Sophiline Cheam Shapiro's "Pamina Devi: A Cambodian Magic Flute" comes to the Clarice Smith Center on Oct. 25 and 26. (Photo Credit: By John Shapiro -- Khmer Arts Academy Photo)Sunday, September 9, 2007
Sarah Kaufman
Washington Post (USA)
"PAMINA DEVI"
For Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, dance was the lifeline she clung to after surviving the Khmer Rouge regime's atrocities in her native Cambodia. But after mastering Cambodian classical dance, an intricate, spiritually motivated art form that was all but wiped out during the bloody dictatorship of the 1970s, Shapiro has taken its traditions a step further.
Audiences will see Cambodian dance wedded to Western fantasy when Cheam Shapiro presents her reimagining of the famed Mozart opera in "Pamina Devi: A Cambodian Magic Flute," Oct. 25 and 26 at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. The production, Cheam Shapiro has said, is an attempt to reconcile her homeland's repressive past with its ancient magnificence.
While it may strain the imagination to picture Mozart's joyous, upbeat romp told by slow-moving, meditative Cambodian dancers in heavily ornate costumes, there is also something apt about the combination. The 18th-century opera hailed the Enlightenment, and its echoes are found in the journey taken by the heroine of "Pamina Devi," who endeavors to transcend the darkness in which she has been raised. Angkor, centuries-old seat of the wealthy Khmer empire, stands in for the glories of imperial Vienna.
At the very least, this tantalizing event, performed by 32 dancers, musicians and singers, promises to be a chief curiosity of the season. It could also be more. After all, Cambodian dance, which has struggled to reroot itself in its own country, doesn't figure too highly on the local dance scene, making this an especially welcome engagement.
KIROV BALLET'S "LA BAYADERE"
Betting on this performance is as sound a gamble as one can make. The ballet by 19th-century genius Marius Petipa is remarkable not for its narrative strengths but for its metaphorical, even meta-mystical, ones.
As in "Giselle," the heroine dies early on, and she is reunited with her grieving lover in the afterlife. But unlike "Giselle," what happens in "La Bayadere's" signature second-act ghost story really has no story. It's a purely spiritual experience, for the audience as well as for the bereft lover Solor, who conjures it up after a few tokes on his hookah.
Count on the Kirov Ballet to invest "La Bayadere" with crystalline precision and operatic grandeur. In fact, the ballet shares more than a few details with the opera "Aida" (Petipa had been staging dances for the opera when he began work on the ballet); both take place in sun-drenched Eastern locales (the ballet in India, the opera in Egypt) and turn on romances between slaves and nobility.
The ballet demands a musically sensitive, effortlessly cohesive and technically unblemished corps; it also requires soloists to handle some of the most difficult individual variations in the canon, and dancers in the three principal roles with consummate acting chops. No wobbly knees need apply, and with this company, you're unlikely to see them.
AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE
There is good news and bad news about American Ballet Theatre's offerings this season. Bad news first: We will be visited, once again, by the company's muddled "Nutcracker," with its mix-ins from various other versions. The good news: ABT's new production of "The Sleeping Beauty" will follow, Jan. 29 through Feb. 3 at the Kennedy Center Opera House.
The revamped classic got middling reviews at its New York premiere in June. Given Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie's treatment of "The Nutcracker" and his heavily theatricalized "Swan Lake," it's safe to assume this ballet will be long on the dramatic effects and showy scenery. Yet be it a charmer or a turkey, I'm terribly eager to see it because (a) it's brand-new and Washington audiences routinely have to wait much more than a few months to see any newly minted New York productions and (b) it marks the return to the company of its storied former star ballerina Gelsey Kirkland, who assisted McKenzie with the choreography.
Kirkland is the divinely endowed but temperamentally unpredictable dancer who was ultimately fired from ABT while the troupe was on tour here two decades ago. After so many years away, she and her husband, dramaturge Michael Chernov, were invited to work with the ABT director to devise a "Sleeping Beauty" that reportedly streamlines the traditional choreography and places new emphasis on the Prince, who is called upon to do more than deliver one magical smooch.
Ballet is an art that relies upon the intimate dancer-to-dancer transmission of its secrets and mysteries. That the nation's premiere classical ballet company has called upon one of its greatest native-born stars to do just that is a particularly meaningful event. At the very least, Kirkland's contribution adds a bit of historical polish to the refurbishing of a workhorse ballet.
For Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, dance was the lifeline she clung to after surviving the Khmer Rouge regime's atrocities in her native Cambodia. But after mastering Cambodian classical dance, an intricate, spiritually motivated art form that was all but wiped out during the bloody dictatorship of the 1970s, Shapiro has taken its traditions a step further.
Audiences will see Cambodian dance wedded to Western fantasy when Cheam Shapiro presents her reimagining of the famed Mozart opera in "Pamina Devi: A Cambodian Magic Flute," Oct. 25 and 26 at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. The production, Cheam Shapiro has said, is an attempt to reconcile her homeland's repressive past with its ancient magnificence.
While it may strain the imagination to picture Mozart's joyous, upbeat romp told by slow-moving, meditative Cambodian dancers in heavily ornate costumes, there is also something apt about the combination. The 18th-century opera hailed the Enlightenment, and its echoes are found in the journey taken by the heroine of "Pamina Devi," who endeavors to transcend the darkness in which she has been raised. Angkor, centuries-old seat of the wealthy Khmer empire, stands in for the glories of imperial Vienna.
At the very least, this tantalizing event, performed by 32 dancers, musicians and singers, promises to be a chief curiosity of the season. It could also be more. After all, Cambodian dance, which has struggled to reroot itself in its own country, doesn't figure too highly on the local dance scene, making this an especially welcome engagement.
KIROV BALLET'S "LA BAYADERE"
Betting on this performance is as sound a gamble as one can make. The ballet by 19th-century genius Marius Petipa is remarkable not for its narrative strengths but for its metaphorical, even meta-mystical, ones.
As in "Giselle," the heroine dies early on, and she is reunited with her grieving lover in the afterlife. But unlike "Giselle," what happens in "La Bayadere's" signature second-act ghost story really has no story. It's a purely spiritual experience, for the audience as well as for the bereft lover Solor, who conjures it up after a few tokes on his hookah.
Count on the Kirov Ballet to invest "La Bayadere" with crystalline precision and operatic grandeur. In fact, the ballet shares more than a few details with the opera "Aida" (Petipa had been staging dances for the opera when he began work on the ballet); both take place in sun-drenched Eastern locales (the ballet in India, the opera in Egypt) and turn on romances between slaves and nobility.
The ballet demands a musically sensitive, effortlessly cohesive and technically unblemished corps; it also requires soloists to handle some of the most difficult individual variations in the canon, and dancers in the three principal roles with consummate acting chops. No wobbly knees need apply, and with this company, you're unlikely to see them.
AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE
There is good news and bad news about American Ballet Theatre's offerings this season. Bad news first: We will be visited, once again, by the company's muddled "Nutcracker," with its mix-ins from various other versions. The good news: ABT's new production of "The Sleeping Beauty" will follow, Jan. 29 through Feb. 3 at the Kennedy Center Opera House.
The revamped classic got middling reviews at its New York premiere in June. Given Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie's treatment of "The Nutcracker" and his heavily theatricalized "Swan Lake," it's safe to assume this ballet will be long on the dramatic effects and showy scenery. Yet be it a charmer or a turkey, I'm terribly eager to see it because (a) it's brand-new and Washington audiences routinely have to wait much more than a few months to see any newly minted New York productions and (b) it marks the return to the company of its storied former star ballerina Gelsey Kirkland, who assisted McKenzie with the choreography.
Kirkland is the divinely endowed but temperamentally unpredictable dancer who was ultimately fired from ABT while the troupe was on tour here two decades ago. After so many years away, she and her husband, dramaturge Michael Chernov, were invited to work with the ABT director to devise a "Sleeping Beauty" that reportedly streamlines the traditional choreography and places new emphasis on the Prince, who is called upon to do more than deliver one magical smooch.
Ballet is an art that relies upon the intimate dancer-to-dancer transmission of its secrets and mysteries. That the nation's premiere classical ballet company has called upon one of its greatest native-born stars to do just that is a particularly meaningful event. At the very least, Kirkland's contribution adds a bit of historical polish to the refurbishing of a workhorse ballet.
1 comment:
Mr. Shapiro is quite an entrepreneurial spirited man.Now his investment is payinhg off after having married this dancer from Cambodia.
I smell Khmer artist for sale,got high bidder...going one,twice thrice...
the gentleman with Casio calculator in hands is the higher bidder.
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