Wadham college breeds good things: radicalism, queer festivals, and lately, the show Tamlane. Unlike some incarnations of the former two, however, every aspect of this stunningly high-quality full-length fairytale choreography is charmingly unpretentious (like the personality of its creator, Hannah Moore). Not for her - or her thirty-odd cast and crew - the postmodern or avantgardist pretensions of some fashionable student thesps around Oxford! Tamlane is an old English tale (one rendering is available on sacred-texts.com: "the Queen of Elf-land has made me her knight!") and the ballet serves it straight up. For this is essentially a ballet - with modern elements like flamenco and salsa incorporated (much as in popular contemporary choreographer Matthew Bourne's productions).
It's awe-inspiring to see this calibre of original dance put on by students - to original music. The entire enterprise is slickly professional, from the precision of the dancers' mutual synchronicity, to the marketing via YouTube videos, to the front of house on the night. The battle between the dark faery and bright mortal worlds, is mesmerising.
A few notes of caution, and reflection upon the genre Hannah Moore & Co are working within. Fairytales are largely, by nature, misogynistic. Re-interpretations of them (for instance, via Angela Carter adaptations) may show how a certain queerness and carnival inheres in their very structure, but their surface mission is to reassert heteronormative, patriarchal claims on men and women's bodies and reintegrate them in the home after a brief adventure on 'the other side'. It is hard not to react to the rejection of the sublime wicked Queen (Anja Meinhardt) by the mortal and soon to be accursed Tamlane (Rob Wallport) with impatience, especially when her forceful expression of female desire seems to be the subject of narrative redress - when the proper heterosexual order of courting/wooing is asserted by Tamlane seizing upon Margaret (Sarah Thorp). I overheard quite a handful of people in the hubbub after the show reacting as I did: 'why can't the interesting, powerful woman win, in love?' So there is an ideological restriction in the form.
Moore's rendering of it is the height of taste. Moreover, all lead roles were played impeccably – how many hundreds of hours can have been poured into this by every dancer involved? The two passionate love scenes between Wallport and Thorp - particularly the second, involving the woman's obstinate refusal to let go of her lover in the face of the fairies' attempts to win by transforming him into various beasts (excellent roles for the cast) - are very moving. The low-point of the evening consisted of the sections dedicated to twee 'mortal life' vignettes, in which villagers have a jolly time, a convention from classical ballet, which seemed to be delivered with no further interest or ironisation at all in slightly cringe-making bustiers and twirling skirts. But with these same twee villagers soon becoming (in Act 2) poignant advocates of abortion to Margaret, with a fairy ensemble so tricksterish and fascinating to watch as it ensnares the mortal man, and with a Fairy Queen who chose him as her sacrifice, so powerful and exquisite, Tamlane is a thoughtful, thought-provoking must-see.
It's awe-inspiring to see this calibre of original dance put on by students - to original music. The entire enterprise is slickly professional, from the precision of the dancers' mutual synchronicity, to the marketing via YouTube videos, to the front of house on the night. The battle between the dark faery and bright mortal worlds, is mesmerising.
A few notes of caution, and reflection upon the genre Hannah Moore & Co are working within. Fairytales are largely, by nature, misogynistic. Re-interpretations of them (for instance, via Angela Carter adaptations) may show how a certain queerness and carnival inheres in their very structure, but their surface mission is to reassert heteronormative, patriarchal claims on men and women's bodies and reintegrate them in the home after a brief adventure on 'the other side'. It is hard not to react to the rejection of the sublime wicked Queen (Anja Meinhardt) by the mortal and soon to be accursed Tamlane (Rob Wallport) with impatience, especially when her forceful expression of female desire seems to be the subject of narrative redress - when the proper heterosexual order of courting/wooing is asserted by Tamlane seizing upon Margaret (Sarah Thorp). I overheard quite a handful of people in the hubbub after the show reacting as I did: 'why can't the interesting, powerful woman win, in love?' So there is an ideological restriction in the form.
Moore's rendering of it is the height of taste. Moreover, all lead roles were played impeccably – how many hundreds of hours can have been poured into this by every dancer involved? The two passionate love scenes between Wallport and Thorp - particularly the second, involving the woman's obstinate refusal to let go of her lover in the face of the fairies' attempts to win by transforming him into various beasts (excellent roles for the cast) - are very moving. The low-point of the evening consisted of the sections dedicated to twee 'mortal life' vignettes, in which villagers have a jolly time, a convention from classical ballet, which seemed to be delivered with no further interest or ironisation at all in slightly cringe-making bustiers and twirling skirts. But with these same twee villagers soon becoming (in Act 2) poignant advocates of abortion to Margaret, with a fairy ensemble so tricksterish and fascinating to watch as it ensnares the mortal man, and with a Fairy Queen who chose him as her sacrifice, so powerful and exquisite, Tamlane is a thoughtful, thought-provoking must-see.