Dance, trying to get on terms with the existential and the metaphysical, using a movement vocabulary that is inspired by and expressive of today’s complex and confusing world.
A moveable wall that on occasion hides the stage from sight of a part of the audience: one of the ways in which Ballads is dealing with Perspectivism, the idea that a bird’s eyes view on reality is impossible. A dancer enumerating an infinite list of names of – depending on your worldview – heroes/villains is emphasizing that point in a different way.
But especially the way the dancers will take you on a journey from a harmonious world to a vibrant one and back, is expressing the ambivalence of existence. With Ballads Leine & Roebana, in collaboration with the dancers, created a personal and emotional work, in which choreographic structure becomes the matrix for the dancer's immediate artistic choices.
The capricious, contemporary movement idiom is interweaved with musical extremes: Coh Iron, Miko Vaino, Pan Sonic, Pixel Display, Pauline Oliveros, Autechre, Gavin Bryars and Chet Baker.
Choreography in collaboration with the dancers: Andrea Leine en Harijono Roebana
Dance: Sarah Linstra, Tim Persent, Lia Poole, Ederson Rodrigues Xavier en Heather Ware
Music: Chet Baker, Coh Iron, Miko Vaino, Pan Sonic, Pixel Display, Pauline Oliveros, Autechre, Gavin Bryars
Remix music: Andrea Leine en Harijono Roebana
Lighting design and technical production: Peter Romkema
Felt design: Studio Claudy Jongstra
Costumes: Marjon Leek, Leine & Roebana
Videoprojections and sound: Diana Wildschut
Software for video: Frieder Weiss
Light: Rob van der Knaap
Creation decor: Vorm en Decor, Rob van der Knaap
Poster design: Thonik
Premiere 20 January 2006 in the Theater Bellevue in Amsterdam
Review in NRC, 23 January 2006
Surprisingly frivolous dance from Leine & Roebana in 'Ballads'
The face of American jazz trumpet player Chet Baker, in the years before his death, showed clear signs of a tormented life. His ballads, on the other hand, had a remarkably easy sound; sultry and melancholy. This great contrast is quite strange. Ballads, the new dance production by Andrea Leine and Harijono Roebana, is also characterised by contrasts. The duo took four of Baker's ballads as their starting point. Though these give structure, and Lia Poole dances sensual steps to Baker's silvery tones, there are even more meditative, threatening, hard electronic sounds in the piece, which create a totally different atmosphere. This second type of music in Ballads comes from experimental composers: COH, or the Russian Ivan Pavlov, the American avant-garde composer Pauline Oliveros, the Finnish techno band Pan Sonic and Gavin Briars.
Leine & Roebana have woven all this material into a refined soundscape that underlines their deep affinity with music, almost as if they were composers themselves. Their choreographic web is equally finely spun from threads which are almost transparent, interlaced with a few stronger, thicker strands. Organic, rounded movements are alternated with abrupt and angular shapes; meditatively soft versus passionately heated, and impulsive versus controlled. This mix of qualities lends suppleness, flexibility and elasticity to their dance textile.
A new element is that a hint of the narrative has tiptoed into the performance in the form of words that are both projected onto the backdrop and spoken by dancer Tim Persent. This touch of drama – about heroes from world history and their virtues, and about emotions – is surprising, as are the jokes that suddenly embellish the dance. The strange thing is that these frivolities really suit the otherwise very serious Leine & Roebana style.
Ballads also looks wonderful. The decorative wavy screen on wheels, covered in felt by textile designer Claudy Jongstra, is eye-catching. Coiled between rough tufts of wool - from the moorland sheep of Jongstra's own district of Drente - are decorative curls of lamb's-wool. Golden-yellow lighting transforms the felt screen into an artistic baroque relief. The colour ot this mobile piece of scenerey beautifully matches the sand-coloured backdrop and the brownish-grey, pitch-black and creamy-white costumes.
Ballads has lots of contrasts: in music genres, in pure dance opposed to meaningful actions, and in a multitude of different angles. Sometimes this is too much, as the constant shifting of Jongstra's screen in order to create a different set for everybody comes across as an unnecessary effort to be interesting. And throwing around the names of heroes is also rather gratuitous.
By using so many devices and angles, it seems as if the makers want to guard against the dullness that has played a part in their latest productions. And they’ve been successful in this, because despite the couple of snags mentioned, Ballads as a whole is a very pleasant and appealing production; playful and sparkling. The dancing from Tim Persent and Ederson Rodrigues Xavier is outstanding, as is that from a strong Lia Poole, theatrical Heather Ware and spirited Sarah Linstra.
Isabella Lanz
Review in Het Parool, 23 January 2006
Restlessness and harmony in Ballads
Best performance by Leine & Roebana in recent years
The title of the new production by Andrea Leine and Harijono Roebana sounds innocent enough. Ballads – that ought to be a pleasant, peaceful sort of work. But nothing is farther from the truth. Ballads is full of restlessness, dissonances and contradictions, with – fortunately – the expected harmony as a haven here and there.
The choreographers’ duo likes to use a very stylised stage set and this time it is an extremely beautiful design, with a mobile, wavy wall that creates an ever-changing space, thanks to Claudy Jongstra’s fanciful felt artwork. Five dancers perform in this set. First comes Lia Poole, looking at the audience flirtatiously and swaying her hips to Chet Baker’s There will never ever be another you. In complete contrast is the withdrawn Tim Persent, who shows the beauty of Leine & Roebana’s dance idiom in a wonderful solo; gentle, flowing movements, with clear lines and limbs which seem to semaphore electrical pulses surging through his body.
This introvert solo is followed by an energetic duet for Persent and the powerful Sarah Linstra, and in this way the choreography continually switches from one extreme to another, though sometimes with Linstra’s soothing hip-swaying as an intermezzo. Heather Ware, in a contrasting white costume and hidden behind a mass of long hair, has an interfering function. She calls out the names of famous people, artists, politicians and other less savoury characters, some dead and others alive, while texts about ‘heroes’ are projected on the backdrop. This seems to suggest that fame, for whatever reason, is the only criterion for hero status. It is these rather high-flown sections that detract from the organic construction of Ballads. Slightly less deafening sound effects would improve the quality. Gorgeous beyond a doubt is the harmonious, synchronous duet in which the elegant, precise Persent and the robust, strong Ederson Rodrigues Xavier give their own nuances to the movement material. This is one of the strongest passages in one of the best productions presented by the choreographers’ duo in recent years.
Francine van der Wiel
Review in Trouw, 24 January 2006
Ballads is safe and soft as silk, but also cool and distant
After the performance, the audience cannot resist furtively touching the felt wall of the stage set. The wavy, mobile dividing wall in ‘Ballads’ was designed by Claudy Jongstra, known for her felt designs for Donna Karan and Christian Lacroix, and does indeed have an enticingly high level of 'strokeability'. The felt walls are as soft as a new-born kitten, but here and there they are also roughly brushed like tufts of raw cotton. This contrast applies in general to Leine & Roebana’s dance production ‘Ballads’: safe and soft as silk, but also cool, distant and ‘roughed-up’.
As a leading representative of ‘pure’ dance in the Netherlands, the work of Leine & Roebana is characterised by a formal approach; a steady and almost ‘mathematical’ dance investigation into forms and structures, in which the music always directs the proceedings. However, it is not a case of visualising the music; the dancer’s body enters into actual dialogue with it. It is beautiful, inventive and always fascinating, but the abstract approach often tends to make it a touch inaccessible.
With ‘Ballads’, the choreographers’ duo are changing tack. The loose, fragmented structure of the choreography is remarkably different. The five wonderful dancers literally get more freedom of movement, which enables emotional depth to predominate. This is shown mainly in the case of Tim Persent, who uses all the space to completely remove the form-oriented corset. It is wonderful to see how he incites the three female dancers to dance, with texts like ‘Generosity. Go’ and ‘Smile. Go’, while he shoots his arms freely in the air with his body twisted to the side. ‘Ballads’ has a true Leine & Roebana-style interaction between the dance and the music. Passionate songs by Chet Baker accentuate feelings of nostalgia. ‘There will never be another you’, sings Baker, while a dancer kicks her legs in a nonchalant and ‘jazzy’ solo, her eyes fixed flirtatiously on the audience.
But as Baker’s voice fades away, the felt wall shifts and the lighting gets chilly. To the cool techno of Pan Sonic and the black ambience sounds of Autechre, the comfortable security of Baker’s songs transforms into an extremely charged atmosphere.
In this ‘beyond’ of the felt wall dances a faceless Heather Ware, her wild mop of curls concealing her from back to front. In a monotone, she recites the names of prominent ‘heroes’ from world history. She goes from Einstein and Madame Curie to Hansje Brinker, though Judas and Osama bin Laden also get a mention.
Whirling projected letters form sentences like ‘Live fast. A good hero feels no pain, or feels it but it doesn’t show’. This rather forced addition is not always clear, but does guide the emotional intentions that are pushing Leine & Roebana’s dance in a promising new direction.
Sander Hiskemuller