Sleeping Beauty Dreams Review: Diana Vishneva
December 7, 2018 | Art Basel – Miami, FL, USA
Nestled amid the exciting visual and performing art events of Miami’s 16th annual Art Basel, Sleeping Beauty Dreams, played to a partially full house December 7 and 8 at Miami-Dade’s Adrienne Arsht Center. This version of Sleeping Beauty interpreted the moves of our heroine, Diana Vishneva, and projected her motions on a giant screen through the wonders of 3-D virtual technology. A confluence of sensory and visual challenges and stimulations, the innovative team behind the short-run production took the audience to new places and inspired new horizons for future marriages of sound, sight, and motion.
For the Friday night performance, Ms. Visheva was greeted by hundreds of her devoted fans, many of whom loved her judiciously during her 2003-2017 span at American Ballet Theater. Enjoying new horizons herself, the mother of a son who is now less than a year old charged forward from the opening scenes and did not relinquish her demanding and consistent pace throughout the evening.
As anticipated from the cryptic yet surprisingly accurate pre-performance press, the virtual reality technology was immediate and pronounced and was defiantly punctuated by basic tenets of Bauhaus and the visceral rewards of this electronic dance music sound, now popular in experimental art since the World War I era. In fact, the residue of Western, Post World War I Modernism permeated this piece, the residue of Isadora Duncan and the like who taught audiences to thrive on the acceptance that the center cannot and will not, and, in this ballet, perhaps is best when it did not hold. The much-touted 3-D technology created ongoing images on the screen that were at times in concert with the dancers on the stage and at times in contrast, creating tensions and tangles that are, no doubt, new to the world of dance and virtual realities. But in the end, it was the dancers, the humans, who drew the eye and inspired the mind, with the virtual presentation serving as a mere addition to the talent and potential of this interpretation of a Romantic classic set in a post-post-apocalyptic world and wrapped up in the residue of the 1980s.
As Diana Vishneva owned her monochromatic stage, start-to-finish, the audience enjoyed body gestures and gender positing often reminiscent of early Keith Haring graffiti art. Still, while the production was clearly rooted in Modernism, the 1980s homages were also clear and pronounced. This connection back to the Cold War West was, no doubt, welcomed by the audience clad in fashions harkening back to the same period, most notably the red Gucci fanny pack we saw donned proudly on a patron. Our culture is mad about the current 1980s Renaissance, demonstrating yet another reason why Sleeping Beauty Dreams hit so many salient spots in the current cultural consciousness. One hundred years in to the Modernist experiment, Vishneva and her company of nine helped to define marking and spacing on the screen by being rooted in the discipline and the talent of the terre. Further, the nine skirted accompaniments—the males clad in white mesh skirts and, temporarily, metallic red topics—were in league with Vishneva, making gender as fluid in time and space. Beginning, middle, and end, it was as if the technology on the screen became more and more etherical as the movements of the dancers became more concrete.
To be clear, Vishneva was the center—the one who could not be held. Her movements were so precise—so close to the form—like a metronome or a drummer, and this perfection allowed for the mid-passages of symmetrical arm movements, reminiscent of Siddhartha and Eastern dance values. In Hindu art, the moving arms represent battling cosmic forces, and the Lead gave her Miami audience precision with her arms—her weapons.
With all the elements at her disposal – earth, wind, fire, water – Vishneva was, as kitchy as it may seem to say it – the steam off the electronic dance music borne of the Bauhaus messenger – Thijs de Vlieger of Noisia. The playfulness of de Vlieger’s day job with Noisia was obvious in his musical composition for this ballet that played more like a soundtrack than a score. De Vlieger’s vision was jarring and unsettling and a pastiche of postindustrial sounds that further showcased the discipline of Vishneva’s long-limber legs and arms.
Those limbs connected so effortlessly on her own frame and were shared so generously in moments with her masculine foil, the Prince, Marcelo Gomez. Ever the striking Brazilian, also of American Ballet Theatre fame, Gomez toyed with his own gender identity and was made physically and emotionally unattainable in his unique shirt dressing, a white ‘totally 80s’ silhouette from costumer Bart Hess. Hess’ designs put the final coat of veneer on the thin layer of a subconscious bubble that the audience was invited to navigate during the inaugural performance of Sleeping Beauty Dreams. A second show followed Saturday in preparation for the 2-night New York run from December 14-15 at the former movie palace, The Beacon Theater.
Featured Photo for Sleeping Beauty Dreams Review: The Virtual and the Real Awaken Art Basel © Sleeping Beauty Dreams
Jeanne Fuchs also contributed to this review. She is a Professor Emerita in the Department of Comparative Literature and Languages at Hofstra University. She has written many noted books and articles on French and American literature. A former ballet dancer from The School of American Ballet and Assistant to Tanaquil Le Clercq for The Ballet Cook Book, Jeanne also worked with Jerome Robbins.
