Anguish and reverie combine as this solo becomes a parade of memories, with reenactments of his earlier roles. Harlequin (Marcus Morelli), Petruschka (Brodie James) and the Golden Slave (Jake Mangakahia) appear, as does the more sinister figure of Diaghilev (Maxim Zenin).
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Neumeier uses the protagonist’s fractured psyche to progress his narrative, moving associatively between past events. This gives the ballet a kind of tragic irony: the descent into madness is terrible, but so is the fascination this madness holds for others.
In the second act, the ballet becomes increasingly abstract, and increasingly difficult to enjoy. The stage is dominated by illuminated circles, a shape that obsessed Nijinsky in his years of confinement. Images of war, always eroticised, constantly intrude.
The achievements of the ballet are undeniable. There are strange and unsettling solo, duo and trio arrangements that cast a creepy light on personal relationships. But there are also sequences that, while visually compelling, may alienate even those familiar with Nijinsky’s legacy.
And yet the influence of the work should be obvious. You only have to look at The Australian Ballet’s recent production of Oscar by Christopher Wheeldon. The parallels are striking, particularly the explicit masculinity and explorations of madness and homosexuality.
Neumeier’s Nijinsky demands a lot from its dancers.Credit: Kate Longley
Neumeier’s Nijinsky demands a lot from its dancers, but it also demands serious engagement from its audience. Neumeier wants to challenge us to think again about Nijinsky, to recognise his humanity, and not to pigeonhole him as a superstar who went off the rails.
And ballet doesn’t have to be a pleasure. While this work can be exhausting and overwrought, its seriousness and allusive depth make it a necessary experience.
Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrmann
THEATRE | ASIA TOPA
Tiny, Fluffy, Sweet ★★★
The Show Room – Arts Centre Melbourne, until February 23
When Tiny, Fluffy, Sweet opens, one is invited to listen to a brief history of the panda – what Beijing- and Utrecht-based theatre maker and performer Ran Chen says is the “indigenous native of China”. Seated next to her is fellow performer Feng Li, who in turn reads off a prepared script as three screens of varying sizes – think Matryoshka dolls – project images of pandas throughout history.
Tiny Fluffy Sweet is part of this year’s Asia TOPA Festival.
It’s an intriguing premise. The duo go on to question why there haven’t been records of the animal in ancient times, only for it to enter popular consciousness after Europeans began to show it interest in the early 1900s. From there, the panda’s image continued to spread through what Chen calls a “cuteness economy” to finally culminate in how it is received now, particularly through cute videos on social media – “no longer belong[ing] to the forest, but to the data”.
The panda: it is tiny, fluffy, and sweet indeed. The audience is treated to image after image of the black and white creature as zestless music composed by Peishan Xu pipes through the venue. Soon however, the duo’s mild narration quickly pivots to a vulnerable memory from Chen from the height of the COVID-19 pandemic that has her sounding nearly in tears.
The scene lingers, then abruptly it’s time for a new act: screens no longer centerstage, Li puts on a inflatable panda costume, the duo entering a domestic yet absurd setting that goes on for almost too long. The dead silence too, lends an alienating effect.
As we observe Chen and Li care for a toy panda through a two-channel live video, the play devolves into incongruity to result in an ending that is bizarrely more entertaining than everything else that came before. Unused props too, suddenly make sense after the show purportedly ends. Chen describes the panda’s body as one that “looks like that of a man who has given up on himself but still has desire” – this may very well be the logline for Tiny, Fluffy, Sweet.
Reviewed by Cher Tan
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