UNDER Christopher Hampson’s leadership, Scottish Ballet has not shrunk from innovation and risk-taking. In transposing the 1870 ballet Coppelia (Festival Theatre, run ended; touring Scotland this autumn) – with its famous score by Leo Delibes – to a dystopian near future in which an amoral, hi-tech mega-capitalist believes he is on the brink of creating a thinking, feeling, plausibly human robot, the company has excelled itself.
In the original ballet, Dr Coppelius is trying to animate a female doll he has made. This supposed “comic” idea (which was originally choreographed by Arthur Saint-Leon) carries its own disquieting, misogynistic connotations (built, as it is, around a male fantasy of the physically “ideal” doll-woman).
However, this new version – choreographed and directed by Jessica Wright and Morgann Runacre-Temple, aka Jess and Morgs – turns up the dial on sinister motivation. Here, Coppelius is CEO of trailblazing artificial intelligence corporation NuLife.
This Zuckerbergian character has a capacity for technological innovation that is well in advance of his moral integrity. In one voiced-over section of the ballet, we learn that he considers his company’s social responsibility to extend no further than abiding reluctantly by employment law and delivering dividends to his shareholders.
This is an extremely bold resetting of a 19th-century classic and one that Scottish Ballet’s remarkable collaborative team has pursued with an extraordinary, stunningly successful confidence and conviction. From the moment that the journalist Swanhilda (danced powerfully by Constance Devernay) arrives at NuLife’s Silicon Valley HQ to interview Coppelius and witness his latest AI product, we are thrust into a futuristic world that is both frighteningly convincing and impressively consistent.
Bengt Gomer’s sets and Annemarie Woods’s costumes draw us in as compellingly as any big-budget sci-fi movie. Will Duke and Hayley Egan’s remarkable projections and live video magnify the piece’s undeniable sense of ushering us into a near future that is menacingly real.
The music – in which elements of Delibes’s original score are intercut with brilliant, modern compositions by Michael Karlsson and Michael P. Atkinson – creates an appropriate contrast between the defiantly analogue, unpredictably human and the digitised precision of AI. The choreography itself reflects with unerring brilliance the same juxtaposition between robotised movement and the human passions of dance.
An adversarial pas de deux between Devernay’s sceptical and concerned Swanhilda and Bruno Micchiardi’s dynamically loathsome Coppelius expresses the essence of the piece. The regimented robotics of the corps de ballet – who are multiplied, seemingly infinitely, on the back screen by Duke and Egan – exemplify the work’s sense of Orwellian warning.
An extremely clever and creative take on an established classic, this Coppelia is a near flawless triumph of modern ballet.
From one superb adaptation in dance – and one dystopian vision – to another in the great choreographer Akram Khan’s extraordinary Jungle Book Reimagined (Festival Theatre, ends today). The piece resets Rudyard Kipling’s much-loved tale of the child Mowgli’s adventures in the jungle to a near-future of environmental catastrophe.
Here, Mowgli (who is an intrepid girl, rather than a boy) is a climate refugee who finds herself in the urban jungle of a ruined London. Danced with a tremendous, paradoxical sense of strength and vulnerability by Pui Yung Shum, our heroine is a climate refugee, separated from her beloved mother on the ever-rising seas.
In the battered metropolis, Mowgli encounters the many animals – from the clownish-but-loyal bear Baloo to the deceitful snake Kaa – that we know from Kipling’s book and Disney’s animated film. The city and its creatures are evoked through a combination of simple, ecologically conscious sets, props and puppets constructed from recyclable cardboard boxes, and marvellous animations, which are projected onto both the back wall of the stage and a ghost curtain at the front.
Respect is due to the entire team involved in the visual design of the piece (from animation through to lighting). The idea of partnering Khan’s typically excellent choreography – which segues between charming, animal-inspired ensemble dances and beautiful, plaintive contemporary solos and duets – is a very intelligent one.
Of the many screen and stage adaptations of The Jungle Book, the Disney animation from 1967 dominates the world’s consciousness of the story series. By placing his dance-theatre adaptation within the frame of a radically different – gorgeously stylish and monochrome – kind of animation, Khan subverts the popular understanding of the tale in visual as well as thematic terms.
Whether the animations are representing the terrible tempest that separates Mowgli from her mother or the great, dignified elephants who are worshipped by the refugee child, we are unquestionably, and enthrallingly, in a world that is utterly distinct from Disney’s much-loved, but somewhat saccharine cartoon. The animated evocation of the murderous hunter (who represents the worst of humanity) contrasts powerfully with Pui’s wonderfully sympathetic portrayal of Mowgli (who is the image of an urgently required humanity that is in respectful step with nature).
The piece boasts an astute, often very funny script by Tariq Jordan. Jocelyn Pook’s tremendously diverse musical score – which shifts mercurially between music in Indian classical style, sacred incantation and invigorating electronica – is perfectly attuned to the demands of both the narrative and Khan’s movement.
Simultaneously engaging, sobering, transfixing and hopeful, this beautiful work of art is worthy of gracing any stage in the world.
Indeed, any studio stage should be keen to welcome BOY (Summerhall, ends today) by Dutch-born dramatist Carly Wijs. Co-produced by Flemish company De Roovers and Swedish theatre-makers Teateri, this two-hander (performed by superb actors Vanja Maria Godee and Jeroen Van der Ven) tells the true story of an American couple whose son ended up in the dubious “care” of the infamous doctor and sexologist John Money.
Bruce – one of twin boys born to the Reimers in 1966 – was accidentally genitally mutilated during a supposedly pioneering circumcision procedure soon after birth. After seeing Money on TV talking about his seemingly path-breaking work on surgical gender reassignment, the Reimers (who were both lapsed members of the Mennonite sect) sought out his services in a bid to transform their mutilated, little Bruce into a genitally restored girl named Brenda.
Godee and Van der Ven unfold this story with a mesmerising simplicity. Narrating with the assistance of soft toys and dolls, their storytelling carries a powerful innocence that speaks to the Reimers’ anguish and desperation.
At the beginning of the piece, the storytelling – of an ordinary family, with ordinary children, headed by an ordinary woman, and an ordinary man who commits suicide in his car – is delivered in the style of a kindergarten for adults. Working backwards from this cataclysm, seemingly unconnected, apparently fictional tales are placed side-by-side until, eventually, they are built into the shape of a terrible, painful truth.
Crucially, as the complex – and, in 2022, still extremely contentious – issues of gender, nature and nurture are set out, Wijs’s intelligent and sensitive script never reaches for definitive explanations or easy solutions. Rather, it is a resonating work of exploratory, humanist theatre that should prompt anyone to question at least some of their assumptions on this incredibly important topic.
Deceptively simple in both its staging and its performance, BOY is, in fact, an impressively sophisticated, deeply emotive and sharply thought-provoking work of theatre.
Scottish Ballet’s Coppelia tours to Glasgow, Aberdeen and Inverness in September and October: scottishballet.co.uk
