Review-Les Sylphides-Hong Kong Ballet
24-5-14
By: Meaghan McGurgan
Hong Kong Ballet's Les Sylphides and more is a salon style ballet. This means it's several smaller pieces put together into an evening of entertainment. I prefer this style of ballet over a full production for several reasons:
1) I like the variety of music styles, costumes and dance styles.
2) If it turns out that I don't like something, it's over pretty quickly.
For the purpose of this review I will break down each piece individually.
******
Les Sylphides
Choreography by: Michel Fokine
Staging by: Madeleine Onne
I've heard it's much more difficult to dance slowly. It takes more control to make a slow movement appear fluid. Les Sylphides was a very slow, traditional ballet, which seemed to be a quite challenging piece for the performers. I absolutely loved the work of the corps in this piece. I thought they were perfectly in sync and looked very ethereal. I did not care for the male lead, Wei Wei. I thought he looked pretty clunky on stage in his leaps, had no stage prescence and appeared to wince when lifting the ballerinas. I adored their accompianist, 9 year old Daniel Chan De-yao. He was an amazing pianist for a full grown adult, let alone a small child. It was a shame that Les Sylphides was my least favorite of the evening as it was the longest piece at about 40 minutes long.
Finding Light
Choreographer: Edwaard Liang
This was my favorite piece of the evening. My notes read: "Absolutely stunning. Perfect. Nothing wrong with it." I can't find a single fault with this number; it was beautifully performed and had gorgeous stage pictures. Leads Tan Yuan Yuan and Damian Smith were spectacular performers with gorgeous lines, wonderful expression, great extension and fantastic chemistry on stage. The performance was flawless. I was totally bummed when this piece was over. I could have watched it again and again on a loop! Can someone at Hong Kong Ballet make a gif of it? (Please?)
Le Corsaire
Choreographer: Marius Petipa & Vakhtang Chabukiani
AdiLiJiang Abudureheman (say that name 3 times fast!) was very impressive as the male lead in this piece. He has impressive height on his leaps. Le Corsaire upon first glance is a very traditional pas de deux. It contains some crowd pleasing tricks from the leads, tons of pirouettes and various styles of lifts. Overall, it was an enjoyable number to watch. The male dancer was obviously a much stronger dancer than his partner. He was better at selling the character, although her pirouettes were very impressive.
Five Movements, Three Repeats
Choreographer: Christopher Wheeldon
Another short piece by power duo Tan Yuan Yuan and Damian Smith was another wonderful addition to the evening. I didn't like this one as much as Finding Light but I did enjoy it. I enjoyed the twisting and pulling imagery in the choreography. I enjoyed the repititive nature of the movements. I also enjoyed the performers' commitment to the characters they were playing. The music choice in the number was very avant garde, I felt they could have been a little more brave with their lighting choices for this piece; it would have helped sell it a bit more.
Shape of Glow
Choreographer: Jorma Elo
Shape of Glow was a world-premiere piece created for the Hong Kong Ballet by Jorma Elo. I really enjoyed the last 5 minutes of this number. I thought it was really dynamic and interesting to watch. I enjoyed that different things happened on stage at the same time causing my focus to be split. It reminded me of motion studies I used to see in Science books as a kid- where you would see a person running and see the various still shots of the person in motion. I took a look in my program and saw we were studying the motion of music. It totally made sense. I didn't get the costume choice - I thought they looked like dolphin trainers at Ocean Park - but I liked the bold color choice. We had a few stumbles on stage during the piece but the dancers were very professional in carrying on like nothing had happened.
******
Overall, the quality of this show is good. Production values are high and you feel like you get your money's worth. There are various price points for the production, including 140HKD nosebleeds in the balcony that are still available. I would recommend it to people who are wanting an intro to ballet. You can get a taste of variety for one ticket price and get to support a wonderful local dance company.
Les Sylphides and more is playing through May 25th at Hong Kong Cultural Center. For more information, click here.
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