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World premier choreographed by Sean Bovim to Freddie Mercury. Costume designs by Gavin Rajah, Craig Port, Christiaan Gabriel du Toit and Malcolm Kluk. Tay Dall is contemporary abstract artist. Lighting by Shamiel Abrahams. Presented by Cape Town City Ballet with vocalists Duncan Royce, Luciano Zuppa and Zanne Stapelberg and the Cape Town Opera Vocal Ensemble. Michael Hankinson conducts the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra in his arrangements of Mercury's music. Artscape Opera until 9 October. Sheila Chisholm reviews.
BRILLIANT, is one superlative describing Queen at the Ballet. It's brilliant in choreographic and musical concept, production, sets, costuming and Shamiel Abraham's artistic lighting effects. Add marvellous orchestral playing under Michael Hankinson's direction, magnificent solo, duet and choral singing and dancers coping superbly with Sean Bovim's formidable step configurations and presto you have a memorable world premier.
It's not that Bovim contrives to be abstruse. His 'mind's eye' conceives movement atypically, so unhesitatingly sets about implementing his ideas on skilled recipients. And they need to be highly skilled technicians to remain in control at the pace they change direction, reverse port de bras, clench fists, splay fingers, zap legs into assorted alignments, roll over the dorsum (top of the foot) onto the floor into different shapes, then leaping, mold their bodies into redesigned alphabet forms foreign to classical ballet trained dancers, but which only the classically trained could dare attempt.
Backed by famous Mercury songs, energetically rendered by Mercury's 'voice substitutes' Duncan Royce and Luciano Zuppa with a glittering Zanne Stapelberg joining Royce to stunningly climax the evening with Barcelona, Queen is a spectacular aural and visual journey.
Spread over nineteen scenes in two (shortish) acts Queen plotlessly replicates Mercury's zest for living. Either en pointe, bare-footed or in soft shoes, numerically mixed groups were frequently danced prestissimo. Although sometimes too busy to clearly define what Bovim intended to be in canon or what was under rehearsed untidiness never-the-less always made exciting kaleidoscopic pictures. As did the beautifully constructed, and danced, pas de deux for Tracy Li and Daniel Rajna (Don't Try so Hard) and Marianne Bauer and Johnny Bovang (Love of My Life).
Relative newcomer to CTCB's ranks Russell Cummings' international experience brought distinctive flavour to his part as the dancing Freddie Mercury, and masterly he wove dramatic connecting threads through tableaux. His outstanding foot work was most apparent in Bohemian Rhapsody while bouncing up and down on a trampoline as a lift slowly raised him out from the orchestra-pit to stage level - a breath-stopping time for watchers frightened he'd fall. But that exercise combining his en pointe pas de trois with Bauer and (a vastly improved) Andre* Sauer added yet another dimension to this grande spectacle. As did Grant Swift as a Marcel Marceau style Time-keeper riding solo on a tandem around Li, Rajna, Michelle Louw, and Robin van Wyk in the humorous Bicycle Race, as well as Megan Swart and corps' in their angled top-speed spinning act holding gymnastic rings.
Who Wants to Live Forever introduced poignant moments (Bauer, Bovang, Cummings, Sauer, Simone Muller and Coert Grobbelaar), while evergreen We Will Rock You drew spontaneous audience participation. In costuming, worthy of Parisian haute couture parades, Gavin Rajah and fellow designers chose basic black and white compositions with red, yellow and green splashes in easy-to-dance-in fabrics and glamorous styles reflecting Mercury's fashion tastes. And Tay Dall's six, see-through panels and gauze curtain, symbolically mirrored this. Seating the orchestra and chorus upstage kept all role players connected and thereby turned Queen at the Ballet into a brilliant theatrical experience.
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