A pretty cool programme: Scottish Ballet with Pite and Preljoçaj at Sadler's Wells
Preljoçaj's MC 14/22 (Ceci est mon corps) and Pite's Emergence
Scottish Ballet
Sadler's Wells
Second Circle SG1, £9.60 (multibuy offer)
9 June 2017
Sadler's Wells page
I guess there has to be a first time for everything. Still, I find it slightly annoying that I have managed to be this old before seeing my first Preljoçaj.
The title of MC 14/22 refers to the chapter and verse in Mark's gospel – 'And as they did eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body.' The ballet is certainly not quick of pace, with each section (all visually distinct and engaging) drawn out long beyond comfort levels. But if there were a piece rewarded by excessive length, this is it. It could have been half as long and it would have been weaker for it.
Without knowing the meaning of the title I concluded from watching the ballet that it was an exploration of the cruelty men do. I should have clicked that self-sacrifice was an integral element in that cruelty. Still, each section provided plenty of fodder in situ without the Christian context and in hindsight with. It is a deeply thought-provoking ballet that ambitiously seeks to contain key areas of human endeavour and experience – science and sex, art and violence – interrogated through a constrained palette that yet reveals deep nuance and colour.
That palette is chiefly the bodies of 12 men. These dancers have exquisite control and breathtaking commitment, subjecting themselves with apparent fearlessness to the extraordinary physical and mental demands Prejloçaj makes. I was in awe. I also enjoyed most other aspects of the ballet, particularly the rhythmically and sonically inventive score from Tedd Zahmal.
Contrary, it would seem, to pretty much everyone else, I didn't think the Pite was flattered next to the Preljoçaj. It was, unsurprisingly, the Pite that I booked to see, and it certainly has her trademark invention and vision, and impressive handling of large groups. But by the end of Emergence I was bored of those bodily innovations, and of the Owen Belton score, which was very similar to Zahmal's but to my mind less interesting. I also felt the programme as a whole was a bit tough on the women, who either got to do nothing or to be a creepy alien/insect swarm. Still, when Pite is the least cool thing on the programme, you're doing alright.
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