Fire and water

It is not surprising that Baroque operas have long attracted the interest of contemporary choreographers. Apart from the numerous dance passages that punctuate these works, their classically inspired plots, rife with political, cultural and social metaphors, are inexhaustible and stimulating sources of inspiration for any modern-day artist. Not to mention the fact that a radical and often intentionally irreverent take on much-revered ‘important’ masterworks is a well-established trait of post-modern dance-theatre making.

Sasha Waltz’s 2005 staging of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas is one of the most recent additions in the long series of choreographic translations of early operas and oratorios. And it is a daring choice, too, for Purcell’s masterwork had already been successfully turned into modern and post-modern dance a few times, most memorably by Mark Morris.

Waltz’s unique approach to both dance and theatre makes this work stand out from any other production, though. Unlike her predecessors, who remained faithful to the score’s form, Waltz has turned what started life as an oratorio into a spectacular event, in which the music and the singing are intentionally overwhelmed, though never thwarted, by theatre and dance imagery. Indeed, highly theatrical ideas are one of Waltz’s distinctive features, as is revealed, as soon as the lights go down, by the underwater dance performed by 17 artists in a visually striking fish tank. Whether the underwater sequence is a reference to Aeneas’ journey at sea, or, more specifically, to the water divinities evoked and invoked by the two narrators in the prologue, it is difficult to say. Likewise, the fires that dwindle magically in unison with the final fading chords of the orchestra might or might not be a reference to the pyre on which desperate and abandoned Dido finally throws herself.