Living culture

Dance-Drama
Barbarossa
Argotti Gardens

As seeds for an increase in cultural activity and awareness are being planted in Malta in preparation for Valletta’s candidature as European Capital of Culture in 2018, the Malta Arts Festival showed evidence of the outward-looking approaches being initiated in preparation for our candidature. Thus, the performance of Barbarossa at Argotti Gardens last week had a double layer of contextual references to Malta.

Firstly, through its being a product of Istanbul 2010, a modern dance-drama commissioned by the 2010 European Culture Capital Agency and the Genera Directorate of the State Opera and Ballet of Turkey. Secondly, through its thematic focus; this offered a contemporary revisit to the life of the legendary 16th century Ottoman Admiral Barbarossa Hayreddeen Pasha and his corsairs, and their Turkish incursions on the Mediterranean. Explicit reference to the historical ties that linked the Maltese context to this narrative were made during the curtain call where dancers brought out the Maltese and Turkish flags to stand alongside each other.

The performance itself promised to eclectically draw on various techniques, styles and forms from various contemporary approaches to performance. Its primary focus remained the narrative, hence the claim to being a dance-drama. Thus the dance revolved around the struggles and triumphs of the Barbarossa brothers as they venture out into life at sea, making war and making love, developing fraternity and power. In scenes where the corsairs faced the crusaders, specified in the programme to be the Knights of St John, the heroes of Malta’s history were depicted as the anti-heroes of Turkish history offering a moment of awareness on the subjectivity of histories’ perspectives for the audience.

Nevertheless, the extent to which the performance kept in focus the details of the narrative, detracted from the potential emotional intensity of dance. With the narrative in focus, the performance deployed representational techniques to show the story more than emotional reliving of it.

This also translated to excessively frequent scene changes which lacked somewhat in smooth flowing interchanges. Perhaps, the fact that the outdoor setting did not fully meet the troupe’s technical requirements and for which they needed to make some adaptations as announced at the beginning of the performance, was the contributing factor to the evidence of the scene seams.

The physical presence of the dancers was the strength and unique factor of the performance. With a troupe of 25 male dancers and 12 female dancers playing out mostly chorus work, the sheer number of dancers present at any one time on stage was almost trance-inducing.

Few scenes played out moments between small numbers of dancers, and although the narrative depended on having clear characterisations, the troupe was almost equally present and visible to the audience, making all roles essentially present and significant to the performance. The performance oozed sexual dynamics. This was a dance which offered a rare moment of an overwhelming presence of male ballerinas using dance to assert unequivocal masculine dynamics. The female dancers, representing more fantastical elements in the story such as anthropomorphic dolphins, mermaids and stars, embodied roles that were sublimely feminine in their ethereality.

As the backdrop, the performance engaged with a contemporary framing to the narrative as screenings of film shots were shown from Besiktas, “one of the most crowded and popular city centres of Istanbul, where Barbarossa Hayreddeen is buried,” to quote the programme notes. More than highlighting the “relationship of contemporary man to the sea”, I feel this served as a reminder of the romanticisation of history and identity as the reality of the contemporary walk through the city juxtaposed the historical narrative that was given form through the extra daily physicality of dance, interlaced with the fantastical elements embodied in the dance narrative through notably through the female forms.

Through the opportunity of watching Barbarossa at the Malta Arts Festival, a notably large-scale production, we may look to critically asking ourselves what approaches we may wish to invest in for Valletta 2018. It served as a reminder that investment in contextual revisiting within contemporary settings is stimulating and entertaining, however looking at innovative ways of approaching artistic techniques, even if at the cost of technical excellence, is what can give testimony to a life-breeding culture.