Mats Ek Carmen

This essay will analyze and discuss one of Europes intimately creative and influential leap-makers, the Swedish dancer and choreographer Mats Ek acclaimed for the theatricality and immediacy of his oeuvre charm his contribution and development through the dance field with the primary(prenominal) focus on his revision of the authoritativeal concert dance stories. It will withal discuss one of his major make waters Carmen and relate it with the airplane pilot one. Mats Ek is a prominent and controversial figure of the contemporary dance.He has his own choreographic drift and his work in contemporary dance choreography is contested. He was born(p) in 1945. Eks aim, and his big crop, was the famous dancer and choreographer Birgit Cullberg, the founder of the gentleman total recognized, Cullberg B all in allet Comp either. As said before, his mother was a huge influence for Ek. Therefore one privy see that both, Mats Ek and Birgit Cullberg, choreographic style has a lot of same characteristics such(prenominal) as the attention of psychological characterization, the in the raw portrayal of hu small-arm beingss feelings and the humorous episodes. In performance we see a fantasy world so unwaveringly strange and characters so imperiously dysfunctional were goodly compelled Ek may ask his dancers to go to some real odd places but the Cullberg Ballet follows him with ardent alacrity (Judith Mackrell, the Guardian. ) In 19745, Ek was a section of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Dusseldorf, and then made his choreographic debut in 1976 with The Officers Servant, for the Cullberg Ballet, the first of many of his works formed on them. In 1980 he became the artistic director of the Ballet Cullberg and a member of the Nederlands terpsichore Theatre.He in any case worked and created sections with many great dance companies. Mats Ek in well known for his revisionist readings of the classic ballets. He has also created his own work and most of the time his r eadys commit to do a lot with humor. that in reworking ballet classics, Ek likes to keep the characters alert so as to everlastingly provide an inner emotion to the characters emotions and line of productss. The characters in his pieces,in contrast to the classic ones, have an emotional world of much to a greater extent than intense than ordinarily and the alliance among them has a greater depth.Although he is revising the pilot pieces, he never forgets to stay true to the original context of the work and as far as the music is concerned he al routes uses the original one with very slight changes yet to suit the in the buff hammy structure. Mats Eks key word, is clarity, despite the fact that he aims for clarity, this does not imply that he also uses simplicity in his pieces. I was never interested in keeping to the classical traditions as such, What I want to explore are the underlying fairy tales that convey fundamental human issues revel, deceit, pain, goodness.Th e classics have sprain cliches, and we have forgotten how they came to be and what they imply. We know them so well they block off to have meaning for our time. (Mats Ek) Mats Ek is very often labeled that he relates his choreographies with the governance of the time that the choreographies are being made. This is not however right because no(prenominal) of Mr. Eks choreographies can be regarded as a political manifesto. In his pieces, the fuddled images and the dramatic situations will occasionally select into humorous episodes. Humor, is one of Eks master(prenominal) characteristics end-to-end his pieces and as mentioned previously in the report so is his mothers.By using humor in his dances, this does not mean that the pieces lose their tension. Since Mats Ek also studied theatre, most of the time his creations are a lot more dramatic than usual and this can be detected in every one of his pieces (Fifty coeval Choreographers, Pages 144-146). Ek has a vivid theatricality and gift for genuine surprises his theatricality is matched by a full-out dance language that merges the sophisticated with the primitive. I became aware of on the button how much meaning Ek can compress into his pieces (Nadine Meisner, the Indep exterminateent).Eks style has become distinctive for its imaginative interpretations of stagelines, in combination with a lyrical approach which transfers through suit the underlying emotions and feelings rather than just the narrative detail. His choreographic style and vocabulary is mainly from his ballet training, his descent and dance experience with his mother and his collaboration with the Nederland Dance Theatre. Although Ek has rejected the stately codes of classic ballet, it is collect in his pieces the he uses a lot of ballet technique.This can be found within the jumps, turns and footwork that he uses within his black marketment vocabulary. At the same time though, Ek uses a lot of contemporary endeavours such as drop of the pelvis, a lot of floor work and ashes weight. He manages to relate both styles with a unique and approveful federal agency in order for everything to look good and lovely. (Fifty Contemporary Choreographers, Pages 147-148) Ek has done a great deal to enlarge how women are portrayed on stage, particularly in the ballet classics. His Giselle and Carmen offer intense reimaginings oftheir heroines. (Keeping dance alive a Mats Eks portrait.Claudia La Rocco, TV classics) Lets now move on to one of his most famous and great works, Carmen. Originally, Carmen was first performed in Paris on 3 March, 1875. Written by Georges Bizet. The story is well-nigh a temptress, Carmen, and her lover Don Jose who sacrifices his devoted lady, Micaela, to pursue his manly dears for Carmen. Jose, idle by her familiar behavior and blinded by his own rage, kills Carmen, hence bringing upon himself his own devastation resulting in finis. The opera is set in Spain and the story line is more comp lex than the original novel by Prosper Merimee.The character of Carmen was too offensive for family theatre. Although Carmen collectings to popular culture, the opera even attracts academic discourse as the spirit of Spain is personified in the character of Carmen. It is trenchant that in order for Carmen to be represented as a whore, she had to be black. That suited the beliefs of that time being, that the color of her skin will make her good-for-nothing and evil. to a greater extentover the color of her skin makes her also more exotic than any European and this will make her more desirable to the male auditory sense and maybe more hated by women.In 1999 Mats Ek revised the Spanish classic Carmen to consultations all over the world. This version of Carmen is currently in the repertoire of the olympian Ballet, Cullberg Ballet, Lyon Opera Ballet, National Theatre, Ballet of Prague and the Polish National Opera Ballet. Ek in his pieces in general manages to base each character s psychological aspect in depth. In Carmen, one can see that he presents Carmen as this woman who is complicated and has a complex behavior. That is what he usually does in his pieces, he presents all the women as very complicated and sexual creatures.In his choreography Ek is trying to keep the original features of the opera but in order to attract more modern audiences he makes some changes so that the audience, in that time being, will be able to relate with the characters (Fifty Contemporary Choreographers, Pages 144-145). For example, the sexual behavior of Carmen in the piece is very important for the story line. However in the original piece it was not that clear. In Mats Ek version though, the sexuality is clearer and more understanding for the audience. Generally Eks version explores the actual human behavior as it is in real life.He pushes the male-female role reversal between the sexually free gypsy girl and the soldier Don Jose beyond safe boundaries, substituting a ci gar for the familiar bloom between Carmens teeth, spell her into one of the boys( Cigar Crossed Lovers, David Bogoslaw, 1999). That cigar takes that she has a masculine soul in a womans body. (Carmen, 2010) Carmen is a symbol of freedom and sedition and can have as much freedom as she wants. In contrast, Jose is a traditional feminine role, a weak character that wants peace and a marriage, but cannot control his passions for Carmen in spite that he is going to connect Micaela.Eks Carmen begins and ends with a scene of a man, Jose, facing a firing police squad and recalling in the last moments before death his tempestuous liaison with the gypsy girl who refused to be tamed. The dance then retells the story of the progressing love thing between Carmen and Jose. Eks choreographing style in this performance is a combination of both, ballet and modern dance. As they first dance together, Carmen and Jose, is like she is slowly explaining to him, throughout the dance, how she is and how she likes to live her life.He also tries to show her that he is a military man with a lot of discipline. At the beginning of the piece their movements are more aggressive, but as soon as they fell in love their movements become more soft and gentle. This change of the movement shows how they started to feel booming with each other as time passed (Janet Adshead, 1988, Dance Analysis possibleness and practice, Pages 72-75). Carmens movement style initially is aggressive and masculine while it is becoming more beautiful as the story evolves.However, the fact that Jose is carrying the rose and Carmen the cigar, this shows that she is still the man in their relationship (As Willful As constantly And Puffing On a Cigar Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times. 1999). Another example of how the movement shows the emotional world and the relationship between the characters is when there is a three-base hit between Carmen, Jose and Escamillo, who is the reason why Carmen does not love Jo se anymore. He is the new love of her heart and that makes Jose angry. In the trio the two mens jealousy is passing obvious throughout the dancing movement.There is imitation and repeat between each ones movement and the fact that they keep a received distance between one another, shows the jealousy between them. At the end of the trio, when Carmen is going to strike Joses face, it becomes clear that she does not love him anymore. More over there is Michaelas character which is also made clear through her movements. At the beginning she is dancing in a fainthearted way but after she gets really angry with Jose and Carmen, thus her way of movement changes. She begins to be more aggressive and dynamic in price of movement vocabulary and that is a aspect of her emotional world.The music in Eks choreography, as mentioned above, is sheep pen to the original one by French composerGeorges Bizet. The altogether difference is that is being used for different purposes in the story. In the original opera the music is a guide for the progress of the plot. In Mats Ek piece however, the music is not really needed to explain the plot or the relationship between the characters. It is there to create a mood in the piece. One thing that is really different from the original opera, in damage of sounds, is that in Mats Ek piece the dancers are sometimes talking and shouting. This adds a dynamic touch to the whole piece.Shouting is also more realistic than just apprisal opera. Carmen is wearing the same color of costume in both versions and just about in every version that has been created in the world. Red is the color of passion and sexuality. Thus, when the audience first sees Carmen, immediately understands her character and that she is a temptress. Micaela, in contrast to Carmen, wears blue, a color that symbolizes her innocence and that she is fragile. The street ladies costumes in Eks piece show their character and their Spanish ethnicity in contradiction to the o riginal opera costumes that are showing the class and there social status.Ek uses very colorful, shiny and frilly dresses that are a throwback to the 80s, in order to show that all women have sexuality. The costumes of the men are very simple and dark, just to show their discipline, as they are military men. The designs and sets in Eks Carmen are cartoonish and with playful colors. In terms of light, he tries to keep it dark. There is a metallic setting and panels which are suggestive of Spanish fans, as well as a large exercise ball downstage.In Mats Ek version of Carmen, there is a deeper reflection of all the characters emotional world. Carmen is clearly a symbol of Freedom and anarchy with an even more complex nature than the one of the classic story. That is what Mats Ek does anyway. unless from changing the classics into more modern and humorous editions, the thing that makes him special is how he deals with the inner world of each character. He manages to present each chara cter, throughout the dance, in a very intense way so that the audience can understand for sure the characters personality.However he keeps the original story as it is, and he aims to show the same meaning as the original piece while at the same time he tries to explore a bit more the relationship between the characters. All of the above lead to Eks success when revising the classic stories. He remains faithful to the original story but however he does it not only with a more modern vocabulary but also with a more modern approach to suit the present. Much like Bizets opera of the same name, Mr. Eks version proves that a grim tale of love and death can be downright entertaining (As Willful As eer And Puffing On a Cigar Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times. 999). It seems that Carmen will continue to appeal the audiences for years to come. Mats Ek Carmen will also continue to be popular to the audience because of the emotional and dramatic state of Mr. Eks pieces. He is a choreographer that distant himself from anybody else in the dance field. He is very original and successful with his choreographies and it is no wonder that he is so famous and he has achieved so much. He is an extremely talented choreographer with a lot of theatrical ideas and that is what makes him so special throughout all these years BibliographyAdshead, J. 1988. Dance analysis theory and practice. London Dance books Bremser M. and Sanders L. Fifty Contemporary Choreographers. Second Edition. 2011. Roudledge Au S. Ballet and Modern dance. 1998. Thames and Hudson world of Art. Articles As Willful As Ever And Puffing On a Cigar Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times. 1999 Websites Linda. 2010. Carmen. http//www. theballetbag. com Peter Grahame Woolf. 1996. Mats Ek Carmen. http//www. musicweb-international. com Claudia La Rocco. Keeping dance alive A Mats Ek Portrait. http//www. classicaltv. com