Dancing with classical

As the program began the nearly full house was presented with the HBSO orchestra seated on stage, with little room for any ballet. So we sat back and awaited developments.

The ballet in fact made an appearance early on, in an extract from Carmen. Some twelve dancers, all clad in red, edged their way across the narrow space in front of the orchestra, and then down into the orchestra pit, the area in front of the stage where the orchestra normally plays in fully-staged performances. We were not to see such a display again until almost the end when the same performers re-appeared for Offenbach’s Can Can. There was another item mid-way through the evening (which had no interval) when two young performers gave a rendition of a tango.

But instead of professional performers, we, the audience, were invited to dance ourselves. No one took up the offer, and the most we contributed was some clapping-along to Johann Strauss in the style of the New Year Concerts in Vienna’s Musikverein. Not to be deterred, however, conductor Le Phi Phi himself descended at one point into the pit and began to waltz with a lady celebrity waiting for her cue in the front row. Seeing that earlier Le had addressed us with some comments on musical history in barely audible tones, this felt like a belated attempt to create a party atmosphere, something the audience felt only half-inclined to reciprocate.

The essential problem with this program was that there was no very clear idea of how it was intended to develop. What it needed was more fervor and more fun. Some of the musicians did burst into song at one point, but an attendant hurrying down to tell surprised audience members not to take photos didn’t help. Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance went with a swing, but why were there no dancers on stage for that? Had the whole evening been a dance extravaganza, as the program’s title suggested it might be, with the orchestra in the pit and ballet on-stage throughout, then most people would have gone home a good deal more satisfied.

On the whole, patrons to an evening like this don’t expect to be lectured, or to have to exhibit themselves without warning dancing on stage, but simply to be entertained. The HBSO Ballet and Symphony have the resources for this, but nevertheless the evening managed to fall between two (or more) stools. The dancers were zestful enough when we were allowed to see them, but too much of the rest consisted of unsuccessful attempts at humor, with much of the music pre-World War I gaiety that on January 3 seems at best ironic in view of the horrors that, historically, were shortly to follow.

In reality, some audience members might have been persuaded to dance had the ballet members come down into the stalls and led them on stage.

Nothing like that happened, though, and as we left the sight of an outdoor stage being constructed on the Opera House steps couldn’t help giving us hopes of something more extravagant and unbridled to follow on New Year’s Eve.