@ Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, until Sat 23 Jan 2016
Creative collaborations can be difficult balancing acts; they attempt to weave something whole, out of what may be quite disparate imaginative strands. Crucial to the success of such collaborations, is that they allow adequate room for each of the collaborative threads to knit together properly, no thread complete in and of itself.
Where this doesn’t occur, there can be an uncomfortable tussle of competing intentions. This is unfortunately the case in balletLORENT’s new ballet Snow White, whose impressive creative team clearly have many bold and interesting ideas, yet these do not quite crystallise into something genuinely homogeneous.
Murray Gold’s score, for example, leaves very little space for the choreography to breathe. Although in many ways expertly crafted, it nevertheless lacks a certain amount of real substance, yet despite this, it is almost intrusive at times. The choreography, which is any case tends to be a little unfocussed, just cannot always compete.
The clever and compact set, no doubt designed with touring in mind, while giving a useful element of height to the choreography, also acts as a magnet drawing the dancers into the centre of the stage, resulting in a small screen version of something that should be in Cinerama.
Carol Ann Duffy’s retelling of the Snow White fairy tale is artful and witty, and narrated very compellingly by Lindsay Duncan. However, as masterful as it is, rather than creating much needed cohesion, the narrative frequently seems to interrupt the flow of the dance. Indeed in general, the whole ballet could be usefully edited and thus more tightly structured.
There is certainly a lot of good work here backed by a genuinely insightful reworking of the well-known fairy tale. However, although there are many thought-provoking and magical moments throughout, the perfect parts that make up balletLORENT’s Snow White, create a somewhat imperfect whole.
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