Corybantic Games

Royal Ballet, 2018

Credits | Reviews  ⇓

Projects

Music by Leonard Bernstein, 1954

Choreography by Christopher Wheeldon

Stage Design by Jean-Marc Puissant

Costumes by Erdem Moralıoğlu

Lighting by Peter Mumford

 

 

 

Production Manager: Colin Maxwell

Images © I. Kerslake and courtesy of Royal Opera House

Kudos to Jean-Marc Puissant for his soaring architectural set.

The Times

Choreographed to Bernstein’s Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium), Christopher Wheeldon asked the team to create an abstract work inspired by Ancient Greece, bringing together its cult of beauty, sport and art with a notion of God and the divine.

 

The scenography is composed of large architectural shapes, assembling and disassembling into formations, alluding to temples and civic architecture.

 

The 4th movement takes its inspiration from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The set is seen though a diffuser; two-dimensional shapes become shadows and silhouettes, creating a new sense of depth and volumes, shifting throughout a dreamy, floating sequence. This slow motion, kinetic transformation continuously transforms the way that we, the audience, perceive the relationship between the dancers’ bodies and their environment.

 

The edges of the set, etched with LED strips drawing the architecture of the set further, ties the space in with Erdem Moralioğlu’s white costumes etched with black, and Peter Mumford’s bold chromatic signature lighting.

 

 

The Times by Debra Craine

Kudos to Jean-Marc Puissant for his soaring architectural set.

 

The Spectator by Rupert Christiansen

Elegantly integrated designs by Jean-Marc Puissant (sets), Peter Mumford (lighting), and Erdem Moralioglu (costumes) help to evoke the palestra of ancient Greek games.

 

Culture Whisper by Teresa Guerriero

Jean-Marc Pouissant’s immensely intelligent sets carry the mere suggestion of classical colonnades, shifting shape subtly to frame the piece’s five sections under Peter Mumford’s transforming lighting.

 

The Guardian by Judith Mackrell

Framed by the abstract temple architecture of Jean-Marc Puissant’s set.

 

Bachtrack by Graham Watts

Jean-Marc Puissant has designed a versatile set that creates a subtly different ambience for each movement.