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Weekend review: Joni Mitchell’s “The Fiddle and the Drum”

By Alex Goodman

Feb. 28, 2010 10:07 p.m.

Remove from James Cameron’s epic “Avatar” all the explosions, cornball dialogue and the massive-scale technology, leaving only the central premise that humankind is destroying nature through war and environmental neglect. Now reconstruct a show around that premise, only this time with ballerinas, minimalist costuming and the music of Joni Mitchell. Such is Joni Mitchell’s “The Fiddle and the Drum,” performed by the Alberta Ballet at Royce Hall Saturday night, and it is entirely another kind of spectacular.

For roughly an hour and a half, the Alberta Ballet danced the steps of Jean Grand-Maître, maybe the most relevant choreographer in the world at the moment for designing the performances at the opening and closing ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympic Games. The music was all Mitchell’s, 14 songs taken mostly from her later albums. Those were among her least popular records, but they’re more rhythmic than the folk rock of her early years and thus offer much livelier source material for the dancers.

During the first half of the show, a large circular screen hung above the stage that projected a series of Mitchell’s paintings, done primarily in shades of green and meant to support the dancing and music. Her skills as a painter are praiseworthy, but there was enough to occupy the senses already, and when the second half proceeded without the screen, presumably because of technical difficulties, the performance was the more focused for it.

Especially then, with the cast on stage before nothing but a black curtain, “The Fiddle and the Drum” made a case for the beauty of the human form, and for naturalness in general, as only dance can do. The argument was made with fluid, elegant motions and pushed against by the occasional intrusion of rigid military marching. The dancers, dressed also in green, embodied innocence, and everything else ““ helmets, rifles, television ““ sought to corrupt them. It required no words of explanation but was synthesized beautifully with the lyrics of Mitchell, one of the great poets of pop music.

The show’s second half also drew the best of Grand-Maître’s choreography, the strength of which laid in numbers. The dancers, exquisite though they all were individually, made the greatest impact in groups, moving as a kind of many-limbed organism. As we root for the triumph of the dancers, of naturalism, the more people we see on stage, the more it looks like we’re winning.

“The Fiddle and the Drum” hit its sensationalist peak, naturally, at its near-end, to the tune of “If,” Mitchell’s jazzy rendition of the Rudyard Kipling poem. The dancers whooped and clapped and formed the most graceful of dance circles while they took turns in small groups doing break-inspired moves at center stage. In the exuberance and organic activity of those moments, it seemed only logical that humankind should swear off technology forever and sustain itself solely on the joy of live performance.

Since the release of “Avatar,” Cameron has been called a hypocrite for making a film almost entirely from cutting-edge technologies about the virtues of simplicity and embracing nature. His folly is where “The Fiddle and the Drum” shines most brightly, its case made elegantly through the beauty of the human form.

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Alex Goodman
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