The Fiddle and the Drum: the return of Joni Mitchell in this “portrait ballet” will bring joy to Mitchell fans.
The Fiddle and the Drum, the title of an anti-war poem written by Canadian singer Joni Mitchell in 1969 is also the title given to this remount of the first of Alberta ballet’s “Portrait Ballets” created by choreographer Jean Grand-Maître in 2007. The poem, composed the same year as Woodstock, that ‘ Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music” that had international consequences on the neo-romantic anti-war movement of that time and Mitchell was rooted deeply with that period. There is no doubt that this production will fill Joni Mitchell fans with great joy and much nostalgia hearing her voice and her music, all heightened by the excellent dancers, the anti-war themes , the universal messages of saving the planet and visual dream-like additions to the staging.
Set up within the frame of a huge circular moon that hovers over the dancers, these symbolist -like delicate images of clouds floating over the earth, or of soldiers parading to their doom from an even more distant view from up in the stratosphere, echoing those left on the planet earth below as it sails away among the stars.
The dancers appear to become creatures reduced to their relative insignificance in the whole space of the universe as they move about, often all connected with all living human beings and animals in tribal unison, interpreting the twelve songs taken from Mitchell’s repertoire that make up the programme of the evening.
The individual numbers will have a much stronger impact on those who know the lyrics because her message is in the text. The music was haunting, there is a mystical quality in her vision of an interconnected world that touches the invisible world and the drumming which lingered throughout the evening moved from suggestions of returning to war, or the traditional music from the African continent .. Thus, the beat of the drum, in the context of the dancing, became a source of rhythmic material that seemed to unite all living creatures on the earth, a deep ecological message of peace fused the whole planet in one single gesture of survival, indicated by the appearance of a child and the oncoming future generations.
This is however a ballet and yet, the music and lyrics overshadowed the dancing because in spite of the excellent technical prowess of this company that gave enormous satisfaction, the choreography was extremely repetitive and lost its emotional strength by the end of the first part. In the final moment, the whole company, wearing flesh coloured body suites simulating nudity, as well as soft flowing elements of costume to suggest feminine presence on the undefined bodies, unites in a great ceremony of love and joy that suggested ever so slightly and on a much reduced scale Maurice Béjart’s Hymn to Joy (Beethoven’s 9th) created in 1964.
Nevertheless, the possibilities for a much stronger emotional impact as a form of tribute to Mitchell were missed. One problem was that the lyrics were not understandable (for those of us who did not know them) , the images suggested from that hovering planet were dream-like , uninspiring. the singer’s poetic interpretations were difficult to pass on to the corporeal presence before us. It all lacked emotional strength corresponding to the possibilities of Mitchell’s messages. The spirit of the music was not necessarily captured by the ensemble of the performance and unless one is an unconditional fan of Joni Mitchel, this portrait would appear to lack much.
The Fiddle and the Drum (Alberta Ballet) plays again this evening in Southam Hall in the NAC at 8pm