Ballet Preljocaj: Winterreise

 

The last time I heard a live performance of the song cycle Winterreise (Winter Journey) by Franz Schubert was in the Arts Hall on campus in Swansea University some 40 years ago as one of the free Sunday afternoon artistic events the University offered. 

     I remember that we were given a little print out of the names of the individual songs and towards the middle of the recital I began counting the number of items of musical torture that I had to endure before I could make my escape.  I was then much more open to the bombast of full-blooded Bruckner rather than being a lukewarm lieder liker.

     The performance in the Liceu a couple of days ago was altogether a different experience, and the magisterial rendition of the songs by the baritone Thomas Tatzi with the graceful and sympathetic piano accompaniment by James Vaughan resulted in the warmest ovation at the end of the evening.

 

 

 

     The choice of Winterreise for a ballet (choreography by Anglelin Preljocaj) was an interesting one.  The number of the songs gave opportunities for a series of linked dances, though the general tenor of the songs was almost unrelievedly downbeat.  The winter journey is a bleak one for the singer/narrator and the questioning ambiguity of the last line of the cycle is emphatically answered in this production with the female dancers slowly sprinkling snow or earth on the prone bodies of the men in a clear indication of death.

 

 

 

     The production is set on a generally empty stage with the ground being covered by snow or dust or dead leaves in a manner reminiscent of the stage of Pina Bausch in her production of The Rite of Spring where the dancers danced and stamped their way through earth.  In Winterreise the substance on the stage is much more ethereal, and it drops onto the stage at periods throughout.  It is used by the dancers as celebration, commemoration and mood change and was effective and pervasive.

 

 Considering the sombre nature of the song cycle, Ballet Preljocaj did manage to inject moments of humour into the occasion, though the humour was sometimes grim as with the mutual miming of suicide by poison, but there were more light-hearted touches with the power of a pointed finger being made good use of at one point and a rather distracting episode where a central dancer seemed to be wielding illuminated batons more useful for guiding aircraft into their standings than being a focus for dance!

     The dancers were an enthusiastic ensemble, though sometimes their coordination was a little off, but some of the intertwined body pictures that they created on stage were startling and very effective.

     I always say that for me, Ballet is like banana yogurt: it’s not something you would choose, but when you are given it, it’s quite enjoyable. 

     Ballet Preljocaj was a very superior banana yogurt!

Lord! See how virtuous I am!

My Secondary School was a bus ride away from my home, and I can remember that the schoolboy cost of a ticket (one-way) was 1½d or 1.5 pennies or three ha’pence or just over half of one modern new penny.  The cost now seems derisory, and it wasn’t a great deal even then, but it was worth collecting by a real, live ticket conductor and there was always a chance (remote but real) of your ticket being demanded to be seen by a ticket inspector.

     As my bus travelling was at peak time, ticket conductors were not always keen to visit the seething zoos on the top deck and were sometimes somewhat cursory in their collecting of the three ha’pences for the fares.

 

     

 

  

     At the bottom of the stairs there was, attached to the metal structure of the bus, a little locked ‘honesty box’ where uncollected fares could be placed.

     I have to admit that I scorned to be called a thief for three ha’pence, and always put my penny ha’penny into the box.  Indeed, there were times that, unless I was asked for the fare directly, I kept the money in my hot little hand until I could place it in the honesty box.

     I now realize that my actions had little to do with honesty and more with what is now called ‘virtue signalling’ where the public act of honesty outweighs the quality of honesty.  I was doing the right thing, but I wanted to be seen to be doing the right thing, and therefore parading my honesty rather than merely (as I saw it) being honest.

     This juvenile act of selfish pride came back to me when considering the Pandemic.

      Last night I went to the Liceu for the ballet (of which more anon) and, as I was walking down the crowded Ramblas from the excruciatingly expensive car parking, crunching my exquisitely painful knees, I was forced to consider the disparity between older folk who were almost invariably wearing masks and those people aged about 25 and younger who weren’t.

     The rules (ha!) for what you can and can’t or what you are supposed to and not supposed to do have always been somewhat fluid (no matter how they were presented by the authorities), and I think (who knows?) that the wearing of masks outside is now permitted, but they should still be worn in crowded outdoor situations (I think).  I would consider the most famous street in Barcelona, Las Ramblas, packed as it always is with tourists and natives, to be a crowded public place under the meaning of the rules.  Well, they (the youngsters) weren’t masked, and they were not observing social distancing.

     I have had my flu jab and my Covid booster, so I can consider myself fairly well protected – but I always wear my mask, I am positively Pilateian (the word may not exist, but we need some sort of expressive adjective, though the adverb may be too clumsy to use) in my compulsive hand washing, and I keep my distance.  Why can’t others?

     But this zeal for protection extends itself to my locker in the pool.  In our pool you can hire a locker and have it as your personal storage space on a permanent basis.  Not only does it mean that you can store some of the essentials on site and not have to carry them to the pool each day, but also you can be assured of its not being used by anyone else and therefore you can be assured of its cleanliness as well.

     However, after I have changed, I clean the outside door and the interior of my locker with the disinfectant provided by the centre, using sheets from one of those giant rolls of absorbent paper also provided.  I have my own spray of disinfectant that I keep in my locker, and I spray and clean the pegs and the sitting area of bench that I have used.

     We are constantly told that Covid is transmitted through the air and that the chances of transmission via surfaces is limited.  Limited by not non-existent.  I am aware when I am cleaning that I am doing something that virtually everyone else ignores.  Most people regard the wearing of a mask (which the centre demands in all inside areas, except the showers) as sufficient.  And perhaps they are right, and I am just virtue signalling again, revisiting the childhood pride of ‘honest’ bus riding.

     Having said that, I do feel some degree safer after my cleaning and I enjoy that sort of selflessness that comes with knowing that at least the bits that I used are now clean for others.

     I think that the simple reality is that any amount of virtue signalling is to be encouraged when you are dealing with a pandemic that has killed millions and incapacitated millions more.  I will continue to clean!

 

 

The review of my Liceu evening can wait for another time!

    

No choice to choose

 As I am off to the Liceu this evening - admittedly for an evening of ballet rather than opera, but that is how the season tickets tumble – I will deny myself the mucky pleasure of pointing out the corrupt sleaze that the Conservatives and presently mired in, led by a craven and despicable apology for a leader 

 

T

who because of a ‘previous appointment’ cannot be in the commons to apologise or accept his knocks for his frankly appalling management of the Paterson Scandal. 

     I will instead, to keep my mind unscarred by justified vitriol, consider decluttering.

 

knees, operation, library, getting rid of books,

      

 

 

     With the present state of my knees, which are little more than flesh covered bags of various sized marbles, our present abode is almost perfectly unsuitable.  The house is spread over three floors with the ground floor containing only the garden and the entrance, while the living quarters start on the third floor.  There is no lift, and the stairs are unyielding and narrow.

     There is no bathroom on the first floor that contains the living room and the kitchen, so everything needs stairs.

     My study (or hollowed out space in clutter) is on the third floor and that also has no bathroom.  The result is, when you get where you want to be, you don’t move until you absolutely have to!

     If, and given the way the health service has been knocked for six by the pandemic that is a big ‘if’, anything by way of an operation was considered to try and get my knees back to something approaching normality – then my house would emphatically NOT be the place to consider recuperation.  This means that we now have to consider moving within the near future.

     This is a sobering and frightening proposition.

     Where I go, there also goes my library.  And libraries, unless you are totally wedded to Kindle, is not something easily transportable.  And my library is large.

     Were I to move taking only my Art books and catalogues then I would be moving more books than most people have in their houses.  And given that they are Art books, a damn sight heavier than the books most people have.  And Art books are but one small part of my holdings.

     In spite of what Toni says and believes, I have ‘rationalised’ by collection over the years.  I did manage to shed a depressingly large section of my library in Cardiff (books, I might add, that I still resent having got rid of) and over the years in Castelldefels I have donated masses of books to educational establishments (and I resent their absence even more) but, and this is a sad, but entirely understandable fact, I have replaced the Lost Volumes with new and essential books that I NEED.

     If I am realistic, I know that we are unlikely to find somewhere as commodious as our present place and that means that I will have to be bloody minded in cutting my holdings even further to the bone before we are able to move.

     Yes, I know that there are some books that moved with me from Cardiff that I have not looked at or even opened since they were unpacked, but I know that they are there and THAT is the important point.

     I also know that I can have the classics of English Literature (at least historical and out of copyright English Literature) stored electronically and I do have various books on my Kindle, but I also have the copies of the books in which I first read them.  And I am and remain a ‘paper purist’ – there is nothing like actually turning the pages and feeling the heft of a volume in your hand.

     Sooner, rather than later, reality is going to have to hit, and I am going to have to make some very hard choices.  But I am putting my faith in prevarication and the liberal application of embrocation to stave off the evil day.

     Long live the bound and printed word!