Kim Brandstrup, Echo and Narcissus Review ★★★★★
Award-winning choreographer Kim Brandstrup completed his mesmerising mythological trilogy with Echo & Narcissus, a study of image, desire and dysfunction
Echo & Narcissus - Laurel Dalley Smith and Seirian Griffiths. Photo: Foteini Christofilopoulou
On a dark monochrome stage flanked by mirrored pillars with a shallow trough of water running the width of its edge, Narcissus pursues his image while evading his own pursuer in the third and final piece of Kim Brandstrup's trilogy inspired by Greek mythology.
Echo & Narcissus - Seirian Griifiths. Photo: Foteini Christofilopoulou
Like the previous two pieces, Minotaur and Cupid and Psyche, Echo and Narcissus, too, was created for the extraordinarily vital Ustinov Studio, part of the Theatre Royal Bath, under the direction of Deborah Warner, and in this small, intimate space, it gains particular potency.
If you didn’t know in advance that the first love of the UK-based Danish choreographer Kim Brandstrup was film, you would immediately guess it when faced with the visual composition of his stage. As he told this reporter elsewhere, ‘my way of seeing is through a camera.’
Brandstrup resumes his collaboration with lightning designer Chris Wilkinson, set designer Justin Nardella and sound designer Eilon Morris, all of whom worked on Metamorphoses, to create an out-of-time setting, entirely leached of colour, for his reading of the myth of Echo and Narcissus, he the beautiful youth who falls in love with his own image, she the nymph to tries and fails to make him love her.
The piece starts with a prologue where the blind seer Tiresias, danced with daunting gravitas by Jonathan Goddard, prophesies that Narcissus, in a powerful performance by Seirian Griffiths, will live a long life, but only if he does not know himself, something symbolised here by a repeated gesture where Tiresias covers Narcissus’s eyes.
Echo, danced by the exacting Laurell Dalley Smith, currently a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company, tries to engage his attention and they dance a very physical duet, Branstrup’s choreography relishing all the possibilities of contemporary dance language.
Narcissus, though, catches sight of this own image and his obsession with it is embodied by Archie White. In a mesmerising, at times frenzied central section, the two men mirror each other’s actions without touching, though an electrical forcefield runs between them.
Throughout Tiresias haunts the margins of the stage as his prophecy takes shape. The final section, where Echo returns, is entitled ‘Defeat’ but its ending is ambiguous.
In this fascination with image and the pursuit of perceived perfection, Brandstrup sees a parallel with the life of dancers, determined by the image they see in the studio mirrors; a point that is hinted at in Echo & Narcissus, but not overelaborated.
The performance of Echo & Narcissus was preceded by a screening of Brandstrup’s 2014 short film Leda and the Swan, and a performance by oboist Judy Proctor of Benjamin Britten’s Metamorphoses, whose moods, going from the eerie pastoral of 'Pan' to the agitato of 'Bacchus' and his feasts and the mournful notes of 'Niobe' lamenting the death of her fourteen children helped create just the right atmosphere.
Echo & Narcissus - Seirian Griifiths. Photo: Foteini Christofilopoulou
Like the previous two pieces, Minotaur and Cupid and Psyche, Echo and Narcissus, too, was created for the extraordinarily vital Ustinov Studio, part of the Theatre Royal Bath, under the direction of Deborah Warner, and in this small, intimate space, it gains particular potency.
If you didn’t know in advance that the first love of the UK-based Danish choreographer Kim Brandstrup was film, you would immediately guess it when faced with the visual composition of his stage. As he told this reporter elsewhere, ‘my way of seeing is through a camera.’
Brandstrup resumes his collaboration with lightning designer Chris Wilkinson, set designer Justin Nardella and sound designer Eilon Morris, all of whom worked on Metamorphoses, to create an out-of-time setting, entirely leached of colour, for his reading of the myth of Echo and Narcissus, he the beautiful youth who falls in love with his own image, she the nymph to tries and fails to make him love her.
The piece starts with a prologue where the blind seer Tiresias, danced with daunting gravitas by Jonathan Goddard, prophesies that Narcissus, in a powerful performance by Seirian Griffiths, will live a long life, but only if he does not know himself, something symbolised here by a repeated gesture where Tiresias covers Narcissus’s eyes.
Echo, danced by the exacting Laurell Dalley Smith, currently a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company, tries to engage his attention and they dance a very physical duet, Branstrup’s choreography relishing all the possibilities of contemporary dance language.
Narcissus, though, catches sight of this own image and his obsession with it is embodied by Archie White. In a mesmerising, at times frenzied central section, the two men mirror each other’s actions without touching, though an electrical forcefield runs between them.
Throughout Tiresias haunts the margins of the stage as his prophecy takes shape. The final section, where Echo returns, is entitled ‘Defeat’ but its ending is ambiguous.
In this fascination with image and the pursuit of perceived perfection, Brandstrup sees a parallel with the life of dancers, determined by the image they see in the studio mirrors; a point that is hinted at in Echo & Narcissus, but not overelaborated.
The performance of Echo & Narcissus was preceded by a screening of Brandstrup’s 2014 short film Leda and the Swan, and a performance by oboist Judy Proctor of Benjamin Britten’s Metamorphoses, whose moods, going from the eerie pastoral of 'Pan' to the agitato of 'Bacchus' and his feasts and the mournful notes of 'Niobe' lamenting the death of her fourteen children helped create just the right atmosphere.
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| What | Kim Brandstrup, Echo and Narcissus Review |
| Where | Theatre Royal, Bath, Saw Ci, Bath, BA1 1ET | MAP |
| When |
19 Jun 24 – 06 Jul 24, 19:30 Thu & Sat mats at 14:30 Dur.: 1 hour 5 mins no interval |
| Price | £38.50 (discounts £28.50) |
| Website | Click here to book |