Amor og Psyche | Review | Monna Dithmer | Politiken | 26 May 1997
Psyche’s Monodrama :
Kim Brandstrup masters the form of grand drama
There are limits that may not be crossed without fatal results. That is why they are so attractive.
This made apparent with overwhelming visual power in the opening of the new Royal full-length ballet, Cupid and Pysche. On high the goddess of love, Venue, floats as a bronze fury, while her earthly rival in beauty, Psyche, is standing below in the dark. Each in her sphere, but linked by a magnetic diagonal. This the start is clearly indicated of the classical triangular drama, where Venus from jealousy persuades her son to seduce psyche, but the god instead falls in love with the soulful earthling.
The choreographer Kim Brandstrup has a superb ability to tell a story through the drama of forms – not by leaving it to mined presentation of emotions. He consistently maintain the tension between the two spheres – with innumerable high lifts and sliding galls along the floor, just as the huge pillars of Pompelian red simultaneously reach upwards and weigh down.
At the same time the actual earthly arena of the meeting between man and god is cut through by the sharply drawn diagonals of the dancers, just as the design’s projecting angled lines divide the space crosswise. Cupid and Psyche’s universe is a place of sharply drawn limits. Otherwise there is no excitement about crossing them.
The scene is a Mediterranean 50’s square with scooters and neon signs. A crowd of couples, priests and wedding guests move in and out of the café on the square, which like a ship’s prow juts boldly into the space. The designs of the Brothers Quay is powerful and loud, and Kim Helweg’s music swells filmscore-like in an impressive fusion of, among others, Debussy, Prokofiev and Bernstein’s West Side Story.
Her Cupid appears as an attractive, jazzy seducer on Gene Kelly cat’s paws, while Pysche stands in icy isolation, from the beginning lost in her own universe. A frightened, slight figure who with her short hair and cool dress is reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday.
Clearly there is no room for any lover’s meeting or drama of destiny in the hectic ‘contemporary’ world.
On the other hand that is possible when the story jumps backwards to the classical mausoleum-like pillared hall, where Psyche meets her Cupid, but also the absolute limit of love: only covered by the darkness of night can they meet, Psyche must never see him.
After the dynamic stream of movement and hectically accelerating progressions of the first act, Brandstrup with the same organic flow manages to create a still point of emotion. Deliriously floating lyrical pas de deux where Psyche from listening for Cupid’s ‘tap-tap’ on the floor and feel his naked embrace is driven to the point where she must cross the fatal limit and see him.
But the decisive element in Brandstrup’s presentation of the love drama is that it becomes rather the story of a woman’s development.
It is always – also in the back-turned embraces with Cupid – Psyche, in Heidi Ryon’s internalised and beautifully understated, elegive somnambulist figure, that attracts the attention. And the fatal transgression consists of Pysche’s acting herself, rather than remaining constantly in the power of her surroundings.
As a result Cupid had difficulties in establishing himself. Despite Martin James’ beautiful, softly sensuous dancing, Cupid with his bare chest and outflung arms more than anything resembles an escaped Golden Slave from the Ballet Russes – smoothly evasive. What constitutes the attraction between them?
Consequently the dominant dramatic opponent becomes Lis Jeppensen’s Venue who like an ominous bird of prey interferes the drama with ever-increasing force, majestically carried along on the shoulders of her subservient cavaliers. Unfortunately the ballet loses its way in the dark proscenium stage of the third act, with a checkmated Cupid and a couple of unclear scenes which after all makes love the main theme, as well as an awkward ending in the happy-end sunset glow of the design.
Nonetheless the format is indisputable. With his first great full-length ballet, Kim Brandstrup demonstrated his ability to handle the big drama. With a filmic drive in the cutting and a swell of emotion in the forms, so that Psyche’s monodrama is given the fatal sound of destiny.
Monna Dithmer