By Imogen
Link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000qry2
Available until: 16th May 2021
Sir Matthew Bourne is one of the greatest ballet choreographers and directors alive today. He has adapted many well-known stories, some ballet some not, like The Nutcracker, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Carmen (as The Car Man) and most famously of all Swan Lake to give them a more modern twist and greater relevance to the 21st century.
The Red Shoes is based on an old film from 1948. The film was inspired by a gruesome Hans Christian Andersen story with the same title. The fairy tale is about a bratty girl called Karen (wasn’t he just so forward thinking to know what Karens are like?) who wants to have red shoes and wear them to church but she gets cursed so she can’t stop dancing so she has her feet cut off. Anyone who says fairy tales are soppy seriously needs to read some.
The film is about a dancer who appears in a ballet which is based on The Red Shoes and the ballet has the same story. The main character is a ballerina called Victoria (much better than Karen) and she’s spotted by an impresario called Boris (in the ballet his name is changed to Bernard which is probably a good thing in the circumstances) and he makes her into a star. But then she falls in love with the geeky composer Julian and she has to choose between love and stardom. I know what I’d choose.
It’s a really great romantic story and there are lots of typical Matthew Bourne moments, like little quirks that should look really stupid onstage but actually tells you lots about the personalities of the characters in the opera. He is really good at comedy and romance and he uses both in this miraculous piece of choreography.
One really lovely bit is when Julian is playing the piano and it has obviously been choreographed. He is dancing so it is beautiful to watch but he is also very obviously playing the piano. I like the way Matthew choreographs things like that which are quite simple and everyday tasks but really important to the character so he makes it important to the choreography. I also really liked the beach scene when the men were wearing trunks. They are quite old-fashioned but ballet dancers are very muscular so you can see almost everything. It is so important to support equality by making the men flash the flesh too.
It is lovely to watch choreographically but Matthew is also the director and it lacks the special sparkle that names it a Matthew Bourne ballet. Swan Lake, Nutcracker! Cinderella and The Car Man are complete reimaginings of the original, Matthew has something new to say about all of them. (Maybe not so much Sleeping Beauty but the choreography is just too cute.) The Red Shoes doesn’t have that specialness in the same way, he has nothing new to say about the film or the fairy tale, it’s just a good ballet without being a great one.
Ross MacGibbon has done a good job of directing it for the screen. He mostly keeps the camera in a wide shot so you can see the choreography properly but he is good at picking out moments where a close up really adds to the plot like the look on Bernard’s face when he sees Victoria and Julian together. Lez Brotherton has done some beautiful sets as usual, a lot of the ballet is set in a theatre and the designs are very elegant but everything he does looks good and he brings a bit of artistic originality to it all.
Bernard Herrmann’s music is very nice but he’s no Tchaikovsky or even Bizet. He hasn’t really composed any big showstoppers which is quite annoying because the music is kind of like quite important in a ballet. Conductor Brett Morris gets what he can from the New Adventures orchestra but I think the music could have been more exciting.
Ashley Shaw is a beautiful Victoria, she is a nice person but she is not boring. Ashley gives her lots of personality as well as performing the romantic choreography perfectly. Dominic North’s geeky Julian is actually quite sweet and it is very clever the way he performs the choreography in a way that gives the impression that he is the typical uncoordinated sort of geek but actually he is a very very good dancer and we do know that really. Adam Cooper the original Swan plays sneery Bernard to perfection. He’s getting on a bit now so it’s nice there are still roles he can play.
The Red Shoes is a really enjoyable ballet and
even if you don’t usually like ballet it’s worth watching it for the beach
scene.
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