FIELD/Minus 16 at Opera Ballet Vlaanderen
Kirsten Wicklund danced for many years with Opera Ballet Vlaanderen. For Choreolab 2023 – in which OBV dancers take their first steps as choreographers – she created the work The Subject is Overgrown and thus her future beyond OBV took shape. Today, she is artistic director of Ballet Edmonton in Canada and she is returning to OBV with the world-premiering creation FIELD. It will be her first production on this scale. A proud moment not only for her, but also for Opera Ballet Vlaanderen.
FIELD will be an abstract ballet based on the moving String Quartet No. 8 by Dmitri Shostakovich and the ‘Melodia’ from the Sonata for Solo Violin by Béla Bartók. Musicians from the Opera Ballet Vlaanderen Symphony Orchestra will perform the music live. In addition, Jean Delouvroy composed an intriguing soundscape for this production with Innerscape.
To this enchanting music, Kirsten Wicklund opens a portal to a mysterious universe of different spaces that are demarcated by porous screens. They evoke both physical and spiritual connotations. The dancers move in and between these spaces in a dance language that combines work on pointe with modern and contemporary languages of movement. FIELD aims to merge choreography, bodies, sets and lighting, which is also reflected in the beautiful costumes by Irina Shaposhnikova.
Alongside FIELD OBV will present a major contemporary classic: Minus 16 by Ohad Naharin. Since this production premiered in 1999, it has found its way into the canon of contemporary dance. Every dance company has this work on their list of achievements, but it is only now being seen for the first time at Opera Ballet Vlaanderen. Kirsten Wicklund also danced it once.
Minus 16 is a collage work, a kind of best-of compilation of Naharin’s oeuvre in which his well-known Gaga style is central. Minus 16 already begins at the end of the intermission with a humorous solo by one of the dancers. When the dancer is joined by his colleagues, the evening changes into an energetic mix of intense ensembles with tender duets. Musically, the performance is also a succession of catchy mambo, pumping techno and intimate piano music by Frédéric Chopin.
Minus 16 is simultaneously light and angry, vibrant and vulnerable, spontaneous and controlled, full of life and at the same time a moment of deep contemplation about the unpredictability of reality, a work that celebrates but is never vacuous and invites the audience to experience all those layered emotions. The audience is given a remarkable role during this performance, where you simply cannot sit still.
FIELD/Minus 16 will be at Theater ‘t Eilandje 3 – 5 Dec and at Opera Ghent 13-19 Dec. Tickets from €22. Visit operaballet.be to book now.
FIELD, Image credit OBV