Infra Dance Notes

Infra

Overview

  • Choreographer: Wayne McGregor
  • Company: The Royal Ballet
  • Premiere Date: 13th November 2008
  • Premiere Venue: Royal Opera House, London
  • Dancers: 12 (6 male, 6 female)
  • Duration: 28 minutes
  • Structure: Abstract, featuring solos, duets, and ensemble sections
  • Dance Style: Contemporary Ballet

Choreographer: Wayne McGregor

  • Appointed Resident Choreographer of The Royal Ballet in 2006, the first contemporary choreographer to hold this position.
  • Notable works for The Royal Ballet include Chroma (2006), Limen (2009), Raven Girl (2013), and Woolf Works (2015).
  • Directed and choreographed Dido and Aeneas / Acis and Galatea (2009) for The Royal Ballet and The Royal Opera.
  • Multiple award-winner with work in the repertoire of leading international ballet companies.
  • Founded Wayne McGregor | Random Dance in 1992, now a resident company of Sadler's Wells.
  • Interested in cross-discipline collaboration across dance, film, music, visual art, technology, and science.
  • Directed movement for theatre and film, including Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and music videos, including Lotus Flower for Radiohead.

Company: The Royal Ballet

  • Founded in 1931 by Dame Ninette de Valois.
  • Granted the name The Royal Ballet by Royal Charter in 1956.
  • Under the leadership of Kevin O'Hare, the repertory includes works by Frederick Ashton, Kenneth MacMillan, Wayne McGregor, Christopher Wheeldon, and Liam Scarlett.
  • Based at the Royal Opera House in London's Covent Garden.

Performance Details

  • Premiere: 13 November 2008 at the Royal Opera House, London.
  • Dance Style: Contemporary ballet.
  • McGregor's Style: Distinctive for its speed, energy, dynamic, angular, sinuous, and hyperextended movements that push dancers to physical extremes.

Choreographic Approach

  • Three methods to generate movement vocabulary:
    1. SHOW: Present a phrase to the cast, who then recreate it exactly or create a version.
    2. MAKE: Create a phrase on a target dancer(s), while others watch and copy or develop it.
    3. TASK: Set a choreographic task or problem for dancers to solve, often involving imagery as a stimulus.
  • Movement vocabulary is structured into longer "sentences" and "paragraphs."
  • Works musically with the structure, piecing it together like a jigsaw.

Stimulus and Choreographic Intention

  • The title Infra comes from the Latin word for 'below.'
  • Presents a portrait of life beneath the surface of the city, a meditation on human interactions.
  • Inspired by T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land: "Under the brown fog of a winter dawn./ A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many."
  • About seeing below the surface, particularly Julian Opie's design.
  • Explores pedestrian language to represent recognizable human experiences.
  • Aims to help the audience's eye in watching a complex structure but leaves the visual field open for individual interpretation.

Dancers, Duration, and Structure

  • Dancers: 12 dancers (6 male / 6 female); brief appearance of a crowd.
  • Duration: 28 minutes.
  • Structure: Solos, duets, and ensembles; e.g., 6 couples dance duets in six squares of light, a crowd surges across the stage as a woman grieves.

Aural Setting

  • Music by Max Richter, performed by The Max Richter Quintet with Jonathan Haswell; sound design by Chris Ekers.
  • Mixes melancholy string melodies with electronic and everyday sounds like train whistles.

Costume

  • Costume designs by Moritz Junge.
  • Fitted shorts, vests, t-shirts in flesh, black, white, grey.
  • One female dancer wears a short wrap-around skirt; one male wears long trousers.
  • Females wear pointe shoes; street clothes for the crowd.

Lighting

  • Lighting design by Lucy Carter.
  • Lights the width of the stage, often focusing downstage.
  • Dancers lit by shafts of light; 6 rectangles of light frame 6 duets at one point.
  • Colors highlight different sections.

Performance Environment and Staging

  • Proscenium arch/theatrical setting.
  • Set design by Julian Opie: 18m LED screen high on the black back wall displaying a flow of electronic walking figures.

Stimuli: T.S. Eliot, ‘The Waste Land’

  • "Unreal city, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many."
  • Infra: Latin for 'below,' referring to parts of a text or location.

Choreographic Intention

  • Explores seeing below the surface of London life, where crowds of strangers pass each other daily.
  • Feelings and emotions are often restrained, transformed into socially acceptable actions.
  • McGregor's observations during the London bombings in 2005 influenced the piece.
  • Explores emotional aspects of humanity, revealing hidden aspects of people in raw, vulnerable ways.
  • Uncovers relationships and portraits of society, provoking questions about hidden emotions and internal lives.

Structure Overview

  • 12 dancers (6 female, 6 male), with McGregor not focused on binary gender roles but a snapshot of society.
  • Episodic structure, building in complexity with pace, rhythm, and number of dancers.
  • Movement language and motifs introduced slowly.
  • Full visual field invites individual selection of focus.
  • Contrasts lots of movement with stillness or slow motion.
  • Climax: six male/female duets performed simultaneously in blocks of light.
  • Highlight: crowd of 'normal' people walking like pedestrians contrasted with a solo female dancer moving slowly to the floor in grief.
  • Ends with one duet as the lights and music fade.

Sectional Analysis: Section 2 | ENCOUNTER | 3:41-7:00

  • Description: A male dancer enters from upstage and stands still. A female dancer enters from stage left and walks towards the male dancer. The music changes and the male and female dancers perform a contact duet. The original two male dancers perform different solos before walking off stage right. The duet is left performing complex and gestural partner work.
  • Mood: Intimate, follows the theme of what happens behind closed doors.
  • Movement Vocabulary: Gestures, complex lift work, repetitive rippling of the whole body and body parts.
    • Action: Gesture, elevation, turn, stillness, extend, contract, extreme, rippling, isolations of different body parts.
    • Space: High, low and middle level, big expansive movement, small intricate movement, close proximity, linear horizontal pathway.
    • Dynamics: Sharp, fluid, undulating, sustained, direct and indirect, strong.
    • Relationships: Contact, counterpoint, duet.
  • Lighting: White, showing more of the foreground in a curved shape.
  • Set: Digital characters walk slowly across the screen.
  • Costume: Male dancer wears black trousers and no top, the female dancers wears a black long sleeved top and black briefs.
  • Aural setting: Music changes abruptly when the duet starts. Live string instruments are the foreground playing a repetitive, empty yet intimate melody.

Duet Analysis

  • Variety of actions: swing, lift, hands brushing across shoulders, demi plié, kiss, grande plié, holds, grabs, body ripple, thrusts, spins with foot in passé, back bend, peers at audience, pointe work, retiré, fireman's lift, pelvic contraction, intertwining limbs, needle, straddle lift.
  • Suggests a multi-layered relationship: Romantic (kisses, close proximity, eye contact, lifts). Public Image (peering at the audience).
  • Actions also suggest aggression or manipulation, for example:
    • Contortionist lifts
    • Forcing limbs, unnatural or painful looking movements
    • Grabs neck repeatedly
    • Constant eye contact.

Motif Analysis

Undulations of the spine and pelvis (rippling body)
  • Development:
    Embellishment - Additions movements such as swing/lift
    Repetition
  • Direction:
    Facing - Begins with woman facing audience (back to the man), Evolves to face-to-face.
  • Levels
    • Varies, with females being lower than male.
Male Manipulates Female by Holding Leg
  • Embellishment:
    • Variations by changing the shape of the legs.
      Level
      *Adding a lift
Circling Hands Over and Around Partner's Body
  • Embellishment
    • Adds contact such as holding hands, hug or a choke. She also performs the choke motif on herself.
  • Force/dynamics
    • Sometimes he makes the gesture stronger and faster to appear more aggressive and controlling
  • Tempo
    • Tempo - in picture 3 & 4, he frantically runs his hands around her torso
  • Intention
    • When the female circles her hands, it appears to be determining personal space. When the male does it, it appears possessive and/or protective

Sectional Analysis: Section 3 | RACE | 7:00-9:54

*A different male and female couple walk on from stage right facing each other. They perform a fast contact duet, where the female dancer expresses an agitated quality with fast twitches and undulations of the back with her partner’s support. After performing a short section of movement on the floor, the dancers from the previous duet walk off stage with male exiting stage right and the female walking across the width of the stage and exiting stage left. At the end of the fast contact duet the female dancer is carried and spiralled off stage right.

  • Mood: expresses an angry or agitated mood almost like an argument or disagreement.
  • Movement Vocabulary: contact work, being supported off centre, fast turns and twitches and being entangled.
    • Action: transfer of weight, turn, elevation (flight), extended kick, twist, distorted movements of different body parts, off-centre, unbalanced, twitches, pull, clasp
    • Space: middle and low level, changes of direction, three dimensional, spiral air pathway, linear floor pathway
    • Dynamics: fast, indirect, sudden, strong, abrupt, agitated
    • Relationships: contact, counterpoint, action and reaction, duet
  • Lighting: the upstage area changes to a deep green and the downstage area is dark.
  • Set: digital male and female figures walking in both directions at a slightly faster pace.
  • Costume: male dancer wears a close-fitting grey short sleeve top and black shorts and the female dancer wears a close-fitting long black short sleeve top and black briefs.
  • Aural setting: A fast and complex piano piece is played throughout the section and is in direct relationship with the fast movement vocabulary.

Sectional Analysis: Section 4 | VIDE INFRA | 9:54-13:13

*This section starts with the digital display of people walking across the screen above the stage. A male dancer walks on from stage left and six rectangular blocks of light appear in a line. A female dancer meets the male dancer appearing from upstage. On a clear sudden music change they dance a tight, fast and articulate contact duet in the third block of light. Other couples enter one by one. All duets continue to perform different yet complimentary movement. They sometimes meet in unison with other duets before breaking off into their own movement again. The male dancers then drag the female dancers upstage, except one couple where the female dancer pushes the male dancer backwards. The dancers start to depart using more pedestrian style movements.

  • Mood: argumentative, manipulative, frantic, separate narratives, beneath the surface, behind closed doors
  • Movement Vocabulary: some of the movement vocabulary is classical ballet, particularly fast footwork and jumps (petite allegro), pirouette turns, arabesque and attitude lines. The female dancers dance en pointe. There are large virtuosic lifts and supported balances. The arms are generally more free and contemporary in style and the back is used to distort the more classical lines
    • Action: turn, elevate, transfer of weight, use of different body parts, gesture of hands and arms, pull, push, kick, stab, twist, ballet movement vocabulary
    • Space: facing different directions (out and in), static, locked in, vertical, contained, mostly use of high level, combination of big and small (fat and thin)
    • Dynamics: sudden, fast, tense, violent, rhythmical, direct, precise
    • Relationships: counterpoint, complement and contrast, contact, action and reaction
  • Lighting: The green light from the previous duet disappears and six evenly spaced rectangular blocks of white light appear in a horizontal line across the downstage area. The area around each block is black.
  • Set: There is a steady flow of two or three digital characters walking across the screen at different speeds and in both directions.
  • Costume: A combination of black, white and grey tops, trousers, skirts and shorts/briefs.
  • Aural setting: The sound starts with the found sounds of shortwave radio, beeps and on the cue of a loud distorted vocal announcement the live string instruments begin to play.

Sectional Analysis: Section 7b | LOSS | 23:13-25:00

*The female dancer performs a short slow, spiralling and turning solo centre stage before pausing and silently crying. A flowing crowd of people, including the cast and lots of extra dancers, walk from stage right to stage left. They are oblivious to the solo dancer. The solo dancer’s movement of despair increases in scale as she lowers to the floor in a foetal position. One female dancer stops behind the solo dancer, facing stage left. She then turns to face the solo dancer who is in despair but does not react. A male dancer then stands next to her. The solo female dancer stands and exits stage left.

  • Mood: showing despair
  • Movement Vocabulary: pedestrian walking
    • Action: turn, stillness, contract, pedestrian walking
    • Space: small, high to low, waves of people moving in a linear horizontal pathway
    • Dynamic: slow, showing despair, continuous
    • Relationships: complement and contrast
  • Lighting: The deep blue lighting gradually fades away and the lighting state changes to a soft white light focussing on the solo female dancer.
  • Set: The digital flow of people increases in number and follows the same direction as the live flow of people on stage.
  • Costume: A combination of black, white and grey tops, trousers, skirts, shorts/briefs and pedestrian style clothing.
  • Aural setting: The section starts with a repetitive electronic sound similar to the sounds in Section 2. The string instruments are gradually introduced.

Motif Description

  • Describe a motif using action, space and dynamics. 3marks
  • Explain the significance of this motif. 3 marks
  • Identify two ways this motif is developed. 2 marks

Aural Setting

Composer:
  • Max Richter & Chris Ekers.
Aural Setting:
  • Mix of melancholy string melodies with electronic sounds and everyday sounds such as train-whistles.

Costume

Designer:
  • Moritz Junge
Costume:
  • Fitted shorts, vests, t-shirts in flesh, black, white, grey colours. One female wears a short wrap-around skirt. One male wears long trousers. The females wear pointe shoes, Street clothes are worn for the brief appearance of the crowd.

Lighting

Designer:
  • Lucy Carter
Lighting:
  • Works with structure. Lights the width of the stage and often focuses downstage. Occasionally dancers are lit by shafts of light and at one point 6 rectangles of light frame 6 duets. Colours are used to highlight different sections.
  • Describe and evaluate each example.

Set, Staging, Environment

Performance Environment:
  • Proscenium Arch
Set Designer:
  • Julian Opie
Staging / Set:
  • 18m LED screen is placed high on the black back wall. It runs the width of the stage, along which there is a flow of electronic walking figures