Almost everyone has trouble letting go of something long cherished, whether it is a childhood toy, a favorite shirt or a dream. Like all professional athletes, dancers know from the start of their careers that their bodies will tell them when it is time to stop, even if their hearts and minds want to go on.
Dance, of all the arts, has always been about mind over matter.
The famed Cuban prima ballerina, Alicia Alonso, barely let a detached retina she suffered in the early 1940s, which resulted in partial blindness, slow her down and continued to perform into her 70s. However, seeing her dance the title role in Giselle at 57 was watching determination in action, but it was a bit painful for the audience, even those too young to have seen her in her prime.
Photo courtesy of Wang Tzer-shing
French prima ballerina turned modern dancer Sylvie Guillem has been quite clear for awhile that she had no intention of following in Alonso’s footsteps, and having turned 50, she is now more than half-way through her final shows on her “Life in Progress” tour that ends on Dec. 31.
Guillem told a news conference at the Regent Hotel on Thursday last week that the decision to stop dancing was hard — harder than her earlier decisions to leave the Paris Opera Ballet and, 17 years later, to retire as guest artist at the Royal Ballet — but she knew for a long time that it was coming.
“There is the moment you know, and the courage to say ‘that’s it,’” she said. “It is not an easy thing to say.”
As for “Life in Progress,” she said that she did not want a show that looked sad or was nostalgic, but wanted “a way to say life is going on,” with works by “people who have been important to me.”
She more than delivered on Saturday night at the National Theater, with a show that reminded the audience of what has made her so great: her amazingly long arms and legs, that wonderfully high “6 o’clock” extension (one foot raised way above her head to form a perfect vertical line), the ability to be gawky and still graceful, her unthrottled passion and dazzling artistry.
The program opened with Akram Khan techne, which saw Guillem, in a silver mini-dress, scuttle, crawl and dance around a silvery tree. The piece opens with the epitome of elegance and grace moving around the tree in a tightly crouched position, knees pumping sharply like some nightmarish android-human-insect hybrid. The insect metaphor was seen again in a variety of ways, highlighted by the use of sharp angles of elbows and knees, but later Guillem unfurls to elongated grace, her arms outflung, the footwork speedy yet never rushed.
Giving Guillem time for a breather, Brigel Gjoka and Riley Watts performed William Forsythe’s Duo, the choreographic stand out of the show, in which the two men, standing together at the front of the stage, moved through a series of alternating simple and increasingly complex hand and arm movements, sometimes mirroring each other, other times with one leading the way, before they spread out in their movements and around the floor. It looked like hard, marvelous fun to perform and was a joy to watch.
Russell Maliphant’s Here & After, which Guillem performed with Emanuela Montanari, featured his trademark dark lighting and fluid movements, with the two women evenly matched in terms of body type, ability and pace. The first half of the dance is primarily a combination of slow, stretchy movements, but the second, with brighter lighting, sees a jazzy explosion of footwork and partnering.
The final work was Matts Ek’s bittersweet Bye, which never seemed more poignant. The piece begins with an unflinching black-and-white filmed close-up of Guillem’s face, projected onto a doorway, and progresses through a clever mix of film and live action as she “leaves” the film room to dance on stage, shedding her sweater, socks and shoes to run and jump, with Ek’s giving full rein to Guillem’s athleticism. In the end, sweater and shoes back on, she returns to a now-crowded room on film, turns to look briefly at the audience and then walks off into a white nothingness.
It was a performance that showed Guillem still at her best. What a way to go.
Of course, even when a performer has made up their mind to retire, convincing audiences to let them go is another matter. “Why is she retiring,” was a common post-show comment.
Within seconds of the curtain coming down for the first time on Saturday night, people were leaving their seats to get in line for a post-show autograph. They waited patiently for more than 30 minutes before the dancers appeared in the lobby. But Guillem and her fellow performers stayed until the line petered out almost an hour later.
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