The first premiere of this year’s season the ballet ensemble of North Bohemian Theatre of Opera and Ballet introduced on the stage of the theatre in Ústí is a piece called Café Aussig. This dance performance by a “young but not fresh young” choreographer, librettist and director Alena Pešková (we can list for example ballet Garden or dance theatre Maryša, both in J.K.Tyl’s theatre in Pilsen) is a free adaptation of play Le Bal (Ballroom) by Jean-Claude Penchenat famous for its film version by Ettore Scola. The Ballroom is in this case more imaginary and timeless micro-world called Café Ústí (Aussig) where the most essential historical events of the past century meet allows us to study determinations of regular guests with different age, nationality and social position in detail.
Within the mentioned concept, the stage (author Richard Pešek) tells us about the time changes. On the wall behind the bar, a portrait of a person who ruled our state regularly changes, new props significant for that time gradually gather – from the newest technical devices to newspaper and magazines and flags of the states whose armies crossed our recent history. The previous ones remain on their places and anachronic nature of the stage gradates – maybe as a response to Stoppard’s Arcadia – to the last scene when the circle closes and the image of the 20th century is complete. I intentionally emphasize the 20th century, the only reference to Ústí nad Labem (apart from the name of the staging) is only a projection reminding a city during changes, otherwise you may consider this performance to be a universal cross-section of our recent history
Every historical image is emphasized by costumes (Kateřina Hadravová) – literal ones that have civil design and this may be the reason why they produce discomfort, especially by many swastikas in the second part of the first act.
The scene is foreshadowed, the protagonists are ready and clapperboards (literally) start the events relentlessly defined by history of the last century; six images gradually change in front of us beginning with a prologue placed to a kaiserlich und königlich café filled by guests with music of The Blue Danube to after-1989 present in the sixth and the last image. The rate is rapid, it directly follows the stated line and the performance continues, the only special element is a couple of characters with a frame that substitutes the mentioned clapperboards by moving on the stage and it chooses protagonists who are supposed to tell their story after going through the frame.
If we focus on the dance formation, we must say that the Ústí company is presented as a compact, mature company of dancers who is able to deal with a various range of styles because of the vast time span. Thanks to these performances and choreography based on group scenes characterizing single images, we can say that the performance does not have any stars who would draw attention only to themselves. Dance qualities of the leading soloist of the company (M. Plešková and V. Gončarov) are significant but in this case, they do not stand out, they fit to the final image created by all dancers – minor disharmonies appear from time to time mainly in synchronization in group scenes, but they are understandable because of a small number of second nights and dancers compensate them by nice freshness of performance and joy.
Dramaturgy of the performance invokes many questions, mainly by interpretation of some characters: The Party man (V. Gončarov) is a character that flows in decades of our national history with glibness and servility of a time-server who can immediately orientate in a constantly changing political situation and profit from its changes – its representative weaves his way (like the character) with easiness and plasticity of motion; it is a pity that he is forced to do pretended action with his character bordering on caricature. The counterpart of the Party Man is the second universal character of this performance – the Mother (M. Plešková) is a sufferer who does not like to be involved in history and she would let the others to mix with it but she is the one who is touched and gotten rid of the relatives. The result of the character is completely different – Plešková does not draw the attention to dance interpretation of the role but mostly to convincing and natural acting demonstration – a moment where we anticipate emotional tension evoked by the loss of the son because we see shivering shoulders of her huddled body but it is tangibly present and it belongs to the strongest part of the performance. Dramaturgic help – a son’s bloody shirt – is a useless complement of her expressive abilities.
The strongest moment of the performance is a “Jewish” duet at the very beginning of the second act where lusty celebration takes place in honour of liberators – Red Army soldiers with necessary accompaniment of Kalinka – they are suddenly cut off by the return of a young Jewish girl (S. Christianová) from the concentration camp. Her miserable body broken by hardship emerges unexpectedly and without words in the door of the café as an exclamation, it reminds regular guests of high price paid for victory in the war; imaginatively built and suggestive duet with her boyfriend (P. Popovský) follows accompanied by Zdeněk Lukáš’s music full of pain, reproach and forgiveness.
Other group scenes do not have the same imagination – it is clear that the author incorporated references to certain dances of that time from Vienna waltz to rock’n’roll and disco – unfortunately she did not avoid descriptive details or clichés (raised right arms evoking a Nazi greeting in the image from the Third Reich, a drunken Russian soldier or Gipsies showing their derogation of social rules by picking their nose). A bad thing is an often discussed connection of Richard Wagner’s music with Nazi ideology, in this case it is a prelude to the last act of the Valkyrie when an elderly couple dances a duet introducing the birth of the regime.
Café Aussig is a dance performance that uses subsequent images to directly, clearly and articulately description of essential historical moments of the 20th century that has changed not only Ústí nad Labem but the whole state. A possibility to conceive the topic in a wider manner, to seek, to ask about connections and to foreshadow possible parallels to nowadays falls a sacrifice to this solid framework instead of mere narration of generally known historic events with apparent effort to the greatest objectivity to have one’s own opinion. The performance is focused directly on the audience and it is left without space for interpretation. When the circle closes at the very end with The Blue Danube, everyone meets again in the café that represents the 20th century and a viewer has almost nothing to ask.
Written from the performance on 2nd December 2009.
Josef Bartos
Thank you for your thoughts. One got stuck in my mind – that passion makes us different from AI. Just yesterday I read…I am a dance critic. I am a member of an endangered species