Leigh Warren Dance. Leigh Warren Dance Studio. 16 Jul 2015
Michel Fokine choreographed iconic Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova’s signature dance The Dying Swan on her in 1905, creating choreography filled with lithe melancholic romanticism, weighed in deep aching sadness. Pavlova’s quick, sharp pirouettes, graceful wing like arch of shoulders and arms, mournful bows and dips encapsulate a beautiful creature of nature in their dying throes.
Fokine’s inspiration finds choreographer Daniel Jaber and dancer Kialea-Nadine Williams profoundly transcending the boundaries of Fokine’s choreographic intent, realising a work as equally powerful and demanding of a dancer as Fokines’ A Dying Swan.
Jaber’s creation is uniquely original from the Russian modern classic. He redirects focus of the work choreographically from a swan like woman, to a woman like swan. Jaber and Williams remain true to the innate emotional thematic thread at the heart of Fokine’s creation, even as they completely redefine its subject.
They have transferred the agonising, inescapable slow grip of death upon a beautiful living creature of nature, to that of a woman closed off, caught in the inescapable clutch of loneliness, the barriers it throws up and inevitability of death.
What a remarkable blend of power, gentleness, enlightenment and pain is A Dying Swan. Jaber’s choreography is quite deliberate in its capacity to carefully draw out a sense of a woman both recognising and fighting barriers within her as much as around her.
Fantastically, Williams gives physical expression to the gentlest of moments holding as much raw, aggressive power as they do the softest of touches.
The swan in the woman we watch turning, pushing, running, falling in injury and clutching at mirages of solace sources an unbearable sense of private pain hard to watch.
Jaber’s blend of careful, hard edged contemporary form, delicately iced with classical references is as complex and masterful as is Jason Groves’ in the round white performance space and simple sharp lighting palette, enhancing the whole. Costumier Catherine Ziersch’s simple white dress completes the production’s emphasis on less is more.
Williams’ powers of expression are pushed, as Pavlova’s were, in an extreme test of artistic prowess. A test she surpasses so greatly, that as Fokine’s A Dying Swan was Pavlova’s signature dance of her core artistic genius and sensibility of her times, so is Jaber’s A Dying Swan Williams’ very own personal signature of her power.
David O’Brien
When: 10 to 18 July
Where: Leigh Warren Dance Studio 1st Floor Lion Arts Centre
Bookings: Sold Out
