Case in the pit – Newspaper Kommersant No. 53 (7498) dated 03/29/2023

The Paris Opera Ballet presented the world premiere of the one-act ballet “Pit”, created by the efforts of a large team led by choreographers Bobbie Jan Smith and Ohr Schreiber and performed by corps de ballet dancers. Parisian debut of the creative couple left in disarray Maria Sidelnikova.

Bobbie Jan Smith and Ohr Schreiber are new names both for the Paris Opera and for the European theatrical context in general. Their joint career has been successfully developing in the USA for the last ten years. The Israeli Batsheva Dance Company served as a springboard, where, after studying at prestigious institutions – from the school at the Royal Ballet in Winnipeg to the Juilliard School in New York – the 22-year-old American went to comprehend eider. The dancer quickly mastered the language of creative freedom, open to bodily experiences, becoming one of the brightest and most beloved performers of Ohad Naarin. There she met Ora Schreiber, her life and stage partner, and in 2014 she decided to leave the troupe. The break with Naarin and the transformation of the dancer into a choreographer are documented in the film “Bobbi Jene” (2017), which became her hallmark. “Effort and pleasure,” she tells herself throughout the film, pushing walls, torturing herself, harassing loved ones for the sake of composing the programmatic solo “A study on Effort” (2016) – a furious exploration of the origins of effort. On the screen, it looked extremely impressive and intriguing. Aurelie Dupont was also intrigued. In addition to the eider, whom the ex-artistic director of the Opera ballet loves with all her heart and soul, the choreographer is not indifferent to German expressionism and Pina Bausch, and this is another weak point of the Dupont dancer. The decisive role was played by the production of “Pierre” at the Royal Danish Ballet in 2021, after which she gave the couple carte blanche.

The hour-long premiere of “Pit” (from English – “pit” in all its semantic ambiguity, from orchestral to funeral) brought together the creative forces of the whole world. 24-year-old American Celeste Oram “finished writing” Sibelius’ Violin Concerto. Referring to the fact that the composer himself was fascinated by the potential of his music, she inflated the voids, revived the rustles and sounds, pulling out everything that, according to her, is hidden in the score. And what could not be found there, but all this remained in the orchestra pit, and the soloist, the wonderful Finnish violinist Petteri Livoven, took his place on the stage, acting as a full-fledged, almost the main character of the performance. The Portuguese Juana Carneiro was invited to conduct the hybrid composition. The costumes were ordered by the Belgian Peter Mulier, art director of the Alaia house. Leaving aside the caricatured latex and feather catwalk at the beginning, the silly things like eating a chocolate shoe, and the red dress climax repeated twice (butterfly in front, butt naked in the back), Mulière’s work can be considered a success. Having chosen a black and white palette, the designer dressed the men discreetly – in stylish turtlenecks, shirts, trousers; girls sexy – in long flowing or tight-fitting dresses. The Danish stage designer Christian Friedlander built a central additional platform-elevation on the stage, a kind of second stage. All dance meetings, duets, groups take place on it, outside it – a conditionally dramatic action. The main props are chairs. On the back is the gray underside of the building, like two drops of water similar to the scenery from the recent “Bolero” by Mats Ek.

“Pit” is not a narrative performance, but an intuitive one. The American playwright Jonathan Fredrickson, an artist of the Wuppertal Theater, was called to fasten the feelings and ideas that overwhelmed the choreographers into a single whole. But the design, alas, did not become slimmer. Who are these people who are ready to cut each other’s throats first for a pair of shoes, then for a handful of earth? What kind of character in a fashionable raincoat, who puffs up like the embodiment of evil, but does not go further than suspicious looks from under a raised collar? Why does a violinist grab his gun in the middle of the action and shoot down the partridges and pheasants who have come from where? What a humiliating interrogation against the backdrop of a copulating couple strewn with earth? Burial pit? Kingdom of Hades? A certain door behind which the light will open only once and also meaningfully close forever. Nobody can get away. Everything will end in death. A trickle of blood will flow cinematically across the platform.

“Pit” also has one more meaning: it is a bone, a core. And if you cut through the layers of contradictions, discard the far-fetched images that multiply like the heads of a hydra in this chamber performance in terms of timekeeping and epic in conception, then that very core will remain: namely, a dance forced, in addition to everything else, to break through an uneven score. Like Sharon Eyal, Naharin’s senior pupil, Smith’s language is the language of the flesh, the bodily memory of desires, passions, fears, humiliations and disappointments. But their handwriting is still different. The American woman writes in a more sweeping, expressive manner and with greater amplitude, using speaking back-armours, where fear drives a person, confessional deep pliés in a wide second position, resolute shooting batmans with the heel into the partner’s chest and imploring throwing up of hands, often stumbling upon an invisible barrier wall. The motive of the interrupted movement returns again and again: both in solo pieces and in the group. But elemental poetry is best revealed in duets. Dance here erases all contradictions: emotional ups and downs, hopes, justified and not, tenderness and rudeness, strength and weakness are melted into physical pleasure from proximity and the movement itself. One of the most beautiful dance scenes is a chain of duets in which one partner literally overflows into the other.

The Paris Opera has developed a strong group of artists, mostly from the corps de ballet, a kind of troupe within a troupe that dances the entire modern repertoire, from Eck and Bausch to Forsyte and Pyte. The most experienced Juliette Hilaire, Lauren Levy, Marion Gauthier de Charnance, Caroline Osmond, who reveals herself more and more unexpectedly each time working with modern choreographers Ava Joanis, stylish polyglots Alexander Gass, Alex Ibo, Jacques Gasztov, Mikael Lafont, Takeru Cost – a chance to work with them for any choreographer. It is they who are pulling the evening out of this hole that the authors have dug for themselves.