It’s a strange twist of theatrical fate that we’ve seen more of the Pina Bausch company since her death in June last year than we did for several years before it. First came Kontakhof at the Barbican in April, then Agua at Edinburgh in August, and now the UK premiere of Bausch’s early working of Gluck’s Iphigenie auf Tauris.
Bausch’s danced opera dates from 1974, with many elements of her mature style already visible. There’s the distinctive dresses for the women, their long hair, their elegance, and their expressive gestures reminiscent of photographs of German dance pioneer Mary Wigman.
The most obvious difference with her later style, which borders on the surreal, is that Iphigenie auf Tauris is much more dancerly, and more literally danced. There’s none of the seeming randomness of her later work, none of the speech, and no interacting with the audience, just pure dance sequences closely tracking the plot.
This recounts the tragedy of Agamemnon, who sacrifices his daughter Iphigenie as the price for waging war. She is magicked away by Diana, but her mother Klytamnestra believes her dead, so kills the father, and then her brother Orest kills the mother. In a none-too-common happy ending, brother and sister realise the other is alive and are joyously reunited.
There are a lot of good things about this Iphigenie auf Tauris, including the singers set either side of the stage in the boxes, the orchestra, the spare set, and some of the mime, such as the sacrifice scene in Act IV where the priestesses’ gestures potently frame the impending death. However, Ruth Amarante is an inconsistent Iphigenie.
There are sections, such as the Act III trio with her brother (Pablo Aran Gimeno) and his friend Pylades (Damiano Ottavio Bigi), when their triangular emotions are powerfully drawn, but elsewhere she makes less impact and lacks the sustained dramatic heft to evoke the character’s suffering. The promontory dream she recounts to her priestesses all but disappears. Amarante often understates Iphigenie’s human sorrow, and her last-minute joy.
Until October 31. 0844 412 4300, sadlerswells.com
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch: Iphigenie Auf Tauris
Sadler's Wells
Rosebery Avenue, EC1R 4TN
