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Sheffield Star, 9 February 2005
Review by John Hyfield
Birdbrain
The Lyceum
Both Adventures in Motion Pictures and Northern
Ballet Theatre have given us fresh takes on Tchaikovsky¹s
masterpiece Swan LakeSbut nothing can prepare you
for the explosive approach of Garry Stewart¹s
Australian Dance Theatre stunner.
You could call it deconstruction or you
could describe it as a sledgehammer attack on a
sacred cow. Either way, it¹s explosive,
dazzling and hugely exciting, a fascinating blend
of high art and pure showbiz, delivered with a veneer
of tongue-in-cheek humour.
Tchaikovsky himself gets short shrift, heard
briefly on a crackly album recording and in only
short bursts after that, abandoned in favour of
the thumping, urgent sound of the 21st century.
The fascinating thing is, though, that Stewart
for all the energetic demolition job
actually retains many of the themes that held the
original together. There are still, to some
extent, the young lovers persecuted by a sinister
villain and there are even, in one delightful nod
to the past, the classic cygnets. And even
the most devoted classical purist would be forced
to admire a transformation that, rescued from the
tutus of tradition, becomes a painful, intense metamorphosis
in which a body really does seem to twist its way
from bird to human form. The light and dark
of the Odette/Odile manages to survive, along with
the fascination with redemption through death that
now, as then, provides a stunning climax.
And just in case you missed any of that, the
ensemble wear easy-to-read sloganed T shirts, handy
humorous guides to the complexity of Tchaikovsky¹s
and Stewart¹s design a convenient comic
device, even if the Royal Ballet are unlikely to
adopt it in the near future.
The Guardian
Friday May 9, 2003
Judith Mackrell
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
As the most iconic work of the classical repertory, Swan Lake is a natural target for deconstruction - and Garry Stewart's Birdbrain is, on one level, a ruthlessly slick and funny dismantling of the ballet's plot and themes. In it, the dancers of the Australian Dance Theatre streak around the stage with key concepts from the ballet printed subversively on their T-shirts. One little group designated as "corps" peel off for some dutifully unison dancing, later dividing into characters who represent either "peasant joy" or "royal disdain."
But Stewart's analysis of Swan Lake goes far beyond witty bullet points. Part of his work's considerable comedy derives from his knowing and often loving manipulation of the original choreography. There is a virtuoso mime solo in which a man signs the whole of the plot using a startlingly evocative fusion of classical mime and hip-hop body language. The dance for the four cygnets becomes a wrestling quartet, while a solemn line of men and women take it in turns to execute Odile's 32 fouettés.
Even more interesting are the deviant ways in which Stewart has reimagined Swan Lake. While the ballet's traditional climaxes are glossed over (the lakeside pas de deux is reduced to a snog), some of its more shadowy plot elements are given centre stage. Best are the sections where Stewart explores the swans' trauma as they nightly resume human form. His wracked, visceral choreography makes us feel every cracking sinew, every aching muscle, as the women's wings curve into arms and their webbed feet uncurl.
Some of the work's more provocative elements can feel dated: the brutal pitch of the score, the aggressive rolls and dives are a little too reminiscent of late-1980s Eurocrash. But ADT's expert dancers reshape this language, fusing it eloquently with the vocabulary of Petipa and Ivanov.
As for Stewart's overall concept, it is driven not only by serious fantasy but also by a passion for the original. The final scene, in which Margot Fonteyn takes a curtain call on a slow-motion film loop while a mourning procession of lovers crosses the stage, could only have been imagined by a choreographer genuinely in thrall to the ritual of Swan Lake.
The Independent
12 May 2003
John Percival
Birdbrain, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, ****
I had no idea how much fun Birdbrain would provide. This is Garry Stewart's light-hearted take on Swan Lake for the Australian Dance Theatre, which he took over in 1999 (London saw this Adelaide company years ago under different leadership). His attitude to Tchaikovsky's ballet is irreverent but never irrelevant, starting with a scratchy recording that skips through highlights of the music in a couple of minutes. Thereafter, a techno soundtrack created by Jad McAdam and Luke Smiles takes over.
Near the beginning, Stewart shows, on a screen behind the stage, a long list of factors needed for a successful ballet. Besides such predictable elements as virtuosity, grace and meaning, he includes marketing and sex appeal. Bright boy - he has made sure that Birdbrain has both.
The cast of 11 all play multiple roles, with names on their T-shirts to identify hero or legend, Odettes or Odiles (quite a few of them, in both genders), "corps" or "swans", "tragedy queen", "lake", even at one point "the story thus far", which introduces an amazingly quick series of mime gestures. There are some abstract labels, too, indicating Stewart's thoughts about the ballet: "peasant joy" coupled with "royal disdain"; "lust and despair"; even one indicating "more irrelevant revelry".
We get the famous 32 fouettés, too, on bare feet and shared among four dancers, but counted out on the screen at the back of the stage. There are, for once, real arrows shot from a real bow - but at a feathery heart, not at swans, reminding us that this is a love story. Also, we see swans turning into women, which should happen in every conventional Swan Lake but rarely does.
The dancers are all kept pretty busy, not only with their continual changes of T-shirt but with multiple kinds of movement: breakdance and hip hop, jumping and landing flat, yoga, contortions, headstands and acrobatics, not to mention classical ballet, this latter especially in pas de deux allusions. The choreography is not so continuously interesting as a good straightforward classic Swan Lake would be (if we ever had the luck to see one nowadays), but does offer speed, strength, variety, skill and a lot of daring, accomplished by the whole team.
And because Stewart is concentrating on what he calls the crevices of the narrative, every now and again he comes up with something really striking that illuminates the subject. I mentioned the swans turning into women; even more notable is the way he takes what is usually a brief moment of acting, as the lovers hurl themselves into the water, and makes a big dance climax of it. Yes, Birdbrain is fun, but not only fun.
The Times
May 10, 2003
Debra Craine
Queen Elizabeth Hall
THE Australian choreographer Garry Stewart has a novel take on Swan Lake. He's interested in the bits audiences don't usually think about, those prosaic questions you don't ask when the poetry is working. How do those lovely women actually turn into swans? What goes on in their bodies? Does it hurt? And what happens after the desperate lovers throw themselves into the lake? Is it all over?
Birdbrain is the product of those questions (looking between the crevices, Stewart calls it), a fast, furious and sometimes funny deconstruction of Swan Lake told in breakdancing, ballet, martial arts, gymnastics and video projection. It was brought to London by Australian Dance Theatre this week.
Stewart presupposes you know the story. The key moments (including the lakeside love duet, the ballet's most memorable scene) are thrown away, while the choreography plucks beneath the feathers in search of a less romantic physical truth. The moment of transformation from swan into woman is painfully visible in the dancers' crushed bodies, terrible spasms undermining the iconic image of grace that Swan Lake represents.
Right from the start, we feel as if we are in a gym. The dancers, pumped for action, wear casual exercise clothes, including - a brilliant stroke - T-shirts which provide helpful directions towards narrative and theme. Words such as "doom" and "lust" and - my favourites - "royal disdain" and "more pointless revelry" (it takes the T-shirts of three dancers to compile that last phrase). There's no one Odette, no one Odile, no one Siegfried: the entire company, at one time or another, represent all three.
I must admit to being thrown by some of the visual elements in Birdbrain, including the bow and arrows and the school uniforms. More successful was the accompanying video which offers a rollcall of famous Odettes (from Legnani to Bussell) and a particularly haunting scene of Fonteyn taking a curtain call in her white tutu. The music, aside from very brief references to Tchaikovsky, is a full blast of techno.
Australian Dance Theatre is an amazing troupe. The barefoot dancers are just at home with the beautiful high extensions and whipping fouettés of ballet as they are with the alarming pops and rolls of breakdancing.
These men and women may look like fashion models but they have no qualms about leaping into the air one minute and hurling themselves at the floor the next. Nothing seems to faze them, not even the possibility of bruising. The end of Birdbrain, a flying suicidal arc over the lake, is one of the most hazardous explosions of movement seen in London in years.
BBC
May 2003
Katy Evans
Flying high at the Maltings
Birdbrain by the Australian Dance Theatre, at the Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Snape
Take Swan Lake, one of the most famous ballets in the world, tear it apart at the seams and stuff it with raw rhythms, frenzied footwork and excessive energy and you get Birdbrain, a heart-stopping, eye-popping hour and 15 minutes of pure genius.
Australian Dance Theatre provides a truly theatrical and demanding performance that's funky, fast and furious. Although based on Swan Lake, Birdbrain is a slick and stylish masterpiece, poles apart from the famous classic with not a frill or feather in sight.
Artistic director Garry Stewart has created a melting pot of artistic forms, images, and ideas, fusing frenetic techno music with classical ballet, martial arts moves and video artistry to create an unique and unrivalled 21st century contemporary dance experience.
I sat transfixed as 11 agile dancers from down under, leapt, spun and quite literally pirouetted horizontally in what is surely the most exciting and dynamic production Snape Maltings has seen this year. Trying to take it all in was a challenge as there was so much going on at once. I wish that I'd had an extra pair of eyes!
Somersaulting across the stage, the performers displayed aerodynamic athleticism on par with Olympic gymnasts; collectively expending enough energy to power a small village for at least a week.
Elements of Swan Lake are instantly recognisable but Stewart has taken sections and explored them further. For example, in the traditional story Odette is a swan by day and a woman at night but the change occurs off stage.
In Birdbrain, we see Odette going through this metamorphosis, which Stewart later describes as being 'both cathartic and traumatic.' The evil Baron von Rothbart is, in this version, a contortionist, making most eyes in the house water as he folded his legs over his head.
The set design is simple yet effective - a stark metallic background with faint silhouettes of dancers past, dim spotlights switching to harsh white flood lights, and a video screen projecting images of swans, snakes and dying souls.
Simple costumes of black trousers and T-shirts emblazoned with words such as despair, longing and lust, as well as the characters names, help guide you through the story. The only deviation was the archer, dressed as a Vivian Westwood-inspired public school mistress with two accomplices in similar smart grey attire, symbolising the institution and formality of classical ballet.
Formed in 1965 and still one of Australia's most influential dance groups, ADT stay true to their mission statement to 'provoke, inspire, excite, challenge, entertain and stimulate'. Birdbrain is without a doubt a first class production that's awe-inspiring and gravity defying. A must for any lover of dance.
Katy's mark: 10/10
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