by Many years ago I spoke with Robert Lepage, one of the greatest exponents of physical theatre, about the difference between dancers and actors. He was in the midst of collaborating with Sylvie Guillem and Russell Maliphant on Eonnagata and he could not get over the contrasts between them. “Dancers are different animals than actors or writers,” he told me. “Creative impulses come from the body, from muscles, from movement. You have to let yourself go into this flow.”
I thought of that conversation when I watched Alan Cumming Burn, in which the actor makes his debut at the age of 57. Cumming would light up any club dance floor. Put him on a stage in a play such as Bacchae or a musical such as The cabaret and tell him to move and he will do it beautifully. But place him at the center of a piece that communicates mainly through movement and the result is unsatisfactory.
Brought to the Edinburgh International Festival by the National Theater of Scotland, Burn tells the story of Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns, through his letters, occasional touches of poetry and lots of choreography by Steven Hoggett and Vicki Manderson, accompanied by a passionate score by Scottish composer Anna Meredith.
Ballet Freedom is a cross between a dirty version of Matthew Bourne and Pina Bausch
Cumming, resplendent in long black hair, black waistcoat and underpants (costumes by Katrina Lindsay), waves her arms, pulling figures out of the air with her hands; he polishes and hijacks and collapses on stage as Burns’s depression overcomes him. He is energetic, and the moments of uneven physicality, where the wildness of his gestures overwhelm his ability to control them, are striking. But he does not do the most important thing that dance does, which is to transform thought and feeling into physical realization. The movement feels applied to the performance rather than being the essence of it.
Without a script from the steps, there isn’t much of a story at all. If you knew nothing of Burns, I doubt you would be able to piece together much of his astonishing life, his journey from plowman to poet, his steady plunges into despair and abject poverty, from this impressionistic selection of words. Certainly, you would not understand the importance of his poetry, which is in short supply.
What you’re left with is Cummings’ undoubted charisma, his ability to hold an audience in the palm of his hand with a look and a smile. He is supported by a production of staggering beauty. Against a backdrop of Andrzej Goulding’s monochrome video projections, which combine scenes dating from Burns’s life with a ghostly image of a white horse, designer Ana Inés Jabares-Pita and lighting director Tim Lutkin provide a scene of storm and storm, and lightning shooting through clouds.
Illusion consultant Kevin Quantum adds a quill that scribbles furiously on its own, and a stack of paper that magically rises to take the form of one of Burns’ supporters. The chairs slide into place and tilt back as if floating. A series of shoes are suspended from the flies, each representing one of the many women the poet seduces. It is imaginative and carefully crafted, but it is strangely empty.
Ballet freedom from the Freedom Ballet of Ukraine was my surprise on a short visit to the festival. This darkly sensual show, sort of a cross between a dirty version of Matthew Bourne and Pina Bausch, has very questionable sexual politics, but it’s brilliantly danced by people who have trained for years to feel movement in their legs.
Dark moments characterize a mood of raucous eroticism. In one, a waiter hears a gunshot and then turns leglessly to see himself in a mirror, his limbs like jelly. At another, a girl’s body falls from a wardrobe; three men take turns dancing with her limp body before stuffing her back into the room. In the context of the war in Ukraine, such random acts of violence feel doubly chilling. It’s a show that lingers in the mind.
Star ratings (out of five)
Burn ★★★
Ballet freedom ★★★★
