Hamlet, dear, where are you?

By David Blake
Cairo Opera Ballet Company and Cairo Opera Orchestra; Hamlet and Lorkiana (choreography: Mark Mnatsakanian); Danses Qu'on Croises (choreography: Thierry Malandain); Ivan Filev, conductor; Abdel-Moneim Kamel, artistic supervision; Cairo Opera House: Main Hall, 16 Feb
There was a happening called Hamlet at the Cairo Opera. But the melancholy Dane was nowhere to be seen. He appears as a dancer, as a sylph in black tights, with fine elevation and a striking presence. But, as the Dane with family problems, he did not fit. But keep your eye on the show. It has style, if not perception.
The opera has produced three ballets which are unlikely to be bettered in New York, London or Paris. The dancers, most of whom are Egyptian, with some Russian imports, put out that certain shine which in the theatre means class. There is nothing wrong with Egyptian dancers -- all they need is the chance. In this version of Hamlet, they don't get many. Yet it is Hamlet, a Himalaya of Western reasoning. More than a play, it's an alluring inducement to thought. From age to age it sends out its message that all is vanity. Verdi adored this aspect of Shakespeare, and planned an operatic version of King Lear, Shakespeare's final exposure of existentialism.
Hamlet seems far beyond the choreographic methods of Mark Mnatsakanian. As librettist he has divided the play into eight sections, labeled, for example, "Fear," "Feelings of Gloom," and so on, all of which would be quite superfluous f the choreographer were capable of a minimal showing in dance of the plot itself.
As it is, from the beginning the choreography does not fit the tale. It reduces the very celebrated characters to a sort of parlour game. Where is Gertrude? Where the murderous Claudius? Is Laertes the man in green? Are the actors the ones in cloaks? Since everyone else wears cloaks, it is difficult -- with the exception of the ghost, prominent atop a pillar and wearing a gold outfit, a very showy way to haunt -- to tell who is who.
This version of Hamlet was first made public by Mnatsakanian two decades ago, and it shows its age. The lifts are old-fashioned, softly-romantic sylphide lifts. Everyone floats and soars, mostly in gloom. The choreographer has a love of movement. It is a ballet: whatever you do keep moving. And so, as on a railway station, after the departure bell has sounded, isolated people just take to their heels and rush across the stage as if trying to catch a moving train. There are eruptions of fighting -- Renaissance brutality, we are assured, gives a contemporary edge to the show. But where was this version shown first? In Timbuctoo?
In this Cairo Opera version, after the death of Polonius, Ophelia does her mad scene in a costume she has worn throughout the ballet, a sort of vestal virgin job of grey and white, but she has the moment of pathos in the whole work. As a sad, vague white cloud, she floats down the staircase and when she reaches the bottom step drops dead -- or rather, carefully folds herself up into a decorative bundle.
The ballet soon floats on to the duel scene which kills the remaining characters. Even here Hamlet has no strong dramatic movements, and dies conveniently: there must be an end to this no-ballet ballet. Mark Rodganov was a fine jumper in the lead role and someone called Tanya was the piteous Ophelia lost in this storm about nothing. Yet the shine was there on the production. The Cairo Opera Ballet presented what was offered them, an unsatisfying work, with aplomb and technical assurance, and Ivan Filev gave a sympathetic show of Shostakovitch's weak score.
Danses Qu'on Croise: this was the fine spark of the three-ballet performance. It was a success on its first visit here. Thierry Malandain's Danses is sharply objective about the present day young. Cool, witty, lively and inventive, it was pure joy after what had preceded it.
Erminia Kamel, as producer, has done a good memory recall of the work. It is even better than first time round, giving the dancers more individual colour and character. Being herself a dancer, she bends the dance to Brahms, whose music was played with energy and depth by the Cairo Opera Orchestra under Filev. It is now a proper ballet of form and grandeur.
Thierry Malandain's wit is always bitter-sweet. The eight young dancers have individual characters now, four girls with cigarettes and glare glasses, fishing about in their bags like everyone does, but with the sort of concentration suggested by the grand sweeping music.
Brahms was haunted by youth, its beauty and its perilous position in a changing society. These children are young, but already aware of the uncertainty of life. So their dance is sharp-edged, with a genuine desire to be themselves, generous, playful and vulnerable. This new, polished version of Danses permits the eight characters to be themselves, up there where the crowd is and ready for the jolts when and if they come. All this is done by dancers in costumes of everyday drabness. They look elegant because they are that way inside. In the separate dances that carry the ballet along, they act very vividly, with kindness, compassion, and often a sharp dislike of each other. One girl, in smart glasses, is very grand but with a humorous tolerance that hits the centre of a certain type. Another is frisky, flirty and silly, but sharp as a razor if threatened.
The boys, all Egyptian dancers, are quite perfect. Tough, funny, handsome but without self-satisfied vanity. They play around, but basically are looking for security and relationships that last. All eight are perfectly aware as they preen and prepare for the jungle ahead and the ballet becomes a quiet inlet on a very rugged coastline: we watch these souls sail in, enjoy a short respite, and then go. The vast world has swallowed up the lot.
And it is here where Erminia Kamel does her job with great integrity. As the powerful muscles of the Brahms score flex into action, and the dance pauses, breathes, then swoops on into life, clearing away everything, emptiness reins. This moment is breath-catching. The dance and music are united. The great breath of hope -- and on to the battle. Harsh, not a moment left for trivialities.
If you are expecting anything Spanish about Mark Mnatsakanian's more recent work, Lorkiana, look the other way. It is like its relative ballet Hamlet, a place without roots or definition. One must settle for the same Never-Never Land Hamlet inhabits.
Its heroine, Soledad, is haunted by her dead lover. She feels guilty about any feeling for anyone else. She tries to settle for a torero she has met at a corrida, but the cure for her torment does not work. She dances and dies.
Where are we? South America? Certainly not Spain. As the ballet begins and the hieratic lines of dancers hurl themselves into the tumultuous music, it is obvious we are in Sahara City of the early Nasser era. This Spain never existed, nor did any of the creatures whose non-actions make up the non-plot.
It is hard after the ameliorating effects of Danses Qu'on Croise to take Lorkiana seriously. Don't try, this sort of entertainment is best enjoyed in nightclub land. It has been put together by Mark Mnatsakanian, music by Edward B. Marks B. Marquina, and how it got to the Cairo Opera stage is a question without any answer. Anyway, it is here, castanets endlessly clacking, and soft arm gestures and steps, hardly even human, robotic insects, but colorful. It is drenched in Spanish colours all put to such unSpanish ends we are probably high in the Andean heights. Only no self-respecting South American Indian ever danced like this.
The racket begins as Iman Mustafa lets loose her high soprano voice in a pastiche of a mad flamenco song. She goes into the heights very well, with no flutter and in perfect tune. And how it goes on -- and on and on. Long lines of the ballet company spend their night madly rushing around, heads down like charging bulls, hands out in front, fluttering and dottily suggesting nothing. Certainly not Spain. Perhaps a corrective institute for victims of mad cow disease.
The audience is charged from every angle by the demented dancers, while the heroine stamps and jumps suggesting her broken heart. She is assailed by men in black silk body stockings, and will have none of their hieratic advances. She dies upside down, crucified by her past.
This is a farrago for collectors. It received limited applause from the big audience, showing what can be got away with if it is done with style. It is not even vulgar. It is merely stately, serious, and full of its own importance as great dance art. The Cairo Opera Ballet Company has paid Lorkiana the doubtful honour of respect, and it had a sort of triumph by being performed at all, with dedication and fortitude. The dancers kept straight faces. After all, it is not Egyptian choreography.
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