10 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES Tuesday28 January 2020

ARTS

Barrie Kosky’s

production of

‘Frühlings-

stürme’

Iko Freese

Shirley Apthorp

The last operetta of the Weimar Repub-

lic opened in January 1933 at Berlin’s

Admiralspalast, just 10 days before Hit-

ler came to power. It was closed by the

Nazis after star tenor Richard Tauber

was eaten up by brownshirts, and itb

was never staged again. Until now. In the

turbulent years that followed, the full

orchestral score of Jaromír Weinberger’s

Frühlingsstürme(“Spring Storms”) asw

lost; now Norbert Biermann has pains-

takingly reconstructed it for the

Komische Oper’s new production.

Was it worth the effort? For all the

shadows that lie over the work — Wein-

berger, who was Jewish, fled to the US

and eventually took his own life — Bar-

rie Kosky has turned the lengthy, opu-

lent work into an evening of confetti,

ostrich feathers and hysterical slap-

stick, after the formula he has applied to

transform the Komische Oper into a

funhouse of the formerly dying genre.

Gustav Beer’s libretto is an orgy of

absurdity, with the beautiful young

widow Lydia Pawlowska throwing a ball

at the Russian headquarters in northern

Manchuriaduring the Sino-Sovietcon-

flict. Heradmirer, the Japanese general

Ito, disguised as a Chinese servant (of

course), is also there. He is a spy, as is

German war correspondent Roderich,

who disguises himself first as a cook,

then as a Chinese magician, along the

way falling in love with Tatjana, the

daughter of General Katschalow, who is

also in love with Lydia (of course).

Weinberger’s score makes liberal use of

national lichés, with pentatonic scalesc

and soupy waltzes bringing cheesy ori-

entalism and Russian romanticism.

Was this a piece of escapism at an

unbearable time?Or are there dark

shadows that Kosky and his team have

missed orignored? Three hours is a long

time to shriek and tap-dance your way

through a series of gags, and the opening-

night audience thinnedafter interval.

That is not the fault of the musical

team. Jordan de Souza conducts with

swing and polish, and the Komische

Oper orchestra plays well for him. Vera-

Lotte Boecker sings with voluptuous

sheen as the seductive widow; Tansel

Akzeybek’s yearning tenor is the perfect

lover-who-gets-away as Ito. Stefan Kurt,

as thesuccessful suitor Katschalow, has

a purely speaking role, which is one of

the work’s problems — so much dia-

logue is hard to pull off on any opera

stage, though he is marvellous.

Frühlingsstürmeseemsa historically

worthy undertaking, but it is hard to

escape the suspicion that itneeds less

forced jollity and more directional depth.

To June 30,komische-oper-berlin.de

Dark clouds and fluffy feathers

O P E R A

Frühlingsstürme

Komische Oper Berlin

aaaee

Louise Levene

“I didn’t really know anything about

contemporary dance [and] I hadn’t cre-

ated a performance before,”says Kibwe

Tavares. A fresh eye is one thing, but

picking an experimental short film-

maker to create a major hour-long work

for the 94-year-old Rambert dance

company seemsperverse.

The result,Aisha and Abhaya, made in

collaboration with the Royal Ballet and

BBC Films, began its three-week run at

the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Thea-

tre lastweek. The visuals are often

strong — so one would hope, given the

vast number ofcreatives and techni-

ciansinvolved — but the uneasy mix of

film and live action is an incoherent and

expensive mess.

The brief, given by Rambert’s chief

executive Helen Shute, was to make a

version of a fairy tale and Tavares

selected Hans Christian Andersen’sThe

Little Match Girl, which he has reworked

as the story of two sisters caught up in

the 21st-century refugee crisis. The

opening film, in which the two girls are

washed up on an alien shore, involved a

shoot on the coast of Northern Ireland.

Filmed in and out of focus in un-

steadicam, the footage is not an easy

watch and it is a relief — at first — when

the live action begins, with movement

material supplied by Sharon Eyal to

the usual earmelting soundtrack by

Ori Lichtik.

Eyal’s strictly limited choreographic

palette — basically strutting on the spot

on three-quarter pointe — soon palls,

but the tedium is offset by some undeni-

ably mesmerising projections by Gillian

Tan, Paul Nicholls and Tavares’s own

creative agency Factory Fifteen. The

dancers are backed by a curved screen

which immerses them and the viewer in

a series of nightmarish environments:

an endless corridor; a rainy back alley;

a cityscape made from vertiginous

shards of light like a slo-mo fall from

a skyscraper.

These visuals, while atmospheric, add

little to the narrative. Tavares is not a

natural storyteller and he seems at a loss

to marry the real and virtual material.

There is a second chunk of film,Before,

in which the two sisters hide in a cup-

board while masked men beat their

granny to death, but these episodes are

inserted at intervals like a sudden

change of channel whenever the danc-

ers’ tarsals need a break. The final film

shows grandmother and girls morphing

magically into stardust but this nod to

Andersen feels like an afterthought.

The most memorable moments occur

during the last live sequence in which

the seven dancers are encircled by a

seething mass of a thousand pulsating

CGI clones who twitch and twerk amid

the dystopian cityscape.Metropolis?

Maybe.Little Match Girl? I think not.

To February 9, then touring,rambert.org.uk

D A N C E

Aisha and Abhaya

Linbury Theatre, London

aaeee

Clockwise, from main:

Bethany Williams,

photographed for the FT

by Rick Pushinsky;

Williams’s autumn/winter

2019 collection; items

from her spring/summer

2018 collection,

photographed at an Italian

fabric factory— Jason Lloyd Evans

Williams grew up on the Isle of Man

with her mother, a pattern cutter, and

her grandparents. “I was brought up to

be socially and environmentally con-

scious,” she says. “The Isle of Man is a

tiny community, we eat locally from

small farms. It’s way of life that’s always

made sense to me.” At Brighton Univer-

sity she studied fine art as a critical prac-

tice, “which was hard for me as I’m very

dyslexic and I have to read something

two or three times for it to go in,” she

says. “But it introduced me to artists like

the Copenhagen collective Superflex

who intercept company systems and

divert profits for good, to positive effect.

It made me realise I wanted to create

my own system where my passion lies —

in textiles.”

At the London College of Fashion, on

the menswear MA course, she joined its

Making for Change programme, which

trains women in Downview Prison for

jobs in the garment industry. (She has

since hired a sample machinist from

there.) She also researched numbers of

Y

esterdayevening, at Lon-

don’s Institute of Contempo-

rary Arts, Bethany Williams

picked up a £10,000 prize at

the Arts Foundation Futures

Awards. For a 30-year-old, who until 14

months ago was workingfull time in a

pubto enable her projects to happen at

all,the fundsmust bewelcome.

The Arts Foundation honours a

diverse range of artistic practice every

January, this year including comic books

and experimental film-making. Wil-

liams’s award was for “Social Innova-

tion: the material evolution”, a section

focused on artists and designers whose

workprioritises social design and the

responsible development of materials.

It’s not as niche as it sounds. More

than ever, young designers are looking

at ways to combineenvironmental and

social concerns. In Williams’s case,

though, the outcome is more conspicu-

ous than most: her high-end unisex

streetwearhas been shown on the cat-

walk since last January as part of the

British Fashion Council’s official Lon-

don Menswear schedule.

Williams’s sharp and colourful gar-

ments are sold at the chicest of stores,

including Browns in London and Galer-

ies Lafayette in Paris, but theyhave

inspired roots: made from the linings of

bell tents discarded at a glamping site

outside ristol, or remaindered ribbonB

from a Midlands toy factory,sewn by

women at Downview Prison in Brixton

or at a rehab centre near Italy’s Adriatic

coast. She visited the latter not long ago.

“The assistant, who’s been selling my

work since the first collection in 2017,

said that people love it because it’s so

bright,” she says. “Serena Williams had

bought some. And the King of Morocco.

He buys a woven coat every season.”

Perhaps he knows it’s been made from

books abandoned by the publishing

house Hachette, and that 20 per cent of

profits go back to the charity Bethany

Williams has worked with. But for Wil-

liams, there’s nothing wrong with activ-

ism by stealth. “I quite like the idea that

someone is contributing to women’s

rehabilitation without knowing it,” she

says. “But for me fashion has the ability

to amplify ideas, because it has such a

massive reach; everyone wears clothes.

I love making, and I love textiles and

taking something discarded and giving

it time and love and making something

new. But equally I am really invested in

the social side of my work.”

Williams begins each collection by

finding an enterprise which agrees to

work with her. For her autumn/winter

2019 collection, it was Adelaide House, a

shelter in Liverpool for women leaving

prison, where the 20 residents became

part of the production process, and

abstract versions of their faces were

embroidered into reclaimed denim for

the final garments.

The ieces she sent down the runwayp

on January 4 this year, in a packed east

London warehouse, reflect time spent

with the Magpie Trust in Newham,

where women with children under five

are given temporary accommodation.

“They are vulnerable people,” she

says. “It is a way to bring knitting and

sewing skills, and confidence, and I

learn a lot from them too,” she says. She

has cast models from TIH (There is

Hope), an organisation that improves

the prospects of homeless people.

Transforming the

fabric of society

ways to source textiles for recycling.

“I was the only one doing that,” she

laughs. “The others were spending

thousands on fabrics and I was filling up

the studio with loads of old shit.”

She worked out how to embroider

damaged fabrics back to life, to rework

denim, to unravel knits, to create a

weavable product from old corrugated

cardboard. “I phoned a big manufac-

turer for advice,” she says. “And they

told me how to separate the layers by

soaking it.” She went on to do so in a

paddling pool in the back garden.

Instead of looking for introductions to

fashion houses, she worked with Tesco

and the Vauxhall Food Bank on a degree

show that highlighted the breadline

issues of too many UK families. “We’d

managed to keep the top layer of the

cardboard intact,” she says. “You could

see the traces of the words ‘Walkers

crisps’ in some of the garments.”

To meet Williams is not immediately

to see the activist that she so clearly is:

first you notice the chic, quilted, sleeve-

less kimono (old bed sheets and a pad-

ding made from old plastic water bot-

tles) and sheer shimmering trousers

(that’s the bell tent linings).

If she looks tired, it is because bring-

ing together all these strands of practice

is exhausting, and to fulfil fashion

orders when your pieces are being made

between a number of places, including a

prison, is logistically almost impossible.

But she has certainly created the new

system she set out to develop, knitting

together recycling and rehabilitation.

Notice has been taken, with Adidas

sponsoring her enterprise and, now, a

£10,000 prize.

artsfoundation.co.uk

Bethany Williams has won an Arts Foundation Futures Award

with her socially conscious streetwear. She talks toCaroline Roux

‘You could see the

traces of the words

“Walkers crisps” in

some of the garments’

JANUARY 28 2020 Section:Features Time: 1/202027/ - 18:14 User:david.cheal Page Name:ARTS LON, Part,Page,Edition:LON, 10, 1