Annette Embrechts:
ISH Dance Collective and the Junior Company of the Dutch National Ballet show what can be the problematic consequences of an unrealistic ideal of beauty.
There is no filler or mobile phone involved. And yet Dorian (14+), the third collaboration between ISH Dance Collective and the Junior Company of the Dutch National Ballet, is a grand commentary on the problematic development that more and more young people are pursuing an unrealistic ideal of beauty and are not afraid of drastic plastic surgery. Dorian shows what the problematic consequences of this can be in an overwhelming fusion of dance, music, video art and scenography. In this multicoloured adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novel, choreographers Marco Gerris (ISH) and Ernst Meisner (Junior Company) prove that diametrically different dance styles such as hip-hop and ballet can read and write just as well with each other, provided you hang out together long enough.
In The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), the gorgeous Dorian loses himself boundlessly in the fear of losing his beauty. Due to a devil’s pact with Lord Henry, it is not he who ages, but the perfect-looking portrait painted by good friend Basil. All the while, Dorian sees himself mirrored only in others’ adoration of his appearance, and only the painting accounts for his immoral behaviour. After a rampant life of hedonistic excesses, Dorian only faces the evil consequences when he discovers his horribly altered portrait. And then it is too late.
Artist Luca Andrea Stappers depicts the painting’s toxic transformation with a continuous live creation of the stage-wide video artwork. That’s where the only syringe of the evening pops up: Stappers uses liquid injections, among other things. He writes famous quotes from the book (‘Most people are other people’ and ‘I can resist everything except temptation’) over the stark facial contours of Dorian’s penetrating portrait. That he feels untouchable is impressively rendered by the charismatic dance persona of second soloist Giorgi Potskhishvili.
Other roles are equally excitingly cast, whether they come from ISH’s creative hip-hop underground or are solidly classically trained as the Junior Company dancers. Take the quick-witted Oscar Starink as the promising Basil, the crafty Liam McCall as the devilish Henry and the musical ballerina Anna Tsygankova as Sybil, Dorian’s innocent first love. Each dancer seems to push a personal boundary through this collaboration, propelled in the process by the drive of the collective. Subtle detail: Tsygankova seems eternally young, but is of an older generation. And the movable mirrors look like phone screens.
The ensemble’s dance styles transform along with one temptation after another that Dorian succumbs to. The costumes in the nightclub scenes exude the hip fashion style of designer Thierry Mugler. And then you could fill another page with lyrical descriptions of the labyrinthine nature of Joey Roukens’s specially composed and briskly performed composition by The Ballet Orchestra. Dorian turns out to be a work of art with legions of exciting vistas, especially for those familiar with the book. And why deny yourself this story?
You can use filters to try to look perfect online. You can cut and spray your body to chase eternal youth. You can also treat yourself to this performance to discover how unrealistic this desire is and that a world focused on outer beauty is a glossy-wrapped nightmare.
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