by Jacquelyn Thayer
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here,” was the quote that kept intruding upon me, quietly but insistently, while watching the debut of the Joffrey Ballet’s made-for-digital Boléro, a 16-minute piece choreographed by company artist Yoshihisa Arai and starring Anais Bueno, set to Maurice Ravel’s infamously repetitive composition.
Not to say that Bueno’s besieged protagonist seems a demonic force herself, of course. It’s her cohorts, those anonymous troupers, gradually growing in number and shifting in composition, who to my view represented the sinister.
It’s difficult to read a work created and produced during a lockdown-inducing pandemic as not part of that global event’s tapestry. The flesh-toned masks worn by all dancers here might be a safety measure intended to be as inconspicuous as possible, but can anyone really watch it that way? The masks are costume, right alongside Bueno’s unorthodox button-down shirt and the troupe’s black skirts (and necklace-like collars, for the women). Audio, too, matters: the ballet begins with the orchestra’s tune-up, intermingled with strands of voices—something I only noticed during a second viewing while wearing headphones. We move quite suddenly from chaos to silence.
In such a context, a semi-solo performer reads as an isolated performer. Clad in a shirt suggesting some intermediary state between work and home life, she explores the stages of solitude first, intrigued, languorous. But it transitions, as it typically does, to something darker. As we reach the midway point, her movement becomes increasingly defiant, and then gives way to something uglier, with more broken lines, flexed feet, and violent gestures of kicking and throwing. This woman is ready to rid herself of something, maybe everything.
But this soloist isn’t actually solo. Who are the others who walk always beside her? At times she seems to direct their movement; at others, she’s inspired. Never, though, does she move identically with them; at most, the troupe may offer a more refined form of her own movement, automatons lacking the emotion driving her steps. As the ballet grows, the protagonist comes to feel more like a director, watching as the male troupe members leap and roll, and later adopts the role of lead dancer with the female troupe. In a sense, it’s a difference of demons: the first crew suggesting the ills imposed upon her, the second those unleashed from within. Ultimately, of course, they’ll mingle.
Though it’s no triumphant conclusion, the troupe is finally subdued, first kneeling, then rising to flee, leaving Bueno alone—with us, breaking the fourth wall with a direct gaze to close the performance. Indeed, this is no ballet incidentally filmed for stream, but one crafted with an understanding of the camera’s role. The filming itself becomes more of a player halfway through the piece; as the protagonist deteriorates, we’re given more unsteady close-ups and unusual angles, fostering the unease.
This semi-solo Boléro is not unusual; Ravel composed the piece as a flirtatious feature for Ida Rubinstein, and some choreographic elements are reminiscent of Maurice Béjart’s, danced here by Maya Plisetskaya—though in Béjart’s rendition, the distinction between troupe and lead is firm. Conversely, ice dancer Christopher Dean condensed the composition to a four-minute romance for the ice, representing, apparently, a pair of lovers facing a volcano. Boléro’s narrative potential, that is to say, is open-ended.
But one obvious and unavoidable element of Boléro is its relentlessness. It demands more from its performers as it builds, but never less; there are no moments of stillness, opportunities for pause. It is, as others have observed, a work of machine-like repetition, embodying an inevitable and exhausting sameness. Isn’t it apt, really, for this year that has, for so many, offered limited relief, but constant drain?
