Photo by Pat Bromilow Downing
For those of you who didn’t stand in the queue that stretched from Computicket to Primi Piatti in Camps Bay to get tickets to Robbie Williams’s upcoming concert, I suggest you go along to Cape Town City Ballet’s new production “Let Me Entertain You”. You will feel much better. Something to do with sitting in an auditorium without the Robbie hype, and watching the music set to dance, makes you realise just how boy band poppy and uncharismatic Robbie’s music actually is. The total opposite of Bovim’s last ballet set to the music of Queen. The lyrics are banal and often plain ugly –
“I hope you choke
on your Bacardi and coke”
- goes one rhymed refrain. You get the picture.
The major fault with the piece – and it’s unfortunately the worst thing you can say about any live performance – is that it is boring. Really boring. Much of the choreography is also unconsciously unattractive – the line often unappealing. I have not seen so much repetitive movement still somehow failing to produce even coherency.
Did Elizabeth Trichaardt in her introduction say that Bovim was dragging Cape Town City Ballet into the 20th or the 21st century with this work?
Bovim’s aim is to tell us about the artist – and to do this he has developed four Robbie personas: Robbie Rebel, Robbie Cool, Robbie Icon and Robbie Camp – or was that one meant to be Robbie Star?
Andre Sauer (as Rebel) has a great masculine energy. Devan Josephs as Robbie Cool – whose opening number is the most “Handsome Man” in the world – certainly fits the bill with his good looks, but he starts to run out of strength. Cape Town City Ballet principal dancers Daniel Rajna and Tracy Li, both superb classical dancers, don’t quite find their chemistry in a rather awkward pas de deux.
Lee Fennell is clearly too tall to play any of the Robbie roles, but he has a great stage presence for this kind of work.
Fortunately Cape Town audiences are fairly easy going, but this was neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring. It was only the old folks, a few dance vets whom I recognised and myself who didn’t give it a standing ovation – though for an openng night in Cape Town the number of people who remianed seated does not augur well.
We care greatly about our ballet company, but they did not pull it off tonight. I hope newly appointed Harold King starts making his presence felt.
While on ballet, please spare a thought for dear old John Simons, veteran character dancer, who passed away three days ago.
