San Francisco Ballet – Liang/ Marston/ Pita review: Strange scenes from a goldmine of dance talent

Dark fairytales: Sarah Van Patten and Nathaniel Remez in Pita's Björk Ballet
Erik Tomasson
Emma Byrne3 June 2019

Arthur Pita, the so-called David Lynch of dance, has created the first Björk ballet – and the results are as crazed and perplexing as you’d expect.

Tinsel palm trees rain down from the skies; a fringed bird-like creature goes clubbing in a Mad Max mask. With costumes by Katy Perry favourite Marco Morante and moody lighting by James F. Ingalls, its style is never in doubt – the question is how much substance does it really have?

Pita created the work for last year’s Unbound festival, San Francisco Ballet’s showcase of new choreography in which 12 dancemakers were asked to imagine what the future of ballet might look like. Over the next six days, Londoners will see eight of those pieces across three remaining triple bills at Sadler’s Wells – it’s a safe bet Björk Ballet will be among the strangest. Pita, who is often drawn to dark, deviant fairy tales, here turns eight of the pop singer’s hits, plus her overture from the film Dancer in the Dark, into a kind of hallucinatory fantasy, capturing the essence, rather than the exact meaning, of Björk’s lyrics.

In ‘Bachelorette’ flamenco-esque dancers flit between the palms; in ‘Hyperballad’ the driving, pulsating rhythm fuels a full-on rave on a rotating dance floor at shoulder height. It’s danced with commitment, if not outright relish, by the 23-strong cast – but, immense fun though it is, there are few times the choreography rises above what Pita calls his ‘visual décor’.

From the dramatic to the cinematic, Cathy Marston’s Snowblind, a 30-minute distillation of Edith Wharton’s 1911 novel Ethan Frome, which centres on an ill-fated love triangle between a farmer, his sick wife and the home help. Snow, represented by the corps, wearing a kind of muddy, murky brown instead of the usual white, swirls constantly around the trio, physically confining and psychologically stifling them. Jennifer Stahl is excellent as the betrayed Zeena, all clenched fists and bitter glances, while Ulrik Birkkjaer and Mathilde Froustey bring a pathos to the couple who risk everything for love, yet fail to break free.

The evening’s final piece, Edwaard Liang’s The Infinite Ocean, is a meditation on life and death, set under a huge shimmering sun inspired by Olafur Eliasson’s 2003 Tate Modern installation. It’s beautifully danced, notably by principals Sofiane Sylve and Tiit Helimets, Yuan Yuan Tan and Vitor Luiz, but for all its weighty subject matter and moments of poetry feels curiously insubstantial.

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