THE last time puppets stole the show at Artscape was when the world renowned War Horse returned to the country of its designers. Audiences joined the Handspring Puppet Company in welcoming them with open arms and hearts. Janni Younge, a previous director of the much decorated company has set her sights skywards and is returning with an avian themed production, The Firebird.
Younge has an uncanny knack of translating tales of human experience through the medium of puppetry in a bid to make them more of what they can be and yet retaining the essence of the original story. The master puppeteer, Bil Baird said, “A puppet must always be more than his live counterpart - simpler, sadder, more wicked, more supple, an essence and an emphasis.”
This adaptation seeks not only to do that but to extract the metaphorical meaning from both the score and the puppets. For The Firebird she has created and constructed giant puppets, feats of design themselves which acquire a magical otherness. Larger than life birds that metamorphose and fire breathing creatures that will keep you spellbound are some of the puppets that are included in the cast.
Dance lovers will be familiar with the ballet which premièred in Paris in 1910 and has since been performed extensively. It was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev and marked the beginning of a long relationship between the composer, Igor Stravinsky and Diaghilev’s company the Ballets Russes. Initially choreographed by Michel Fokine the production was hailed for the symbiosis between décor, choreography and music.
It is the symbiotic relationship between dancers and puppets and the complexity of Stravinsky’s music that has drawn Jay Pather to this project. He first presented Rites of Spring in Durban in 1985 and says that the piece “stayed with with me for a while.” He produced it again with dancers from Kwa Zulu Natal and feels that the complexity of Stravinsky’s scores are ideally suited for all forms of classical dance, including that of traditional Xhosa dance. In Rites of Spring he examined issues of patriarchy and the complexities of tradition. In Firebird it is the personal ramifications of a dashed political dream that are explored.
For someone who is dedicated to “finding the personal and the spectacular in the same moment” it is no surprise that Younge contacted him to collaborate on this ambitious project. “I was excited by the combination of puppets and dance and I think that excitement has stayed,” he explains.
Working in the style with which he is familiar and prefers to work himself Pather says he was excited by the series of workshops Younge held in which the work was devised. “We developed ideas and have completely repositioned The Firebird. It is no longer that story of Koschei. It’s a metaphor for South Africa in this moment. The central character is not a young prince but a young black woman who goes through the different phases from the idea of the innocence of the 1994 moment, the jubilation of voting and then the breaking of that veil. Dealing with the very necessary rage, the creative forces to deal with that and the tussle between them. It’s a dark work, it’s a dark Firebird and the puppets are beautiful but they are not not pretty.”
“This is not a happy story. This is about dreams that have been dashed. This is about the Firebird that needs to reformulate, recalibrate itself and it’s not going to be a pretty calibration. In the telling of the tale, it’s not a simple narrative of one thing replacing the other. It’s pulling all the forces, rage and creativity together. The rage and the creativity are inimical but they exist side by side. The choreographer says that. Finding out how those ideas can come through contemporary dance and puppets has been extremely challenging.”
The relationship between dance and puppetry is not an obvious one and in some ways the two disciplines are in opposition to each other.
Speaking about the physical complexities he says, “It’s not simple at all. We are finding out more and more how a dancer’s body intuits and plays with a certain level of generality with certain specifics. One knows instinctively what each action requires.”
Knowing that puppetry requires a different thought process entirely and that each action is only as a result of a very deliberate action has posed an interesting dilemma. It is not just the physicality of the disciplines that is so different. Emotionally and psychologically each requires a different emphasis. “There is a very different play of the ego,” as Pather describes. “In the puppet you invest in the object. It’s not about you at all. As a dancer if you don’t have the ego to get that body moving then you are in trouble,” he says.
Rehearsals have required a certain physical and emotional dexterity of the cast as the choreographer has experienced “When they have a puppetry session and then move in to dance I have to remind them that they are moving again .We do improvisation and experiment on ways to get the body back to feeling again and moving itself.”
The production will be touring globally including a performance at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles accompanied by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Pather has a deep understanding of the effect of site on a performance and has engaged extensively with the various performance venues. The design will remain constant throughout the tour.
“We couldn’t keep adjusting the set and didn’t want to put that pressure on the dancers of revising the choreography completely each time.” Capetonians have only four opportunities to share in this spectacle of creativity before the production tours to the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown and as the poet Cecil Day-Lewis encourages us “burn for Rome’s so near us, for the phoenix moment when we have thrown off this traveller’s trance.”
Choreography is by Pather. Original score by Igor Stravinsky, with Jackie Manyapelo, Craig Leo, Shaun Oelf, Beren Belknap and Zandile Constable. Costume design is by Birrie le Roux. Lighting design is by Mannie Manim. All at Artscape Opera House from Friday to Sunday.
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