On a steamy Wellington afternoon, Ana Gallardo Lobaina points her crimson red fingernails in the air as she gazes into Branden Reiners’ eyes. He powers the Cuban ballet dancer over one shoulder, and she twists and drops gently to the ground. A few weeks out from opening night in
Wellington, the Royal New Zealand Ballet principal dancer and soloist are performing their first pas de deux as the Macbeths.
They’re rehearsing the first duet, a scene at a cocktail party. Macbeth – a modern-day politician rather than a 17th-century Scottish nobleman – has just been promoted, and Lady Macbeth embraces him, their dance full of many lifts. Beaming, Lady Macbeth whispers in his ear ‒ they should kill Duncan so Macbeth can become president. Macbeth grimaces: can’t they just enjoy this moment? Wearing a cocktail dress, Lady Macbeth leads, symbolic of her grip over her husband.
The dance turns from passion to angst: what will happen next? They stop for a take as Melbourne dramaturg Ruth Little watches from the sideline, writing notes. Her role is to make sure the dancers convey the emotion choreographer Alice Topp wants the audience to understand – and tell Shakespeare’s story of 17,000 words without an utterance.
The RNZB production is not the first time Shakespeare’s biggest thriller has been dragged into the present from medieval Scotland. Or into the ballet studio. During the years, stage and screen adaptations have made the Thane of Cawdor into underworld figures, samurai, modern military generals and corporate bosses. He’s been the subject of an opera, too.
Now Australian-born Alice Topp is taking RNZB dancers into a steamy, sinister, contemporary world where Macbeth is a politician manipulated by his wife and social media influencers. The audience will not see a dagger before them – the murders are carried out by poison and a pool cue.
Throw in a heavy metal-inspired soundtrack and Topp hopes the RNZB co-production with the West Australian Ballet ‒ which will stage its version in September ‒ will give her Macbeth an edge.
As Macbeth, New Jersey-raised Reiners says he hopes to portray the complexity of his character. “Everybody’s capable of bad things and Macbeth goes down this rabbit hole he can’t come back from. That’s what I hope to portray. He is the victim of circumstances, social media and influencers. He’s a man who really loves his wife and will do what she wants, which can be admired in a husband.’’
Reiners, who joined the RBNZ three years ago, prefers playing dark characters. “Something about just being evil comes easier to me. It’s easier to keep a grimace and look angry or fearful, and it requires more energy for me to look happy.’’
As Lady Macbeth, the sexy, seductive gazes Lobaina throws across the room come naturally. “It comes naturally for me to portray a woman who is a feminist, stands her ground and has her own mind. ‘’
The Spanish-speaking dancer has a solo portraying Lady Macbeth’s complete breakdown, danced in bare feet with dishevelled hair. Her final scene involves a bath sitting on the higher mezzanine stage.
“The tragedy is they were a happily married couple, they were a team,” says Lobaina. “What I’m trying to portray is that she’s hungry for power and that turns them.
“An audience can’t relate to fairies. They might appreciate that kind of dance, but when you see a human being on stage, you can find a little bit of you in every character you see. And that’s how I feel about every character. Lady Macbeth is fucked up but her ambition, seduction and confidence ‒ those are things that I can relate to, but not to her level.“Modern takes
In another studio, Topp is rehearsing a second scene. In this one, Ross, also recast as a politician, is informing Macduff his family have been slaughtered by Macbeth. Dressed in a grey suit, Ross is played by a woman, soloist Jemima Scott, as Topp has rethought the gender mix in the play’s male-dominated cast.
In some of the four RNZB casts, Banquo – Macbeth’s friend and foil – will be played by female dancers and the “weird sisters’’ trio of witches – now influencers – will include a mix of male and female dancers dressed in power suits and flashing smart phones.
Says Topp: “In the play, the soldiers, noblemen and thanes were men, but in politicians, we can create a vision of a world that reflects our society today. Women are politicians, women are citizens. We want to honour what we know in today’s world.’’
Topp has collaborated with set and lighting designer Jon Buswell on previous productions, such as her work, Aurum (2018), for the RNZB. Six years ago during the pandemic, the creative partners were brainstorming ideas for new narrative ballets. Topp had her mother’s well-thumbed copy of Macbeth and she’d seen many productions, including the immersive, wordless, avant garde Sleep No More that British company Punchdrunk staged in a New York hotel for nearly 14 years.
“What stays with me most is how I connected with it after studying it at school and how I marvelled that, at the time, there were no ballet productions of the classic.”
When she and Buswell started, no contemporary version of the ballet had been created. Since then, acclaimed choreographer Helen Pickett created Lady Macbeth for the Dutch National Ballet that debuted last year.
Topp says companies are looking to deviate from the traditional classics. “Every company has their staple favourites of Swan Lake, Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Giselle. A lot are looking to branch out from those. Story ballets are iconic because people can come along and know what’s unfurling on stage and have that connection. As much as I love a triple bill, sometimes people don’t know what’s unfurling on stage before them, a bit like contemporary art.
“When you think about the ballet tragedies, Romeo and Juliet, Swan Lake, and Giselle, those stories of love and loss and tragedy all have the same qualities that Macbeth has. It’s essentially about love and guilt, ambition and desire and betrayal and loss.’’
Video: See the Macbeth dancers in rehearsal with commentary from choreographer Alice Topp
Topp found it liberating to start afresh. She and Buswell worked with veteran Sydney film and ballet composer Christopher Gordon whose recorded score of classical, jazz and heavy metal will be complemented by a live NZSO string octet.
“When people think of ballet they think tulle, tiaras, tutus, Tchaikovsky, sugar plums and flowers,” says Topp. “This story is darker and to bring in some heavy metal really gave it a charged, electric edge.”
The theme of a powerful man who will do anything for the prize of a presidency sounds hauntingly real in today’s political climate. Topp loved the freedom of reimagining the Macbeths as a modern-day husband and wife obsessed with power and status.
“The original story was set with kings and thanes and noblemen and messengers and a battle. I thought of the battles of today and how that could play out. I imagined Macbeth as a political figure, someone who is really charming but also ambitious and a kind of prodigy. You can think of so many political figures around the world and powerful people from various industries and also their social media presence. The interplay between all of them was a really great jumping-off point for our story.”
Macbeth, Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts in Wellington, February 25-28; Auckland Arts Festival, March 4-7; Dunedin, March 13-14; and Christchurch, March 18-21.
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