Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes— Enchanting
Neither cinephiles nor balletomanes need be wary of Matthew Bourne’s interpretation of this universal, romantic tale. The beloved 1948 film is translated in varied, often breathtaking dance swathed in the iconoclastic love of theater this choreographer purveys with incomparable skill. (Watch character expressions, brief freezes, gestures.) The company is equally deft with integrated jazz, modern, Broadway, and ballet. Scenes succeed one another with utter fluency. Music of Bernard Herrmann, who scored such iconic films as Citizen Kane and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, is adroitly adapted and wonderfully apt.
This is the story of a performer who believes she’s willing to totally commit to her art but discovers sacrifice to be literal rather than metaphoric.
Sam Archer and the Company
Young Victoria Page (Ashley Shaw) wants desperately to be a Prima Ballerina. To her, dancing is like breathing. Taken under the wing of a society matron, she performs for impresario Boris Lermontov (Sam Archer) at a social gathering. Those attending applaud, but the Russian, modeled on Sergei Diaghilev, barely pays attention. Nonetheless, she’s invited to his company’s class. At the piano that night and also invited to the studio is burgeoning composer Julian Craster (Dominic North).
Both the girl and musician are hired with an impersonally pointed finger. Ambitious and adrift, they gravitate towards one another. Ballet Master Grischa Ljubov (Glenn Graham) initially disagrees with his employer’s choices. Graham is arrogant and petulant; somehow entirely Russian in mannerism and expression. Lermontov keeps a keen peripheral eye on the new company members.
Ashley Shaw and Sam Archer
As Lermontov, Archer is aristocratic, autocratic, and piercingly watchful. A pas de deux with Page finds him thrilling in the illusion of like souls with a kind of forceful tenderness. Distressed and alone at home, silent movie expressions coupled with extravagant physical moves manifest over the top feelings. Even a walk across the stage personifies his character.
When Prima Ballerina Irina Boronskaya (a somewhat stiff Michela Meazza) injures herself in a pas de deux with Premier Danseur, Ivan Boleslawsky (Liam Mower), Page is conscripted to star in a new ballet that will also mark the premiere of Craster as composer/conductor. In her, Lermontov sees greatness he can be instrumental in molding.
The Red Shoes, ballet within ballet, finds innocent lovers rent apart by the girl’s burning desire to become the absolute best. Seduced by her art/fame in the form of a pair of magical red toe shoes that indefatigably take over her life, she’s danced to death. Bourne and Lez Brotherston’s concept of a grey scale set with silhouetted scenery and black costumes but for the heroine’s dress and her footwear, works perfectly.
Dominic North and Ashley Shaw
Page is brilliant in the piece, but when she falls in love with Craster, committing less, Lermontov assumes, than her entire being to the ballet, he’s furious. Both men want her, the musician as a woman, the producer as his star. Lermontov forces Page to choose.
We next see the exiled Page and Craster in London where jobs are so scarce, they work ignominiously in a music hall. Misery abounds.
Dominic North’s Craster morphs from wet-behind-the-ears talent to lyrical swain to agonized mate. His partnering is lovely.
After an argument, the ballerina returns to Lermontov’s company. Craster comes after her provoking an untenable push pull whose only escape, she impulsively feels, is suicide.
Ashley Shaw
The amazing Ashley Shaw acts and dances her way into our hearts creating a living, breathing woman. A cogent emotional arc plays across her face as clear as the principal’s pristine dancing. Strong, light, graceful and precise without ever being stiff, Shaw imbues her role with deep love and unbearable pain.
Liam Mower and Ashley Shaw
Appreciation of the period is gorgeously represented by Lez Brotherston’s Set and Costume Design. A revolving proscenium creating a stage on the stage, out front and in the wings, is inspired. Use of curtains is immensely artful. Costumes from performance to leisure- ‘love Lermontov’s dressing gown and the corps’ bathing suits, is attractive and evocative.
Paul Constable’s Lighting Design goes hand in mood-enhancing hand.
Photos by Johann Persson
Opening: Ashley Shaw
New York City Center presents Matthew Bourne/New Adventures production of
The Red Shoes
Based on the film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
And The Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale
Music by Bernard Herrmann
Orchestrations-Terry Davies
Directed and Choreographed by Michael Bourne
New York City Center
131 West 55th Street
Through November 5, 2017
