By Michele T. Logarta
British choreographer Martin Lawrance is back in Manila to do his third piece for Ballet Manila called Amid Shadows. With two weeks to create the work, Lawrance, who had just finished rehearsing with his dancers on a Thursday afternoon in mid-June at the Ballet Manila studios, is getting ready to leave for the Aliw Theater where the ballet will be staged on June 21. He and BM lighting director Jimmy Villanueva are going to look at the lights and see how the lighting will be done, he explains.
The lighting is important in this piece, as the name of the ballet implies. Lawrance’s new piece, loosely based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, recreates the shadowy and magical world of the forest, where the story of two couples unfold and twist and turn through the mischief-making fairy Puck’s machinations. Here, lights create the dreamlike world of magic and illusion.
Lawrance titled his new work Amid Shadows, taking off from Puck’s soliloquy, If We Shadows Have Offended, that closes the play.
“He’s made a mess of two lovers,” Lawrance says of Puck.
The story of this Shakespearean comedy, he explains, centers on two couples, Lysander and Hermia and Demitrius and Helena. Helena is in love with Demitrius who is in love with Hermia. Lysander and Hermia are in love with each other. They leave Athens because the King and Queen want Hermia to marry Demitrius. They flee to the forest. Puck puts a spell on the wrong person and two men are in love now with Helena.
“So it’s like a ménage a trois, although I don’t want to say that… but it’s got that feel to it.”
What it really is about, says Lawrance, is the relationships of four people and one mysterious character.
Lawrance has been doing a lot of research on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. On his iPad, he has pictures of paintings of various scenes inspired by the play. Flipping through the pictures, he says, “If you think about it, it is quite mixed up. You see all this body language.” And he points to one painting that has grabbed his attention. “There is something very gripping about it. Helena has so much power. Two men love her! That is what gives her the power.”
Helena will be played by Ballet Manila alumna Christine Rocas. The new choreography is meant as a gift for her from her former teacher, BM founder Lisa Macuja-Elizalde. A member of Joffrey Ballet in Chicago, USA for the past 11 years, Rocas comes home regularly, to visit family and to dance for BM as well.
Rocas is here to dance for Ballet Manila at performances in Dance.MNL: The Philippine Dance Festival. She will perform in the world premiere of Amid Shadows in The Winners’ Circle on June 21, the world premiere of Gerardo Francisco’s Aspis in Dance Diaspora on June 25 and in Bam Damian’s Romeo and Juliet (opposite BM’s Alfren Salgado) in Ballet Filipino on June 26 – all at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.
When Macuja-Elizalde invited Lawrance to create a new work for BM, he was at home in the UK where events marking Shakespeare’s 400th death anniversary had begun this year. He immediately knew he wanted to do something on A Midsummer Night’s Dream because it is a favorite of his.
With Rocas as Helena, he chose four other dancers for the piece: Rudy De Dios as Lysander, Tiffany Chiang-Janolo as Hermia, Mark Sumaylo as Demetrius and Gerardo Francisco as Puck. The dancers, Lawrance observes, are all different shapes and sizes. Rocas is a tall Helena and Francisco is just the right height for Puck.
This is the first time Lawrance is working with Rocas. “I purposely didn’t ask to see any videos of her dancing. I didn’t want to have any notions. I wanted to see what we would do together in the studio. I started with all five of them in the studio. She has a long pas de deux and a pas de trois. It’s very much focused on Helena.”
For Francisco’s Puck, Lawrance wanted to do something different. “I’ve worked with him twice – in Misfit or Maverick and in Rebel where he was Ferdinand Marcos. I wanted to do something quite playful for him. It’s not like Misfit or Maverick where he was an outsider. He’s almost like a puppeteer who controls everything. Puck is the central character of Amid Shadows. He opens it and closes it, and all the times he’s just watching the others in the forest. He’s the voyeur and he intervenes with them and retreats… back into the shadows. He comes in and out.”
And the shadows on Lawrance’s set will be delineated by 15 men, all in black, standing quietly in the background.
“They are the shadows. The lighting will be shining behind them and the four characters will weave in and out. That’s what it is… they keep going back… these bodies, the ferns, the trees. I’m playing with what’s happening in front and what’s happening at the back. Tiffany and Rudy could be doing a pas de deux, but the spotlight is on Helena. It’s almost like he’s thinking of her.”
For Amid Shadows, Lawrance wants to convey the sense of peering into a kaleidoscope that keeps changing. “The music is serene and beautiful, then with a shift, something else is happening and they retreat back and move forward.”
Amid Shadows is a modern work, but on pointe. Lawrance thinks it’s a difficult ballet because it requires a lot of stamina. The most exciting thing for him about working on this piece, he says, are the dancers. “As I said before, they bring out something me. I like challenging people. I don’t like things easy.”