Ballet and Bots in the ‘Burbs

I saw the Australian Ballet in performance for the first time tonight. How impressive.

Coppélia premiered in Paris in 1870, and our nation’s premier company is taking it on the road as its regional tour. The setting is a bucolic harvest festival, and the plot follows a timeless theme: a romantic coupling, a challenge by a third party. Will true love win through?

But the best part of this outing: it’s got robots.

To be more accurate, it’s got automata. The village’s inventor/wizard/nutty professor is a Dr Coppelius (Paul Knobloch), who keeps a room of mechanical people he has constructed, including a pretty ‘daughter’ that catches the eye of our principle, Franz (Drew Hedditch). The young man’s curiosity leads him to a break-and-enter of the doctor’s workshop in search of his potential paramour, but before he can adjust his cod piece he is captured and drugged by Coppelius. Shenanigans ensue.

It's an accessible, amenable romp with much closing of doors and scrambling into hiding places - closer to musical theatre than I anticipated. But the swirl of dance and drama across the evocative mis-en-scene never flags in the hands of this youthful company.  

Near-front row seats are a revelation; while players’ gestures are almost comically over-emphasised to accommodate the large audience space, their mobile facial expressions can be most easily appreciated up close. In the absence of the spoken word, this crew can act. And I didn’t quite expect the level of beauty projected by the female form in dance, particularly when transitioning from a first-position standing start; still, flat-footed, shoulders poised, to an in-flight flowing movement seemingly propelled by the fluttering of supple arms alone.

It is Franz’s betrothed, the young Swanilda (Montana Rubin), who steals the show. Initially piqued when she notices Franz’s wandering eye in the first act, her peevishness disappears during the second when, cleverly secreted in Coppelius’s house, she brings the lifeless ‘daughter’ to life, and tricks the inventor who is trying to transfer the unconscious Franz’s life force to his inanimate creation.

This was the night’s highlight: a mixture of mime, break dancing and limp-falling as Rubin transforms Swanilda from porcelain doll to graceful swan, one muscle spasm at a time. It is a clever device, this inclusion of a robotic interlude. Notwithstanding the overall performance excellence, as a ballet ‘newbie’ I may have tired of flawlessly executed leaps, pirouettes and arabesques. Swanilda’s delightful mechanical turn was the perfect foil for too much perfection.

I was struck by the physicality of the performance, and the shivering intensity of concentration among the players, as when the female lead is braced against the forearm of the male and she lifts one leg behind her to near vertical, while balancing on the toes of her other foot. Calf muscles extraordinaire. And what about the elegant quivering of legs while 'en pointe?' I can only guess at the years of training behind these performances.

Our recital was in the City of Casey’s very new, very modern performing arts theatre at the flagship Bunjil Place. Like its namesake Aboriginal deity, the building is stylised in the shape of an eagle, predominantly a winged structure that soars over its grounded foundations. Tonight, Coppélia soared in similar fashion.