\n
\u201cThe Fairy Queen,\u201d tangentially related to Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cA Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream\u201d and sometimes performed in combination with the play, is a series of court masques. Its songs and arias are sung by allegorical figures like Night, Sleep and the four seasons. Christie can list productions of it that he\u2019s been involved with going back more than half a century, but this one, he said, is \u201cunique.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the opera world, the chorus generally has their feet nailed to the floor,\u201d Christie said. \u201cBut Mourad has been able, in an extraordinarily efficient way, to turn dancers into singers and singers into dancers. I\u2019ve never seen it happen anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a will from the start that it would not be singing or dancing, but one show all together,\u201d Merzouki said in French, speaking through an interpreter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
In Merzouki\u2019s staging, the singers don\u2019t do head spins, but they do continually move together with a group of dancers who are dressed indistinguishably from them. The full ensemble of singers and dancers acts out much of the text: playing blindman\u2019s buff, tossing and turning in slumber, swirling like a leaf storm.<\/p>\n
Here and there, the dancers \u2014 who also include a Juilliard student and a recent graduate \u2014 expand into more elaborate and technically demanding choreography, applying Compagnie K\u00e4fig\u2019s bouncy footwork, articulated isolations and supple hip-hop acrobatics to Baroque rhythms.<\/p>\n
\u201cPurcell proved to have many points in common with street dance,\u201d Merzouki said.<\/p>\n
This production isn\u2019t an update, the collaborators stressed. \u201cWe\u2019re not saying let\u2019s make Purcell sound like hip-hop,\u201d Agnew said. \u201cWe want the singers to sing with the right ornaments and phrasing, exactly as Purcell might have heard it. But everything that Purcell produced lends itself absolutely to the same rhythmic energy and excitement that Mourad produces in dance.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
Another commonality: Both singers and dancers, though drawing from different traditions, have the freedom to find new surprises. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of improvisation in Baroque music,\u201d Christie said. \u201cEvery night something different is happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s never the same show,\u201d Agnew said. \u201cTrying to do it the same as yesterday is the biggest mistake you can make.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n