Septemberdans 2011
. 5 for Silver, Koreografi: Douglas Lee. Lucas Lima-Leyna Magbutay-Marco Pagetti. Foto: Erik Bergjpg

OSLO: The new season of the National Norwegian Ballet has started the 1st of September with the traditional “SeptemberDans” program, which focuses on contemporary dance. The 2011 edition is the sixth in the series and has been a great success.

Three choreographers with each a very different approach to the choreographic process and a very specific style have created three original works: Soul’s Complexion, by Andreas Heise, Welcome Home, by Ina Christel Johannessen and Five for Silver, by Douglas Lee.

The first one is Soul’s Complexion by Andreas Heise. Heise is a dancer in the company and has already created a work, Nucleus, for «SeptemberDans 2009». Inspired by Anton Tchekhov’s The Three Sisters, Soul’s Compexion is a work for four dancers on the Sergueï Rachmaninov’s Suite No. 2, Op. 17, in which Heise focuses on the psychological evolution of the characters. His choreographic style is quite narrative, very light and fluent, and he still asserted it since his last work.

Septemberdans 2011. Souls’ Complexion. Koreografi: Andreas Heise. Stine Østvold-Yolanda Correa-Ingrid Lorentzen. Foto: Erik Bergjpg

He composes very nice trios between the sisters in which the personality of each is perceptible. Yolanda Correa, who is ex-soloist of the Cuban National Ballet, is wonderful as the youngest sister and gives her a very specific charm and an innocent sweetness. Ingrid Lorentzen and Stine Østvold are more dramatic in the role of the oldest sisters. Yoel Carreño – ex-soloist of the Cuban National Ballet too – is a great partner for the “pas de deux”
. He advances each one of his partners and has a pleasant ease in “pirouettes”.

The colored costumes and the long dresses of the dancers participate to create a very soft and poetic atmosphere, costumes by Stine Sjøgren.

The set is composed by only one triangular table which has allowed many interesting choreographic effects, as it is possible to change its height.

Septemberdans 2011
. Welcome Home. Koreografi: Ina Christel Johannessen. Ingrid Lorentzen-Miharu Maki-Victoria Amundsen.jpg

The second work, Welcome Home, is signed by the famous Norwegian choreographer Ina Christel Johannessen, who created the company Zero Visibility. It is a work for 5 dancers on a contemporary sound composition: Victoria F. Amundsen, Miharu Maki, Caroline Roca, Stine Østvold and Ingrid Lorentzen.

Grimoire and L’Autopsie Phénoménale de Dieu by Kreng, and Barra Barra by Kaboom Karavan. Johannessen’s work is based on improvisation and with Welcome Home she creates a very powerful piece. The mood is darker and more restless than in Heise’s work, despite of the very white and luminous sets and lights
. It looks like a cave of ice or a post-nuclear desert, which is not very welcoming, contrary to what the title says. The work is clearly based on this contradiction. The music is often oppressive while the dance is quite slow. The choreography is made of some fluent parts opposed to some jerky parts which accentuate this ambiguous feeling.

Septemberdans 2011. Welcome Home. Koreografi: Ina Christel Johannessen. Victoria Amundsen-Miharu Maki-Caroline Roca. Foto: Erik Bergjpg

Johannessen plays with the classical technique of her dancers and uses it in her own modern way like when she exacerbates the height of the “développés” and the “jetés”. Another original aspect of the set is that the dancers use some bottles made with resin that they break and then dance on the pieces. This gives the impression that the dancers walk and dance on glass, which creates a really intense and awkward feeling in the audience
.

Unfortunately, this effect is not used enough and even if the work is very powerful, some parts are a bit too long and tend to lose the audience’s attention.

The last work is a creation of the English choreographer and former dancer Douglas Lee who works at the Stuttgart Ballet. Five for Silver – this title is inspired by an English counting rhyme about birds – is a work for 5 dancers, Leyna Magbutay, Maiko Nishino, Gakuro Matsui, Marco Pagetti and Lucas Lima, on original music by Julia Kent, who had already collaborated with Lee, entitled Delay and Green and Grey.

Septemberdans 2011. 5 for Silver. Koreografi: Douglas Lee. Maiko Maki, Foto: Erik Berg.jpg

Lee develops a whole combination of personal and cultural allegories about birds in a very sensual and fluent choreographic style. He makes a wonderful use of all the possible combinations of his dancers and shows an incredible delicacy in his work on the “portés”. So much that we feel sometimes like the dancers are forming the same chimerical being. The language used is clearly based on a classical technique and is very complex. One can recognize a certain influence of Forsythe – who also worked with the Stuttgart Ballet for a long time – in the way that Lee interrogates the possibilities of classical technique and searches always farer its limits. The work has a great emotional power. The costumes are sober and elegant and remind the birds’ feathers. Five statuettes of crows are used by the dancers while they dance. All of them shine by a wonderful technique and we can congratulate them, especially Gakuro Matsui who was injured.

With “SeptemberDans 2011”, Espen Giljane proposed a very rich program of high quality, faithful to his will to advance the contemporean dance in all its variety and make it accessible to the general public. The company has been in tour in the West part of Norway with this program since the 10th of September.