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Fairytale, Dance and Tomatoes By Regina Lissowska, Critical dance, Bytom Poland 29 Jun 2009The premiere of Swan Lake with Idan Cohens choreography was dedicated by the09 Bytom dance festival and annual conference to the memory of Pina Bausch Empty stage. The first notes of Tchaikovskys score. The music invites people into a world of imagination; it signals a well-known, beautiful story of love between a prince and a girl transformed into a swan. The plot begins with the Princes birthday when (in the ballet version) he has to choose a wife. It is this occasion, or precisely the feelings connected with it, that becomes the leitmotif of the first section of the performance. Birthday a special time, when one thinks about dreams coming true, but also a period of awareness of transitions leading to an inevitable end. All three female dancers are birthday girls initially. A garland on the head of one of them emphasises the uniqueness of this anniversary, at the same time referring to Christian symbolism; in this context it is a halo, sign of sainthood inextricably linked with sacrifice. The idea of the performance was to follow the plot suggested by the music, yet to make an abstraction of it. Dancers transform into all the characters from the story, showing the emotions tormenting them, full of anxieties and passion. They are the plot. In these changes and their expressive, pulsating movement they convey its very essence. When the swans transform into princesses, their movement becomes more animalistic, which is underlined by the sounds they make. Their dance gets noticeably closer to the stage. The set design is composed only of tomatoes, which serve also as an ambiguous prop. Initially, their regular arrangement marks the rectangular space of the stage. In the second part of the performance, they lay scattered all over, creating a lake in which the swan-princesses commit suicide; they drown themselves because of unrealized love. It is, thus, the end of the plot. The dancers also play with the tomatoes, squashing them with their bodies, smearing themselves with their juice and flesh. The combination of human flesh with the flesh and color of tomatoes accentuates the formers dirty, physiological aspect, starkly contrasting with the romantic view implied by the music. Preparations for the premiere of Swan Lake lasted over a year. A multitude of allusion to various forms of art can be found in this performance. The costumes bring to mind a past model of swimsuits. Playing with bodies, spreading the skin recalls the works of Francis Bacon, whose creations the artists contemplated while preparing the performance. Tchaikovskys Swan Lake has inspired many dance and theatre creators. For Idan Cohen, it is especially important. It has fascinated him since childhood. As he told us after the premiere: The inspiration for this work was drawn from this music. Together with the dancers, he has produced an exceptional interpretation of this musical fairytale, focusing on its emotional content. An aspect usually neglected in versions of Swan Lake, the tension, violence and passion, is certainly highlighted here. In Cohens work, we experience the gap between the romantic visualization inspired by the music and the physical reality of the body, between fairytale, dream and life.
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