"a company bursting with talent"

August 3, 2005 performance, reviewed by Connell McGrath

The big buzz about the dance company Stockholm/59° North is that it was founded and is comprised of dancers from the Royal Swedish Ballet. In articles about this small company, many writers emphasize how old the Royal Swedish Ballet is, so let's get that out of the way now; they have been around since 1773! and it is allegedly the fourth oldest ballet company in the world. Suspicious? Maybe there's a reason that reviewers emphasize this pedigree rather than the work that the company presents. These dancers are young, beautiful and have great technical ability. They are masters of their form - the classical ballet, but they have a yen to dance modern choreography. Jacob's Pillow has been instrumental in bringing them to American audiences over the few years since their inception. The company is committed to presenting work by Swedish choreographers.

"Come Out" - Stockholm/59° North
photo by Mats Backer

The first piece is choreographed by Jorma Elo and it's called In My Dream Team (2003) to Carl Maria von Weber's "La Spectre de la Rose." Music is beautiful and Elo makes his dance on four company members. The piece begins with a video of the three male dancers in their studio in Stockholm talking about their art, and practicing movement from this piece. The video gives text data of their ages, height and weight, how many times they have performed, how many injuries they have had, etc. It also has their mothers talking about their childhoods and how they became dancers. This is very sweet, and leads the audience to a consideration of what-it-takes-to-become-a-dancer and how-hard-it-is-to-become-as-accomplished-as-these-guys. The video is followed by some very competent, beautifully executed choreography.

Elo has a strong gift for translating the ballet vernacular on to something new. But the video is gratuitous. There may not be any other clear way for him to make his point, but why make it at all? Essentially, In My Dream Team is a piece about dance and dancers, not a very interesting subject to people who aren't in the business, and Elo narrows the scope of his dance with the video.

Next comes Pas de Danse choreographed by Mats Ek to Swedish folk music. This is an amusing piece for two couples (the title is a play on "pas de deux" which is ballet-speak for duet), and Ek creates a tension between the provincial and quaint sounding music and a peculiar, postmodern alienation in the choreography. There is gender tension between the first couple who fight and show anger and try to control each other. This is set against the second couple who play idealized folk dancers. Essentially, this piece is also about dance, though it has a bit more depth than Elo's piece in its comments on culture. It is funny and pleasing.

After intermission is a piece called By the Painless Arrow of Artemis (2005) choreographed by Virpi Pakhinen to good music by Roger Ludvigsen. This is a melodramatic piece that is reminiscent of the work of Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. It is comprised of exaggerated animal movement, and it has a strange, exotic feel. This piece was funny, but I don't think it's meant to be.

Come Out (2003) choreographed by Orjan Andersson made to music by Steve Reich is a piece for four female dancers. The very dissonant, hard-to-take music by Reich is a short sound bite of somebody saying the words "come out" that has been morphed by computer and repeated about 500 times, slowly changing as it repeats. This is both jarring and hypnotic, and both sensations are accentuated by a strobe light which made this reviewer nauseous. To this, Andersson makes a dance that is at times wild and full of reckless abandon, and at other times slow, writhing and kind of like watching a plant grow. There are moments of very good choreography in it, but in general Come Out is hard to take, and not artistically interesting enough to make the experience worthwhile. It may be artistically uncompromising and daring, but I was relieved when the music and strobes stopped.

The evening concludes with a piece by Kenneth Kvarnstrom from 1994 called Carmen?! set to a musical medley, partly from Bizet's Carmen, compiled by Rodion Shehederin. It is for five male dancers who do a parody of the melodrama and machismo of Spanish-themed opera and dance. It was silly and funny, but it goes on too long and is essentially a one-joke piece.

Stockholm/59° North is a company bursting with talent but in need of better artistic direction. While much of the choreography the company chooses is adequate, with moments of very fine movement, it was done in service of no interesting ideas. The packed audience at Jacob's Pillow, however, loved the show, and many audience members clapped as they ran for their cars with the dancers still taking their first bow.

Stockholm/59° North
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