Rather dead than alive – Newspaper Kommersant No. 182 (7383) dated 10/03/2022

The Paris Opera opened the new ballet season with the world premiere of the two-act dance performance Cry of the Soul directed by the Norwegian choreographer and director Alan Lucien Owen. For two and a half hours, the Parisian debutant finds out his complex relationship with reality. Tells Maria Sidelnikova.

The name of 44-year-old Alan Lucien Owen is new not only for the Paris Opera, but for the European audience in general. Until recently, his career took shape in his native Norway. Experiments at the intersection of theater and dance, marked by local theater awards and the status of choreographer-resident of the Norwegian Opera, led Owen in 2018 to Wuppertal, to the cradle of the genre – Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater. After the death of the great German woman, he was one of the first to have the honor of staging in her theater. Together with this order, he received a lucky ticket to the European stages.

Aurelie Dupont was the first to seize on the young Scandinavian avant-garde artist and continuer of the traditions of her beloved Bausch. Together with carte blanche for a full-fledged evening, the artistic director of the ballet of the Opera gave Owen young artists open to any creative experience. It was in 2019, before the pandemic, which pushed back the premiere. Time did not go in favor of the future performance: Dupont suddenly resigned this summer, leaving both the troupe and her protégé to the mercy of fate. Unable to cope with the desire to fit into his “Cry of the Soul” all the pain and stop, the choreographer, left to himself, finally got bogged down in his multi-layered and verbose performance.

But the beginning was intriguing. “Cry of the Soul” Alan Lucien Owen spins from the end. At the forefront, either a person or a reptile (later it turns out that this is a revived lizard – the happiest character in the play, who does not know the hardships of depression) will hiss about death. An accident, a ladder, a man, a murder – something indistinct. A few more episodes, and the action is on the set. Like Bergman in “Scenes of a Married Life,” behind-the-scenes fuss is played out before his eyes. Bergman will soon be joined by David Lynch and Wim Wenders, whose films come to mind when looking at the stage.

Close-up on the screen – the face of the main character. It is performed by the “first dancer” Marion Barbeau, the star of not only the Opera, but also the successful film by Cedric Klapisch “In the body”, where she starred together with Hofesh Schechter. And Dmitry Chernyakov was the first to see her, choosing the part of Marie in Iolanthe / The Nutcracker. Neither alive nor dead, she adjusts the wire at the back of her head, crossing her head like a fresh surgical suture, and says something in fragments about the disease that is eating her. The disease will kill her in the finale – literally, bloodthirsty with a knife in the heart under the arches of the extinct Dance Foyer of the Opera, but before that, the heroine, along with a retinue of strange characters, will have to stray for a long time in the labyrinth of chaotic ordeals that Alan Lucien Owen has prepared for her.

The Cry of the Soul is by no means a narrative performance. Moreover, the choreographer deliberately avoids linearity and dramatic harmony, each time breaking off the barely outlined narrative. The action jumps from Montmartre to the snow-capped mountains, from the Christmas parlor to the American canyons, from the Palais Garnier to other phantom worlds born of the choreographer’s imagination. Some scenes are accompanied by pathos and naive reasoning; others are seasoned with black humor, so organic for the Scandinavians and wild for the Europeans; in the third, loneliness and melancholy show through. They are the most successful, but go catch them and remember. In the incoherent pieces of this tedious puzzle, endlessly assembling and disintegrating before our eyes, Owen explores with obsessive obsession how reality turns into fiction, the funny into the tragic, the game into life, life into death. Death is his obsession. He uses dioramas as the main stage element. In natural history museums, they show stuffed animals in their natural habitat. We become spectators of human dioramas.

To the portrait of Alan Lucien Owen himself with all his obsessions is added the collective portrait of today’s troupe of the Paris Opera. Following the example of Pina Bausch, the Norwegian works with the heads and souls of artists. They are his full co-authors, so part of the text consists of their abrupt monologues. Claims in the spirit of “we are not recognized”, “we never do what we want”, “do we get what we deserve”, “and what performances should we show”, etc. sound like a refrain. And the lion’s share of the text choreographic (in particular, solo pieces and duets) – ballet improvisations, which polyglot artists who worked with the world’s best choreographers from William Forsythe to Crystal Pite, do not cost anything. Perfectly owning their bodies Simon Le Borne, Juliette Hilaire, Marion Barbeau are a gift for any author.

Pina Bausch had a reputation as a great psychologist. From the most hidden corners of the subconscious of the artists, she was able to pull out all the horrors, pain, desires, complexes and translate them into body language. With Owen, things, alas, do not go beyond words. In the few massive episodes of the second act, one can see quotes-influences from Anna Teresa De Kersmaeker, and Sharon Eyal, and the same Crystal Pite, and Pina herself with her ritual walks and round dances, which Owen repeats and repeats. The key scene of “Cry of the Soul” is built as a session of collective psychotherapy. Artists take turns sharing their fears. The portrait looms disappointing: talented young guys, ready for anything – even to sing, even to dance, are completely lost and there is no one to direct them.

The directorate of the Paris Opera is also in search. If earlier the general director took upon himself the responsibility of the sole choice of the artistic director of the ballet, now the intendant Alexander Nef decided to hold a competition. The selection committee included Caroline Carlson, Charles Jude and Angelin Preljocaj. Applications were accepted until August, interviews were planned in September, and Nef must make his choice based on the results. There is nowhere to put it off any further: “The Cry of the Soul” cries out loudly.