Waiting in Istanbul for GöteborgsOperans Danskompani's Hammer by Alexander Ekman, impressive in every way
© Mehmet Kerem Özel
The company's general strategy is not to have a resident choreographer, but also not to have a choreographer as artistic director. Instead, the artistic directors commission pieces from choreographers of their own choosing, and this strategy ensures that the company's repertoire is full of world premieres. Very rarely does a piece created for another company become part of the repertoire. Katrin Hall, the company's artistic director since 2016, follows in the footsteps of her predecessor, Adolphe Binder, and continues to bring the company a repertoire of original pieces by today's most sought-after choreographers, as well as young choreographers just emerging on the international dance scene.
With 38 dancers from 20 different countries, the company has become one of the world’s best contemporary dance companies in recent years, not only because of this commissioning strategy, but also because of the exquisite quality of its dancers.
Last February, I had the opportunity to witness its high quality in its own city, on its own stage, at the Gothenburg Opera House, with three pieces performed on two separate evenings: Yoann Bourgeois' We Loved Each Other So Much (2024) and Crystal Pite's Solo Echo (2012), and Alexander Ekman's Hammer (2022).
© Mehmet Kerem Özel
We loved each other so much
Yoann Bourgeois is one of the leading choreographers of recent years, skilfully combining dance and acrobatics/circus disciplines.
After Hurricane (2020), his first piece for GöteborgsOperans Danskompani, his second creation We Loved Each Other So Much premiered last season and is included in this season's programme.
In this new and exciting piece, Bourgeois has renewed the 'material' he uses in two ways: choreography and set design. As choreographic material, Bourgeois has enriched his vocabulary with movements borrowed from the martial arts, without losing his own main theme in which he moves at the intersection of acrobatics and dance. This has led Bourgeois to use a new material for his stage design. In particular, in order to use the movements borrowed from martial arts on a level that is both safe and extreme, Bourgeois has used a thick sprung floor as big as the dance floor on the stage. This floor not only accelerates and multiplies the dancers' movements, but also allows them to fall or hit the floor without hesitation. In this way, the piece, which is essentially aimed at raising the adrenaline level to the ceiling, more than fulfils its purpose.
For about half an hour, 17 dancers, accompanied by Félix Lajkó's energetic music, engage in a dynamic and enthusiastic struggle in a whirlwind cycle, sometimes in pairs, sometimes in groups, sometimes in small groups, sometimes on the periphery of the storm, sometimes in the calm space at its centre, in what begins as a playful game and gradually turns into a chaotic struggle. The dance phrases are performed with great speed and fluid continuity, with no punctuation between them. The intense energy and enthusiasm on stage never lets up, drawing the audience into the vortex.
Although We Loved Each Other So Much does not contain an obvious narrative, it does contain traces of a love story. Rather than a narrative, the work conveys an emotion full of great enthusiasm and involves the audience in that emotion. This is the feeling of an adrenaline-fueled, dynamic energy that begins with the speed of a harpoon and continues without letting up for a moment. Before this harpoon-like start, we hear Leonard Cohen's poem The Goal, which he first published in 1998, but whose version, which he changed over time, was released to the public in 2019 by his son after his death.
Cohen, who saw life as a quest, speaks of the need to accept defeat, failure and death and then to embrace them in his philosophy of life, noting that unhappiness comes from not doing these things. In this poem, Cohen says that a man who has lived and seen it all and is about to die has achieved every goal he has set for himself, has done everything he can do, but this does not satisfy him or make him happy, and what gives him real peace is to give it all up; and he draws attention to the fact that there is no one to follow and nothing to teach, as well as the realisation that the ultimate goal in life is beyond one's reach. This underlines the existential themes explored throughout the poem, reflecting the elusive nature of happiness or fulfilment.
If we remember this epilogue-like beginning with its idea of surrender, and if we don’t forget these words, even if we feel dizzy, our hearts jump and are carried away by the speed of the turmoil, the rush and the struggle that follows during the piece, the faint love story in We Loved Each Other So Much becomes even more meaningful. But on the other hand, all this effort is really an arduous struggle against the trauma of abandonment and despair that one cannot get rid of for the rest of one's life. Perhaps this is why the piece ends with all the dancers lying unconscious on the floor, the result of all the running they have done throughout the piece. Then they all slowly get up and leave the stage. But one dancer hesitates, stays behind and suddenly starts running at full speed again. It's as if he won't give up...
© Mehmet Kerem Özel
Solo Echo
The second piece of the same evening is a lyrical work that expresses the same struggle, this time not in an overly exuberant and expressive way, but in a calmer and more introspective way: Crystal Pite's Solo Echo, first conceived for NDT (Nederlands Dance Theatre) 1 in 2012.
Just as Pite chose her music from chamber pieces (one movement from each of Brahms' two separate cello-piano sonatas), she has created a small, chamber-scale work with a cast of seven. But with its choreography and scenography (set design: Jay Gower Taylor, lighting design: Tom Visser), Solo Echo is a small masterpiece of great impact.
Inspired by Mark Strand's poem Lines for Winter, Pite uses Brahms' melancholic and introspective music to capture the emotional atmosphere of wo/man's final journey, which ends in death. In Solo Echo, Pite 'echoes' the inner turmoil, hesitations, conflicts and longings of a lone traveller in a snowy landscape in the cold of a moonlit night.
The 30-minute work consists of solo, duo, trio and ensemble dances - albeit with only seven dancers - on a dark and bare stage, with snow falling continuously in the background - and illuminated linearly by a horizontally moving band of light. In the first part, Pite's choreography reveals the individuality of the seven dancers through solo and duo dances, while the second part is characterised by crowded and moving tableaux. In the sculptural tableaux that Pite is so adept at creating, he fluidly changes the focal dancer in each tableau, transforming the other dancers into echoes of the focal dancer.
© Mehmet Kerem Özel
Hammer
On the second night I saw the company in Gothenburg, the programme included Swedish choreographer Alexander Ekman's Hammer (2022).
Istanbul audiences had met Ekman in 2012 with his 2010 work Cacti, which was performed as part of NDT 2's Istanbul tour. Cacti has been performed by 20 different dance companies around the world, raising Ekman's profile. Over the past decade, Ekman has become increasingly known for his large-scale, spectacular and entertaining works, notably A Swan Lake for the Norwegian National Opera Ballet (2014), Midsummer Night's Dream for the Royal Swedish Ballet (2015) and PLAY for the Paris Opera Ballet (2017). Like the aforementioned works, Hammer is a continuation of this series, with music by composer Mikael Karlsson and choreography, staging, set and lighting design by Ekman. Hammer did not surprise me after the others I had seen on recordings, but it made me admire Ekman by showing that such an entertaining and extravagant work can also contain a deep social questioning and criticism of the present.
Hammer's story is about the transformation of humanity from an identical mass to an image-driven and self-indulgent individualisation. Inside the huge playground, bounded by a low wall covering the entire stage, the dancers, all dressed in flesh-coloured underwear, perform the same movements in unison, the atmosphere soulless and uneventful, until a dancer in a frilly orange dress enters the stage from the side, breaking the wall with her feet. The other dancers then leave the stage one by one, or two or three at a time, returning to the stage in different and 'designer' outfits, each time hitting the low boundary wall and creating a breach. In the end, there is no trace of the wall; the dancers are in their own clothes, performing their own unique movements. The bricks that make up the wall are passed from hand to hand and removed from the playground.
This individuality, which at first appears to be pluralism and diversity, which breaks down constraints and transforms the stage into a visual and sensual paradise, eventually gets out of hand. So much so that after a while, with transcendent fervour, the dancers spread out among the audience on the parterre, stepping on the armrests and backs of the seats, drawing strength from the outstretched hands of the audience around them. Each of the standing dancers is a beacon, a focal point in the sea of spectators. The 'focal points' ask the audience to take out their mobile phones and take pictures of them, some of the dancers even command the audience around them to do so in a stern tone. The situation suddenly turns into something similar to today's social media environment, where the focal points present themselves and gradually become phenomenal. The audience, who immediately and involuntarily respond to the dancers' request by taking out their smartphones to take photos and videos, are satisfied, happy, amused, but at the same time do they realise that they have fallen into Ekman's trap? Ekman has used the audience to recreate the self-centred environment created by today's consumer society in a very skilful and mischievous mise-en-scene.
In Milo Rau's Hate Radio, staged in Istanbul in 2016, I recognised and restrained myself from falling into the trap of those who danced to the rhythmic music played from the radio to get the genocide-goers in the mood, with the DJ's exhilarating movements towards the audience, maintaining the tempo from their seats and raising their arms, but in this sequence of Hammer, I couldn't resist taking out my phone and taking pictures and videos of the glamorous environment around me. Not only that, but I later shared the recordings I made at the time on my Instagram account.
As the spectators on the balconies looked down on the parterre in this sequence, they were witnessing those who were trying to 'become famous for 15 minutes', to 'show/sell themselves' to exist in the world, and those who were making their wishes come true. In this way, the audience became part of Ekman's piece, one of the most important elements in the construction of meaning.
When the curtain opened in the second half, the audience was greeted by a completely different atmosphere; a set, costume design and movement language in complete contrast to the first part. The idyllic atmosphere of the first part becomes bitter towards the end. In the second part it becomes totally decadent and degenerate, then depressive.
With Hammer, which consists of two parts of about 40 minutes each, Ekman has succeeded in exposing the image morass into which contemporary society has fallen in a way that is sharp, but at the same time entertaining and extremely humorous. In this respect, I think Ekman is a kindred spirit of another Swedish artist, the film director Ruben Östlund, who has twice won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
The entire cast of 38 dancers from GöteborgsOperans Danskompani was on stage at the Hammer. To see skilled dancers on stage, each with a high level of skill and physicality, clearly enjoying their performance, is a factor that adds to the audience's enjoyment of the show they are watching. It must be for this reason that Hammer has become the company's most popular show since its premiere in October 2022. The excitement and admiration of the Gothenburg audience was evident at the sold-out performance I attended.
This season Hammer will be touring outside Gothenburg for the first time. Fortunately, one of the two cities on the tour is Istanbul. Then Barcelona. I recommend you do not miss the chance to see Hammer for the first time in the world after the Gothenburgers.
In this way you will also learn when the hammer, which I have not mentioned so far but which is important for giving the work its name, is activated and what it means.
[A version of this article in Turkish was published in art.unlimited.]
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