Generation Dance

Interview with choreographer Rena Butler

As a 14-year-old student at the Chicago Academy for the Arts, Rena Butler had to choose between theatre and dance. Instinctively, she opted for the latter, “because dance is a much more extreme way of expressing yourself.” The flamboyant American is making her Dutch debut with Persephone, a new work about the light and shade in all of us.

As a young dance student, Rena Butler (35) was already fascinated by Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Ratto di Proserpina. The Baroque, life-size marble statue portrays the abduction of Proserpina by Pluto – in Greek mythology known as Persephone and Hades – to the underworld, whereby the three-headed dog Cerberus – also known by the Greeks as a hydra – symbolises the crossing to the underworld. “At the time, I was taking classes with Martha Graham and I learned at school about Fibonacci’s golden ratio theory with regard to symmetry. That inspired me so much that in subsequent years I looked for that golden section in every artwork I saw, and then I came across Bernini’s statue. I was moved by the beautiful spiral construction, the detail in the statue, and the many layers of meaning it conveyed. And to think that Bernini was only 23 when he finished the statue. There’s just so much in this sculpture that you don’t even need to know the story behind it. Simply looking at it gives so much context, and moreover, each angle you look at it from gives a new, individual experience.”

A sign from above

The fact that on her arrival in Amsterdam, at the beginning of August, she stumbled across a three-headed hydra, several metres high, in the assembly space behind the stage of Dutch National Opera & Ballet (from Francesco Cavalli’s opera Ercole amante) must therefore, she says, have been ‘a sign from above’. Even more so because Bernini’s statue has now gained a lot of extra meaning for her, due to a personal experience. “When I saw the hydra standing there so pontifically, I knew I absolutely had to do something with it. Bernini’s statue just had to be the subject of my new piece. Not so much because of the story of the abduction of Persephone – which, incidentally, Bernini called ‘ratto’ or ‘rape’ – but because of the associated theme of consent. The way in which Hades’ fingers gouge into Persephone’s thigh (Butler prefers the Greek names – ed.) speaks volumes to me. It makes me wonder what we as humans permit, and how far we want to go before we draw the line. Because of what happened to me a year and a half ago, this is a theme I’m currently re-evaluating for myself. Although that certainly doesn’t mean that I want to force my own story on to my audience. I prefer to stimulate their imagination, so that people can make up their own story. For one person, Bernini’s statue – and thus my choreography – might be about the underworld and the decision to delve into the unknown, whereas for someone else it might be about taking what isn’t yours and later being either punished or celebrated for it.”

Everyone’s personal underworld

In her new piece, a trio, the dancers each have their own role. In the first cast, Floor Eimers takes the role of Persephone, Giorgi Potskhishvili plays Hades and Joseph Massarelli is the three-headed Hydra, whose barking, says Butler, seems to encourage Hades to pull Persephone into the underworld. But for Butler, the three characters also blend together, in the sense that she identifies with all three of them. 

“I see myself as Hydra, as Hades and as Persephone. I’m fascinated by the deeper layers we all carry within us. How dark can it get and to what extent do we allow ourselves to delve into our own underworld? And what encourages us to do that? For me, the story that Bernini portrayed so beautifully is not about genders; it’s not about two male figures who pull a woman reaching for the light into the underworld. In my view, it’s about the light and shade in all of us. And about clarifying the borders within us and thus coming to understand how far we want to go before struggling to the surface to gasp for air.”

All three characters can teach us a lesson, says Butler. “I love Hydra. For me, he’s a shape shifter of the underworld; a shady character who urges people to make decisions, whether good or bad. He propels the story forwards, but also creates chaos. Hades responds to things in a very conditioned way, and his response is manipulated and controlled by Hydra. In such a situation, how do you get your own strength back? How do you break the enchantment, so you can be autonomous and make your own decisions? And in fact the same applies to Persephone. I see her as a modern woman, who suddenly feels at the mercy of two male – or identified as such – characters. How should she navigate between everything that happens to her? Which choices should she make and what does she need in order to get her strength back? I think that first of all she does indeed have to descend into ‘her’ underworld, to find out who she is, and what is daunting her and putting her under pressure, so that afterwards she can free herself with renewed strength.”

Oppressive

For her new work, Persephone, Butler is using music by Hans Abrahamsen, Dmitri Shostakovich and Ezio Bosso, respectively. “I see a clear connection between these compositions. Oppressed by the Stalin regime, Shostakovich couldn’t write the music he wanted. He had to suppress his musical voice, and you can hear that in his music. His String Quartet No. 4 starts off ornately, but gradually becomes more oppressive. It’s that darkness that appeals to me, which I also hear in the pieces by Abrahamsen and Bosso, although Bosso’s composition is slightly more hopeful and high-spirited.”

In collaboration with lighting designer K.J and set and costume designer Tatyana van Walsum, she is currently looking at how to transform the orchestra pit into an underworld, as it were. “I don’t know what the musicians feel about it, but as long as there’s no red light shining on their scores, I think we’ll come up with a solution.”

However, she reiterates that it is not about reproducing a mythological story. In fact, she actually wants to demythologise the story of Persephone, along with her dancers. “In our lives, we all go through things that relate to this story. So I’m asking the dancers to identify with the different characters, and to explore each character’s peaks and troughs, and their rise and fall. And thus to discover how this mythological story is reflected in today’s world and how it links up to our own personal darkness.”

Text: Astrid van Leeuwen
Translation: Susan Pond

Blake Works I

‘A love letter to ballet’. That’s how one of the répétiteurs described William Forsythe’s work Blake Works I, which Dutch National Ballet took into its repertoire last year. To seven numbers by singer-songwriter James Blake, the master choreographer gives a fresh, contemporary glow to the classical ballet vocabulary.

William Forsythe is regarded as the most influential dance innovator of the past fifty years. In the eighties and nineties, he took classical ballet by the horns, dismantling the underlying system and turning its rules upside down. He attained great international success with his radical choreographic works, which are quirky, with balances way off the perpendicular and arms and legs stretched to their maximum extension. In 1999, however, following the premiere of Pas/Parts danced by Ballet de l’Opéra national de Paris, Forsythe gave up ballet and decided to focus on experimental, distinctive dance theatre works, in which improvisation played a major role.

That is until 2016, when after a break of seventeen years he re-embraced his first love – ballet – and created Blake Works I, once again for Ballet de l’Opéra national de Paris. He took inspiration for the piece from seven numbers from the album The Colour in Anything, which had just been released by the British singer-songwriter and electronic musician James Blake. Although pop songs are an unusual genre in Forsythe’s oeuvre, the choreographer said he felt challenged by the ‘strongly syncopated, multi-layered rhythmic surroundings’ created by Blake within the usually straightforward time signatures of the pop genre.

In response, Forsythe made solos, duets, trios and perfectly synchronous ensemble sections filled with complex, sometimes kaleidoscopic movements. The choreography not only makes strong technical demands on the dancers, but also requires them to have great musicality, joy of dance and swing.

Whereas Forsythe opted for an analytical approach to many of his earlier ballets, dissecting the dance idiom almost surgically, Blake Works I unmistakably refers – despite its often accelerated tempo and fresh, contemporary glow – to the roots of ballet; namely to the French school and its specific, demanding details. In his choreography,

he even incorporates some iconic excerpts from the great masters of the genre – particularly George Balanchine – who influenced him during his formative years. The Forsythe of those days, who only did his first ballet class at the age of eighteen, also surfaces occasionally in Blake Works I, embodied by a dancer who, dressed in different, everyday clothes, zigzags between the other dancers, with playful, uninhibited curiosity.

Text: Astrid van Leeuwen
Translation: Susan Pond