Saw Alexander Ekman’s Midsommarnattsdröm (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) at the Royal Opera for the third time. In part for lack of alternatives, but also because I enjoyed it the last two times.

I’ve wondered every time about the fake hay that the dancers throw around. It’s like… better hay than real hay. It’s got stalks of a good, even length; the right amount of bend and give; a nice swish and fluff. Probably also less scratchy, more durable, less dusty and less allergy-inducing than the real thing.

This time I walked up to the scene in the interval and checked the “hay”. Even up close it very much looked like hay, even though it obviously wasn’t. Very thin paper, similar to paper string, thin and durable.

(Image from Dansens Hus, (c) unclear.)

Sharon Eyal is just the best. Awesome. Fascinating. Spell-binding. I don’t have enough superlatives. As an added bonus, this performance took place at Elverket, a small scene, and we had front row seats, so it felt even more immersive than usual.

Into the Hairy had familiar elements, the bits that I have loved in her previous works, but still felt new. Although, to be fair, even if there was nothing new, I could watch this over and over again. Maybe not daily, but once a month? Absolutely.

There was the group, moving together but not in sync, moving similarly but not identically, always having someone deviate somehow. Constant development and mutation in what is happening, even though much of it is told with minimal means. Small gestures, the angle of a wrist, the twist of a shoulder.

There were the precise movements that are elegant but also alien and inhuman. Stepping on the sole of one foot but just the toes of the other, to always be off balance. Especially one of the dancers was like… I don’t know what. An eel. A snake. An octopus. A space alien. Not boneless but just not quite human. Almost uncanny valley.

There were the lacy bodysuits that enhance each movement. A smooth costume smooths out movements, whereas a subtle pattern draws attention to them. I have never been as aware of the flex of each thigh muscle, the undulation of a pair of shoulders, the twitch of a buttock.

Here’s a brief 30-second trailer of Into the Hairy.

We saw Alexander Ekman’s Midsommarnattsdröm (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) at the Royal Opera during its first run, which must have been in 2015 or 2016. Now it’s back, and we saw it again.

From the first time around I remembered the most theatrical parts of it. Entertaining, somewhat pandering, but on the whole not bad. Since then I’ve seen two other pieces choreographed by Ekman (Eskapist and Cacti) and loved both of them, so why not enjoy this one again.

It turned out I’d managed to forget the more interesting parts of the ballet, so I’m glad I didn’t let my recollection of it keep me from giving it another chance.

Act 1 starts with a wild and exuberant… harvest dance, ish. Short but fun.

That is followed by the theatrical part: a parody of a Swedish Midsummer celebration, complete with an anxious hostess, forced cheer, that awkward looking-at-everyone while toasting, too much drinking, etc. I’m not a big fan of story-telling ballet, and I think this part could have been more interesting if it had been taken one step further from normality.

Which the second act definitely did. This is the night after the party, the actual midsummer night’s dream. A dreamscape that approaches magic and nightmare at the same time, where anything can happen. Things grow to absurd proportions, beds hover in the air, people lose their heads. The mood ranges from ethereal to grotesque.

I like beautiful, crazy ballets that keep surprising me.

We saw Alexander Ekman’s Midsommarnattsdröm (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) at the Royal Opera during its first run, which must have been in 2015 or 2016. Now it’s back, and we saw it again.

I’m glad that the Opera is willing to invest in a show with such a large cast. (I counted 40+ people on the stage.) The mass scenes would not have had the same impact with, say, half the number of dancers. Forty people marching, chest to back, makes an impression. Forty people streaming back and forth fills the scene, Twenty people doing the same thing would be puny.

During the interval, dancers were performing in the Golden Foyer of the opera house, seated on three-metre-tall chairs. Mostly a gimmick, and while there were people taking photos, I didn’t see anyone pay them real attention for any longer time.

Ballet evening at the Royal Opera.

Lukáš Timulak, Totality in Parts. Had all the right pieces but left me cold. During the intermission I was doubting myself, trying to figure out whether I just wasn’t in the right mindset for modern dance today, or maybe I was too tired from work to appreciate it properly.

It was just… boring. There is the “individual vs. group” angle, dancers moving as a group and then breaking out of it, but there really isn’t anything new about that. And I didn’t like the “language” it uses – and it’s definitely not just this work, it seems to be a certain style of dance that some choreographers prefer – that is all slouchy and dragging and “drawly”. I think of it as the “bad posture” school. The body seems to hang and be dragged along, rather than moving with energy. Pelvis forward, sternum back; leading with the elbow and letting the arm hang; toes turned inwards; shoulders rounded. A similar style is present in fashion photography as well, with a kind of world-weary, blasé, slouchy look.

The only thing I will really remember from Totality in Parts is the decoration on the far wall, with 512 lights arranged in a spiralling circle, pulsating and fading.

Then came Emma Portner’s “Bathtub ballet”, and all my doubts left me. Nothing wrong with my head; I just needed a better show to look at. Twenty-five bathtubs lined up on the stage, and seven dancers doing everything possible with them. It sounds gimmicky, and it almost could have been – “look, here’s yet another thing I can do with a bathtub!” – but somehow it wasn’t. There was an energy and a curiosity here that was just totally engaging.

And there is SO MUCH a bathtub can be used for. You can be in it alone, or together with someone. Bring water, or soap lather, or a duck. Lie, sit, stand, balance on the edge, arch across it. Hide in it, and reduce your body to a pair of legs, just a graphical combination of two articulated lines, really, paring off everything else. Stand it on end. Remove its bottom so you can pour yourself through it.

(c) Nils Emil Nylander

Aftonbladet’s review finds Portner’s piece meaningless and banal, an agglomeration of loose ideas, a technical exploration without meaning. Whereas Timulak’s piece is existential.

Expressen likewise appreciates the existential message of Totality in Parts, its expression of the loneliness of each individual dancer, a reminder that we are small atoms in a wide universe. Whereas the 45 minutes of Bathtub Ballet is too long for a single idea.

Dagens Nyheter likewise uses words such as “weighty”, “mystical” and “powerful” to describe Totality in Parts, but finds the bathtub idea too artificial, sees it as an unnecessary obstacle to movement rather than an interesting exploration.

What can I say. I disagree with them all. I’m not looking for a deeper message in every single ballet; they don’t all need to tell a story or impart commentary on the human condition and our existence. I just want the performance to be interesting. Bathtub Ballet does interesting things with the scene as a whole, and the enclosed space within each tub, and parts of the human body.

A ballet triple act.

Jerome Robbins’ “The Concert”. A comic piece depicting the audience of a piano concert (which is an actual piano concert being performed on the stage). In my opinion the piece has aged really badly. Its home is clearly in the 1950s, and I don’t understand why anyone would think this silent movie aesthetic was worth dusting off. I guess it was fresh and new when it came out, maybe? All I saw was people reduced to caricatures, and then ridiculed with no warmth. There’s the stern housewife, the cowed husband, the nerdy boy with big spectacles, the flirty hussy. All we’re missing is a plucky black mammy and a squinty-eyed chinaman, to make the collection of clichés complete. I always struggle with second-hand embarrassment but this actually made me angry.

Jerome Robbins’ “In the night”. Three episodes depicting three phases of love. Pretty but not particularly interesting. The piano music by Chopin was the best part of this evening.

George Balanchine’s “Theme and variations”. An artful, technically splendid display of skill and precision and grace, but to me it mostly felt artificial and contrived. There was no room for the dancers to show any personality or any expression other than a fixed, glued-on smile. I couldn’t help wondering if all the dancers had been chosen to match each other’s length and hairstyle.

All of these choreographies date from the second half of the 20th century, so I was expecting something a lot more modern.

Jalet’s Kites and Eyal’s Saaba.

I usually post press photos in my reviews of dance performances but this time we had front row seats so I took my own. Obviously my little camera struggled with the dim lighting but it’s enough for some memories.

Damien Jalet’s Kites. My opinion of this piece went up and down.

First: a woman, lying down on the floor, moving to a poem about the wind. Then, a group running up and down white slopes, evoking the feeling of running in the wind. This section didn’t impress me much – I found it repetitive and lacking direction and choreography. It felt as if the dancers had just been told to run up and down the white slopes, and let their arms drag behind them. Kind of boring, but the constant motion was soothing, like looking at the foam wake behind a boat, especially together with the music.

Then the group gathered loosely at the front of the scene, dancing together but slightly out of sync. One of them starts a movement, and the others follow gradually, like a wave. The next wave had a different starting point and a different direction. It was still relatively aimless: the same kind of thing kept happening for quite a while, without any noticeable change or directionality. It reminded me of Koyaanisqatsi, music and motion blending into one, especially with the minimalist music. It made me see the previous section from a new perspective, and appreciate it a bit more. Still, my opinion of the whole piece kept oscillating between appreciating the minimalism, and finding it low-effort and boring.

The final section was gimmicky. Cords got pulled and clothes transformed – shirts blown full of wind, sparkly jackets, loosely blowing pants, glitter blowing in the wind. Childish and cheap, compared to what came before, lowering the tone.

Also, the streetwear-inspired costume design may be modern and cool but it detracted from the performance. The costumes were loose but stiff, so they hid the dancer’s bodies and made movements indistinct. A tighter design would have made the bodies more visible; a looser, softer fabric would have flown with the motion.

Sharon Eyal’s Saaba. This was spellbinding and awesome. It was as if she had seen the first piece and taken the best parts of the concept – minimalism, gradual change, waves of movement – and added emotional depth and vision, turned up the intensity to 11, and fixed all the niggling little shortcomings.

Like Kites, there is a minimalism to the choreography. There are rarely any large movements or radical changes. Unlike in Kites, everything always subtly mutating. It’s never just time passing. The group is constantly changing direction, or size, or motion, or role. In technical terms, the information density of this work is ten times that of Kites.

The style felt immediately familiar from the last time I saw a work by Sharon Eyal. The dancers move as a group, but their movements are not identical. There is always some deviation, someone going against the flow, or standing on their toes when the others have their feet flat on the ground, or looking left when the others look right.

What was most interesting about the choreography was the tension between the strict and the grotesque. Straight legs, controlled bodies, restrained movement, tightly braided hair – but also hunched shoulders, choked throats, pointed fingers, gaping mouths, distant gazes, pained grimaces. I got the impression of something demonic and obsessed, though it was far from wild or fiery. Possessed, otherworldly, especially with the dreamlike lighting making everything look slightly unreal.

And those amazing costumes of tight light-coloured lace, looking gritty rather than pretty, highlighting every movement.

Hypnotic, powerful, mesmerizing. I barely blinked during this performance, so as not to miss a single detail.

Danse Macabre at Kulturhuset. A mixture of theatre, dance and circus.

This was the weirdest thing I’ve seen in a long time.

The scene was covered in garbage. At the rear, a large construction consisting of a steep hill of sorts, and a box/room/house balancing on top of it. The box/room/house was often but not always tilting quite steeply left and right at a constant pace.

On the plus side, three of the people on the scene were really skilled as both actors, dancers and acrobats (and one of them as a singer). The fourth one seemed to be a bit of a filler, with not much to do and not much skill either – later I found out he was the director. I guess he wanted to stand on the scene, too.

The performance itself was a jumbled mixture of all imaginable things. I couldn’t discern any consistent theme or tone. It was so wildly inconsistent that the surprises stopped being surprising and interesting and just made me roll my eyes. It was as if the director/choreographer had just thrown in everything he could think of. Childish, and not in the sense of unbridled creativity, but more like “look at me being all crazy, now you all have to laugh at me”. And most of these fancies were abandoned soon after their introduction. Nothing actually went anywhere.

“Let’s put the dancers in a tilting box and let them hang off the walls! Let’s give the old guy a silly voice like a whiny kid! Let’s pretend he doesn’t know how to put on a shoe! Let’s make the long-haired actors hang their hair in front of their faces so we can’t see them! Let’s make the guy sing! Let’s make the guy give birth to a bundle of clothes, with really realistic groans and screams! Let’s have the small girl get inside an XXL hoodie and put the wrong body part out of the wrong opening! Let’s give the skeleton guy a pair of fake legs to hold so it looks like he has four legs! Let’s make them all stuff garbage inside their clothes! Look at us being so funny and unpredictable!”

I was yawning by the end of it, and so were the people next to me. At the end, the cast were clapping their hands to pull more applause out of the not-very-impressed audience.

The two parts that I actually appreciated were Dimitri Jourde’s singing, and the dancing inside the tilting box, which contained both actual development and progression and plenty of skill.

I saw this dance performance together with Eric already several weeks ago. Jotting down my notes here for future me before the impressions fade too far away.

Six independent duets by six different choreographers. The whole thing was supposed to be performed in Oslo but there was some sort of strike there so it was moved to Stockholm with short notice. Lucky us to get tickets.

1. Sasha Waltz, Impromptus. Male/female. Technically beautiful but not very interesting. Lovely piano music by Schubert.

2. Emma Portner, Islands. Female/female, with the two dancers wearing a single set of four-legged loose trousers. They moved sometimes like twins, sometimes like mirror images, and sometimes my brain literally interpreted them as a single body with an unclear number of legs and arms. Very cool. Somewhat disappointing that they disconnected from each other towards the end.

3. Mats Ek, Julia & Romeo. Male/female. An excerpt from a longer narrative ballet. Energetic and playful and loving, but it felt a bit misplaced without the rest of the story.

4. Chrystal Pite, Animation. Male/female. The man’s movements start out broken, as if he doesn’t have full control over his body. The woman supports and guides. (Even so I clearly felt that he is the main dancer, not she.) As time passes, he becomes more “normal” and his body more “whole”. Something something love heals all ills? Too bad, because I found this message rather clichéd and his normal movements towards the end much less interesting.

5. Jiří Kylián, 14’20”. Male/female. I have no particular memories of this piece.

6. Ohad Naharin, B/Olero. Female/female. Bold, angular, energetic, cool. Great finale for the evening.

Photo credits: Islands © unknown because the page has been removed from www.operan.no; I got the photo from Google’s cache. Animation © Eric Berg.

A ballet evening in three parts.

Jiří Kylián, Bella Figura. Lovely baroque music, but I never quite managed to connect to the dance. The movements were too intellectual, too artificial. I couldn’t relate. It was as if each movement was a signifier of something important but unknown, but they made no sense without knowing the significance of each one.

Mats Ek, överbord (woman with water). Seen it before, and it was as striking and compelling as last time. A woman and a table and a glass of water, and it is as if she is meeting both of them for the first time.

There was also a man, but he felt almost like an afterthought. He flitted through, dressed in a black suit, poured water for the woman, but didn’t feel like a part of anything. I see from the photos that he was there last time as well – I had completely forgotten him and even thought he was a new addition in today’s version of this piece.

Forsythe, In the middle, somewhat elevated. About ten dancers in green and black. Their movements and poses are classically strict and very athletic. Groups emerge, cohere and dissolve, merge and move apart. Mesmerizing and utterly compelling.

All photos (c) Kungliga Operan/Carl Thorborg.