Turandot 

Directed by Andrei Serban
Design by Sally Jacobs
Choreography by Kate Flatt


This production of Puccini's Turandot returned once again to the Royal Opera House and played until January 23rd 2009. The whole production was then recreated in Washington at the Kennedy Center with Washington National Opera. The last performance there on June 4th was conducted by Placido Domingo, who was Calaf in this production in 1984. 

It was a wonderful experience to work with the singers, American dancers and supers and to reconnect with director Andrei Serban. My assistant was Tatiana Novaes Coelho and Assistant Director was Crystal Manich. We had a five star stage management team making the whole production a joy to recreate.

The production was originally created and directed in a groundbreaking, integrated style when first shown in 1984. It opened the Royal Opera's season at the Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles to rave reviews and has had a total of twenty one revivals worldwide. Apart from the many London revivals, and an expansion for Wembley Arena, the production has been seen in Los Angeles, Seoul, Tokyo, Parma, Cagliari, Lisbon, Madrid and Washington DC in May 2009.

The choreography for the ten masked dancers draws on the T'ai chi Chuan, other martial arts and Western contemporary dance. The singing roles of Ping, Pang and Pong are enhanced by their action and gesture in the style of Commedia del Arte.There is also a group of masked actors who are integral to the staging with the singers and dancers

The working process of making the choreography for the original production was unusual. I worked with the dancers for ten days before Serban arrived, devising dance material and sequences which were then used in the staging of the work. It is hard to draw the line between his work and mine and the seamless nature of the production is very special. There is also about an hour of choreography and movement in the whole. Act I is particularly strong in the way the staging dovetails together the actors, dancers and principals to tell the story.

In 1984 choreologist Ann Whitley assisted me and she wrote the Benesh notation score which has been used in all subsequent revivals. Tatiana Novaes Coelho used this Benesh score for the Washington revival.

 

 Reviews

Serban's point is that the Forbidden City is very much in love with death; it celebrates death. And so revival director Jeremy Sutcliffe rolls out the ceremonial, exotic masked dancers caught in the sensual slow motion of Kate Flatt's choreography, gliding like spectres across the arena of death while the populace roar their approval from the terraces of Sally Jacobs's still striking set.       
Edward Seckerson     The Independent 24.12.2008

      

An extremely successful feature of the production was the dancing, choreographed by Kate Flatt. The director has hereby solved a problem with opera in general and Puccini in particular, which is that there are long musical intervals in which a large discretion is left to the director to decide what is to happen on stage while they unfold. In this production dance provides the solution, and it works wonderfully well. It is an idea worth exporting generally. It interprets the music and advances matters both atmospherically and narratively, at the same time maintaining or heightening tension as needed, and holding the audience

AC Grayling   Times Literary Supplement     June 2006



 
Les Miserables

By Alain Boublil and Claude Michel-Schoenberg

Directed by John Caird and Trevor Nunn

 

A very short history on its 'invisible' choreography.

This work is now so famous and historic it is hard to realise that it had beginnings and a struggle to find its form as the groundbreaking musical it became.

 

I was part of the original team which created Les Miserables at the RSC in 1985. Although my billing was musical staging, this title covered a multitude of activities across the two months of its making. The working process was fascinating. Rather than choreograph numbers, I created improvisations which became part of the language and movement material of the staging. I worked on body language for whores, convicts, the angry unemployed and malnourished beggars. I taught the cast to waltz and created the dance of death which snakes across the stage as Thenardier beguiles the bourgeoisie at Marius and Cosette's wedding. I made soggy-bottomed peasant dances - subtle interventions for the Prologue and the Thenardier Inn - dances which looked improvised and spontaneous but not choreographed. I invented a way to march which gives the illusion of the group advancing without going anywhere ,so that the group led by Enjolras remains centre stage.
 

I discovered a lot as the work unfolded  - particularly about musicals - but also about working with not just one but two brilliant directors - each of whom offered challenges on a daily if not hourly basis. They shared a passion for staging the seemingly unstageable. Their working  process had been well tried however on the fabulous Nicholas Nickelby and Peter Pan at the RSC and they brought their storytelling skills and deeply creative approach to the unfolding phenomenon of Les Mis. I also discovered the extraordinary musical and acting talents of the cast who worked creatively and arduously on the never ending revisions and re-shaping of the work. The technical rehearsals seemed to last forever and many rehearsal room ideas were scrapped in order to integrate the action with the remarkable set. Costume changes, I recall were a particular challenge.

 
The production went through further modifications and developments not only in London but small additions came from contributions of performers around the globe. With each new cast the work is re- created with the performers learning -not set moves- but to play the story of Les Mis within the framework of the production. so the work evolves and stays alive.

For domestic reasons I did not go to New York with the production in 1986 but did finally visit briefly in 1998 to re-stage the Wedding as it is now in the London production with the added Quadrilles. I returned to work though all the original movement material once again with the 2006 New York production. I was part of the two British No. 1 tour productions - one starting at the Palace in Manchester and another from Plymouth. I also have a relationship with two Tokyo productions and particularly enjoyed these times and working with the double cast ensembles. I also worked on the productions in Duisberg (where?) Amsterdam and Paris which was like bringing it home. I also visit to work with each new cast change and work with the current Associate and Resident directors at the Queens Theatre.