The ‘beautiful monster’ of contemporary dance: a close reading

World premiere: The Hague, October 2019
Sydney premiere: April 2022
Melbourne premiere: June 2022

Lighting design: Tom Bevoort, Udo Haberland, Tom Visser
Costume design: Joke Visser, Hermien Hollander

i
Kunstkamer

The idea for the new ballet was sown in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague when Paul Lightfoot and Sol Leon spent the morning turning the pages of an eighteenth century thesaurus that displayed the objects from the famed collection—the kunstkamer— of Albertus Seba. They adored its wild juxtaposition of creatures, plants, mythical beasts and corals 

Kunstkamer directly translates into ‘art room’ and thus it proved to be the ‘perfect metaphor’ for Lightfoot who was ‘steering the ship’ of a major production to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Nederlands Dans Theater. In conversation with David Hallberg of the Australian Ballet (below), he explained it supplied ‘all the freedom we needed to do whatever we wanted with this work and still come out saying Well, that’s what it is⎯it’s a room full of art!’(1)

It also allowed Lightfoot to pay homage to the Dutch apothecary, zoologist and collector who contributed to the Scientific Revolution and by extension to nod at the multitudinous achievements of the Dutch. As with Seba’s splendid collection, the dance work is alive with a spirit of exploration, adventure and wonder

Kunstkamer was given its world premier in October 2019. The company planned to tour with it to Paris, London, Madrid, and Baden Baden, but Madamoiselle Covid intervened and so it was performed a mere 12 times before its Australian season in 2022

ii
The movement

The dance was created by Lightfoot and León as house choreographers of NDT and Crystal Pite and Marco Goecke, who were both associate choreographers. These three are frequent collaborators, like souls who share an ethos that favours the minting of a fresh movement vocabulary to express the music and the mood of the work in hand

Certain recognisable movements appear early and are then scattered across the piece as a whole, such as a shoulder-high developpé in second of the right leg held against the body by the arm. Much of the movement is simple, almost throwaway, conversational, such as hip thrusts, body waves, head rolls, folded arms, side bends, walking and running. There are also technical leaps, lifts, falls and phrases that only a highly trained body can perform with liquid perfection

The general impression is that there is so much movement, particularly in ‘Janis’ in Part I and again in ‘Johann’ in Part II, each created by Goecke, where there can be a step on every count and a twisting jump can finish with a shake of the head. The profusion gives a sense of hyper energy, but each step is precisely delineated and controlled. By contrast, Pite’s long movement phrases in ‘Schubert Memory’ in Part II glide into one another. There is one moment in which a dancer is lifted by the others and seems to run up the wall. There is urgency in her running, as if she cannot run fast enough and the sudden linear shift from vertical to horizontal is striking and, somehow, heartbreaking

The entire dancing body is used: for example, the hands. Rather than dangling gracefully in a movement or pose, they are frequently held tight with closed fingers and long wrists. If the fingers are spread wide open, this is deliberate. Hands poke and jab, point and tear, they smack the face

And the face is likewise brought into play. Absurd faces are pulled with eyes and mouths open wide. Expressions of mock sobbing and exaggerated laughter recall mime artists and clowns. Because thought is reflected in the face, the effect of these heightened expressions is to evoke the private world of feeling. It gives the dancer a persona who is dancing a story

Then the voice is used, further broadening dramatic possibilities. In ‘Overture’, at the beginning of Part I, a solo dancer enters and executes a spectacular movement. Then he looks out into the auditorium and utters a single word that sends it up (don’t want to give away the joke). The audience laughs

This dancer functions as a ‘spirit guide’ and is one of two recurring characters who speak at various junctures. Their speech ‘dances’ in a way because of the variety of tones they produce, although the meaning of the words is obscure. Dancers rarely reveal their voices in performance and the effect here is to create an intimacy between those who perform and those who watch

The choreographers explore the expressive qualities of the collective body. This is joyful in the canon in ‘Beethoven’, the piece co-created by Pite and Lightfoot that closes Part I. The moves are simple (well, not all of them), but 40 dancers running and dipping, from high to low, from one side of the stage to the other, with movement passing along a chain of bodies produces an impression of a restless tide, an unstoppable force. The paradox here is of exuberance and velocity arising from controlled energy and intricate plotting. Every dancer must be attuned to the movement of their neighbours within the group

Pite creates another running crowd for ‘Schubert Memory’ in Part II, but this time the mood is darker. The ensemble work features tableaux that melt and regroup in a series that presents the sculptural possibilities of stillness rather than momentum. In one moment of lush intensity, the canon technique is used to produce a ripple through the dancers’ bodies to open out like a large sea anemone. And then it too dissolves softly into the onward flow of movement

iii
The metaphor

‘... for doesn’t it seem odd that Gowing’s always coming and Cummings’ always going?’
George Grossmith, The Diary of a Nobody 

For all that Seba’s kunstkamer was the springboard for Lightfoot and Leon, Kunstkamer doesn’t evoke the natural world as a metaphor. Rather, the notion of the kuntskamer functions as a kind of net, pulling and holding the various pieces together. Lightfoot likens it to an art musuem where you could look ‘from Munch to Rembrandt to Pollock’, artists with ‘nothing directly to do with each other’, but still you feel there’s a ‘thread or spirit connecting them’ (2)

As it happens, the extended metaphor running through the work is that of openings and closings. Leon states in the program notes that these are ‘symbolic of the windows and doors that artists go through, of comings and goings’ (3) The metaphor resonates in performance because each member of the audience has their own comings and goings

The set plays a part in this. Leon designed it with Lightfoot to present a huge sparse room dressed in black that could be suggestive of a castle or an asylum. It features an upper level with windows and doors, a large door in the centre at the back, and doors at the side

Doors both enlarge and enclose the space. They can be heard when they slam shut. There are secrets behind them. They hint at a world of happenings beyond the stage as when a door is opened to light pouring in

Sometimes they’re part of a joke as when one opens to be hurriedly grasped and closed by the anxious spirit guide, or when a dancer appears through a door on the upper level and falls on to stage in ‘Britten’

The doors provide many kinds of entrances and exits: playfully, as when a group prances in backwards in ‘Strauss’; sorrowfully as when a solitary dancer cracks open a side door and slides in around it in ‘Forgiveness’, She snakes her body forward against the side in a long attitude, arm and fingers extended

iv
The music

Kunstkamer is comprised of 18 musical pieces⎯seven in Part I; 11 in Part II⎯by 14 composers

These are often just named for the composer or composition: ‘Beethoven’ (to Beethoven’s 9th) or ‘Poland’ (to Poland by Olafur Arnalds). Occasionally one has a name unrelated to the music (‘Forever a Second Déjà Vu’ to Avro Pärt’s Fratres for violin, string orchestra and percussion). It’s as if the working titles that became familiar in rehearsal were never revised

Paul Lightfoot harvested the music over 18 months by compiling playlists, ‘only taking things I really loved,’ (4) and whittling them down. Then he conferred with the choreographers to arrive at the final program of compositions that span genre, era and mood: Purcell, Gluck, Beethoven, Schubert, Bartok, Britten, Pärt, Talbot, Arnalds, with polkas from Johan Strauss Jr and songs from Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart and Jose Sandoval

It’s easy to imagine this selection would be as much a delight for the orchestra to perform as for the choreographers to create with. And it’s likely the music licensing was a big job. In his interview with David Hallberg, Lightfoot mentions that the bootleg recording of Joplin that Goecke requested was ‘a headache’ (5)

In Part I, the propulsive rhythms of Britten’s Simple Symphony (for ‘Britten’) and Beethoven’s Symphony no 9 (for ‘Beethoven’) are exploited in surprising, witty ways. It’s in ‘Britten’ that the dancer falls from the upper level, landing in the arms of a group below precisely on the last beat of a bar, like a punctuation mark. It happens twice and gets a laugh each time.

The canon by Lightfoot and Pite in ‘Beethoven’ is set to the Molto vivace-Presto from Symphony no 9 (view a rehearsal in the video below). In performance I found the symbiosis of music and movement so rousing it was unbearable to sit still. I wanted to be on stage running with the dancers. I was desperate to tap my feet or fingers or keep time with my head, but I didn’t want to embarrass my daughter sitting beside me. I squirmed inwardly, in agony, in ecstasy

The presence of the musicians is acknowledged twice within the work. In Part II, a pianist hovers above the stage on the upper level mock-playing during ‘Schubert Memory’ like the phantom of the opera. In Part I, ‘Janis’ concludes with a percussionist on stage playing tambourine for the dancer. The sound produced by the simultaneous tapping and shaking of the tambourine is unearthly and it’s impossible to tell if the movement emerges from the sound or the sound from the movement. There’s a tight charge of hyper kinetic energy from the nervous system of the dancer to the nervous system of the player that explodes outwards into the mesmerised auditorium

The dancers also swap places with the musicians and in Part II sing two songs from Act 3 of Purcell’s King Arthur (for ‘Henry’, all-male voices and ‘See, see, we assemble’, male and female voices). These moments are ‘so arresting’ because ‘it’s singing taken seriously’ says David Hallberg (6). The songs are short and stark, and the dancers sing the 4-part harmonies with strong rhythmic emphasis. As with the spoken word, a sensation of intimacy arises from witnessing them venture out of their natural element. Their being joined together as a chorus ‘speaks of company,’ says Lightfoot (7)

The words from the second song are:

‘See, see we assemble
Thy revels to behold
Though quivering with cold
We chatter and tremble’

Assemble, quiver, chatter, tremble⎯ all Kunstkamer-esque verbs

iv
The mood

Lightfoot, the twinkly-eyed showman, weaves together movement, metaphor and music into a satisfying theatrical whole through his adroit manipulation of the mood 

In some places, several musical compositions combine seamlessly to build an atmosphere. Thus, in Part I, the Allegretto of Bartok’s String Quartet no 4 (‘Bartok’) moves effortlessly into the Playful Pizzicato of Britten’s Simple Symphony (‘Britten’) and then into the Molto vivace⎯Presto of Beethoven’s 9th to generate that high-octane spirit that had me twitching in my seat

By contrast, in Part II, Poland by Arnalds (‘Poland’) pairs with the Andante sostenuto of Schubert’s Piano Sonata no 2 (‘Schubert Memory’) to sustain an air of yearning

Elsewhere, there are sudden shifts that rupture the vibe. The first is in Part I when ‘Janis’ supersedes the melodic melancholy of ‘Near Light’. There’s a sudden bar of four forceful introductory notes⎯ a dramatic pause⎯ and then an unrefined, acid electric guitar riff unleashes a solo dancer performing Goecke’s awkward, intricate steps to the song ‘Ball and Chain’, sung by Janis Joplin. Lightfoot says this song arrives like ‘an earthquake’ (8)

The second lull to be pierced by a shock happens in Part II when Goecke’s polkas to Johann Strauss Jr for ‘Johann’ take over from ‘Schubert Memory’. All at once a boisterous pantomime erupts: the ensemble runs in backwards from the grand door at the back, there are catchy tunes with oom-pah-pah beats and cymbals clashing, and a pas de deux of quarrelling dancers, with bodies tight like toy soldiers, elbows turned outwards

In tandem with these variations, there is an overarching shift in tone from joy to sorrow to reverie between Parts I and II

Part I opens with ‘Archive’, a film by León in which ghostly figures move softly to the music of Purcell’s stately Lament from Dido and Aeneaus. The enigmatic final frame is an image of a white rhinoceros⎯perhaps a real-life beautiful monster

The first person to enter the stage is the spirit guide, who executes his fancy move and speaks his joke,thereby shifting the tone. There’s a mood of charming absurdism whenever he and his sidekick appear, and their interactions stray into the realm of physical theatre. Inevitably they recall Vladimir and Estragon, proxies for everymen. Two dancers in one ensemble wear paper crowns as a mock king and queen. Part I resounds with a sense of playacting, that nothing is too serious, and it rises to a crescendo with the thrilling canon in ‘Beethoven’. The audience is discharged into the foyers for Intermission, revved up with adrenalin and ready for more 

Part II opens with the anguished strains of Chevala Vargas for ‘Que Te Vaya Bonito’ as a scrim raises and closes on an unmoving dancer in an act of revealing only to conceal

The movement has become less spritely and upright. Absurdism gives way to pathos. The five dancers who had first appeared in ‘Near Light’ in Part I reappear here in ‘Forever a Second Déjà vu’, and the movement focuses on connecting and separating, bodies falling over each other. The pretend king and queen can be spotted again, but here their crowns suggest the impermanence of exalted status. In ‘Henry’, the spirit guide expresses agony and despair through his face and torso, no merriment now. When the dancers assemble to sing, they seem like refugees or supplicants

Our revels now are ended
Shakespeare. The Tempest, Act IV, scene i 

The music of Purcell bookends the two parts: the closing piece, ‘Past Present’, is set to Joby Talbot’s Chacony in G minor (after Purcell). A black and white image of the original members of Nederlands Dans Theater is projected on to the back of the stage. The dancers arrive, form a mirror image of the groupings in the image behind them and calmly look out at the audience. Talbot’s Chacony is a march with regal brass and solemn cellos. It swells in intensity and resolves quietly on ethereal strings. The dancers from 1960 and the dancers from today looking out to the sound of the march suggest the passing of generations and an endless procession into an eternity of dance, art, curiosity, creation

Bonus material

Playlist
I’ve made a Spotify playlist of the various tracks. It’s one hour and 44 minutes of listening pleasure. I couldn’t include Joplin’s ‘So Sad to be Alone’ because it’s Goeke’s bootleg song that caused a licensing headache — not available on Spotify!

The historical kunstkamer
Kunst is an Old Saxon word that means ‘art’ in Dutch, German, Norwegian, Danish, and Estonian. For example, Wagner introduced the term Gesamkunstwerk⎯meaning ‘a total work of art’⎯in a series of essays in 1849. But, while kunst may be familiar within circles of theatre, art, and music, it remains an obscure, highbrow term in general

Kunstkamer translates into ‘art chamber’ or ‘art room’ although its origins are not in art but science. The first kunstkamers began to appear in northern Europe in the late 17th and early 18th centuries and were collections of extraordinary objects taken from natural history. They became known in English as ‘cabinets (meaning a room, not a piece of furniture) of curiosity’ and ‘wonder rooms.’

Thus, the kunstkamer arose from the urge to understand the natural world that pulsed through the intellectual life of the Enlightenment. It represents boundless curiosity and thirst for knowledge

Albertus Seba was a Dutch pharmacist who opened a pharmacy in 1700 near the harbour in Amsterdam and asked sailors to bring him specimens of exotic plants and creatures from distant lands. His collection grew into one of the most splendid kunstkamers of the day. Such was its astonishing treasures, it was purchased in 1716 by Peter the Great of Russia who later housed it in the Kunstkamera, the first public museum in Russia.

Seba went on to build a second collection, more extensive than the first, that was auctioned off after his death. The funds went towards the publication of another venture upon which he had embarked: a vast four-volume thesaurus describing objects from his collection and illustrated with hand-coloured engravings. This is now held in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague and is considered one of the most prized natural history books of all time. This is the book that inspired Lightfoot and Leon

When David Hallberg was in contention for the role of Artistic Director of The Australian Ballet, he caught up with Lightfoot (in Moscow, as artistic directors do) and broached a possible collaboration.

‘The word Kunstkamer came out of your mouth,’ he said.

‘You thought it was a swearword,’ said Lightfoot (9)

References

 1 The Australian Ballet. ‘A Beautiful Monster’: Hallberg in Conversation with Paul Lightfoot, Video, 2022 https://australianballet.com.au/tv/a-beautiful-monster-hallberg-in-conversation-with-paul-lightfoot

2-3 Kunstkamer, Program

4-9 ‘A Beautiful Monster’ video