Last night, the Southbank Centre launched its new classical music festival: Multitudes, a space designed to bring different artforms closer together. Over the next few weeks, new video works by William Kentridge and Kirill Sebrennikov accompany Shostakovich symphonies, Igor Levit and Marina Abramović perform Satie’s “Vexations,” and Tom Morris directs a semi-staged performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony.
The festival began last night, with two performances of works by Ravel: a complete version of his symphonie choréographique “Daphnis and Chloe,” followed by “La Valse.” Edward Gardner conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra, with the BBC Singers performing the wordless choir parts from a lofty platform stage right. But the main focus was Circa, the Australian circus company, whose performers drifted through a loosely connected succession of scenes, far away from the traditional storytelling of the text.
The performances were, by default, thrilling. Shorn of the gaudy excess of historic circus, the essence of circus is still based on the allure of danger: the possibility that a ten-foot death drop or a three-person human tower might go horribly wrong. Failure in the circus is something you’re powerless to stop and quietly encouraging to happen.
For the latest edition of BárTalk, I attended the second of the performances with Ed Henderson, a composer and performer based in London, and a regular at dance shows across the city. Over a beer in the Southbank lobby, we spoke about the limits of these kinds of collaborations.
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