrible harness flights, to the hilariously bizarre chorus of heads singing to us from the stage traps. I am left hopelessly in the dark about why Waltz chose Purcell’s work and what she was trying to create on that stage, and yet I ultimately found it so strange as to be in some way joyous.
Strangeness aside, there is something intrinsically interesting in the collision of Waltz’s contemporary dance style with Purcell’s baroque composition.
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