sarma

Many festivals take place in Greece during the summer up and down Greece with music, theatre, sometimes dance for the enjoyment both of the locals and visitors. We will review today the festival taking place in Olympia. The name of Olympia is enough to attract the attention of any prospective audience (at least until we get closer to the 2004 Olympics where many may change their minds). The reality of transportation and the festival’s more general organisation leaves a lot to be desired and may even turn people on their heels. This is another chapter though, so for the moment we’ll stay with the performance of a modern version of La Bayadère given in July by the ballet group of the Grand Théâtre of Geneva at the Theatre in Olympia. It was choreographed by Etienne Frey.

The ballet La Bayadère describes a kitsch love story set somewhere in India and in essence it deals with the conflict arising from the claim of a man’s affection by two women, the high priestess of a temple and the daughter of a maharaja. There have been far too many versions of this story-line (in the romantic and the classical repertory) to render another presentation un-inspired and boring. A contemporary audience may find little of interest in the story, unless one goes to the performance with a sense of irony à la Almodovar; it is then possible to have fun and to be surprised by the on stage (truly!) tarty behaviour between the two rivals and the cruel (and without excuses) desertion of the poor priestess in favour of the princess. This reading of the play allows an equally serious and multidimensional approach to the myth. Etienne Frey presented his version of La Bayadère in which the core elements were the change in time (the characters meet at a small country train station in India at the beginning and at the end), the comical manipulation of the parts mainly danced by the corps de ballet, the dancing with in soft shoes and, for inexplicable reasons, the lack of any worth seeing dance section. In the final analysis, Frey’s pursuit of the deconstruction of an imperialist outlook of the original, backfired by being missed in a convolution of movements which made the whole programme to resemble a school performance.

Frey’s choreography fizzled out soon after the dramatic introduction. He spent time on disappointing comic interludes between some of the characters (for example, courtiers of the maharaja), “jocky” costumes and non-existent dance. Pompous and arrogant in its conception, Mr Frey’s work made us wonder whether he had anything against his dancers whom he made to walk in the same way throughout the performance with one exception ( the kingdom of shadows with references to Mats Ek). This was the best part of the show.