For the most part Alas worked. The staging was minimal and the lighting frequently organic, with dim glows coming from stage right so that the shadows of the dancers were projected onto the large screen at stage left. The water ballet at the end was beautiful, especially the unintended reflection of the water onto the ceiling of the National Theater, which made looking up give you the feeling that heaven and earth had been reversed.
While Damiel was sans wings, costume designer Angelina Atlagic thoughtfully left large slits in the back of his coat (and his T-shirt) where wings could have been attached. But while Duato amply conveyed the physical struggles of a heavenly creature torn by his desire for mortality, the reasons for this desire were less clear. In the film, Damiel wanted to join the woman he loved. In Alas, the woman appeared to be an afterthought.
I had expected some grand pas de deux. What you got was Damiel as a watcher, not a doer.
The 52-year old Duato, however, has retained the suppleness he was famed for in his younger days, and while I’m sure he could tell the difference, there were probably few in the audience on Saturday who would have been able to discern his age from the way he danced.
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