Liv Lorent's dance version of Rapunzel, written by Carol Ann Duffy, brings the fairytale alive for children and adults with a tale of romance, rescue and loss
The story of Rapunzel, the girl who was locked in a tower and used her long hair as a rope for a prince to climb up and rescue her, is a resilient one. The ancient tale was first collected by the Brothers Grimm 200 years ago and most recently used in the 2010 Disney adaptation Tangled. In the interim, that iconic image of the hair flowing down from the top of the tower has become embedded in the popular imagination and has proved to be almost endlessly reworkable: one of several memorable New Yorker cartoons of the scene is captioned "Rapunzel? Rapunzel moved out years ago, I'm Bruce …" as a hapless prince discovers he has climbed up a beard.
"But the tower and the hair are usually the only part of the story people know," explains Liv Lorent, founder, director and choreographer of balletLORENT, whose dance version of the tale is currently touring and will be performed at Sadler's Wells, in London, at the end of the month. "The bit that really got to me about the story, and the bit that I'd totally forgotten, was that it is also about a husband and wife longing for a child."
The Grimms' tale begins with a peasant couple who thought they were unable to have children. When the wife does fall pregnant she develops a craving for the vegetable, rampion – also called rapunzel – that leads her husband to trespass in the rampion patch owned by an enchantress. When he is caught, the witch, who also wants a child, agrees to let him keep his life and take as much rampion as he needs on the condition that he delivers his daughter to her when she is born. When Rapunzel is handed over to the witch, she keeps her secure in the tower, prompting the refrain: "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair".
balletLORENT's Angelmoth, a fantasy about a butterfly-like creature who transports children from a dusty library into a world of adventure, was a success at the Lilian Baylis studio at Sadler's Wells in 2008. About the same time, Lorent herself became a parent, "and so doing work for a family audience seemed to matter even more to me. When Sadler's Wells asked us back, the themes of Rapunzel struck me very strongly. I am of that generation of women who have developed their careers, and it doesn't always happen easily that you have your own child. I have very close friends who haven't managed it and have witnessed the suffering involved. And, of course, the other part of Rapunzel is having a child and then losing it. There is no greater horror for a parent, and those two elements were key to me as I wanted a fairytale that could speak powerfully both to the adults and the children in the audience."
Lorent asked poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, who has had a long engagement with the Grimms' and other folk tales, to write a story that might be adapted for dance. In the production it is read as a voiceover narration by Lesley Sharp that "is quite cinematic with the words coming through and being underscored by the music", says Lorent. Among the first things she discussed with Duffy was the fate of the couple who gave Rapunzel away. "None of the versions I read told us what happened to them," she says. "It seemed mad that they just disappear and I didn't think it worked theatrically." Duffy had known Rapunzel since childhood. "It was my mother's favourite and there are mothers and children running right through it. The witch desperately wants to be a mother, as does the wife. So when she takes the baby away, I have the mother tell the rest of the story to herself and to her husband as a sort of consolation, a fantasy that might be a way of healing them. It becomes a story within a story."
Duffy says she has so far seen three performances on the tour and "people have cried every time. I've never seen that before at the ballet. There are horrible resonances with real stories such as that of Madeleine McCann. You can't help but think of them. And this is not because of anything I have done, or Liv has done. It is something that is in the original story and that is what is so fantastic about these old folk tales. They contain so many of our fears. You can do many things with them, and there is a great case for revising them, or doing a feminist version, or whatever. But if you are going to honour a fairytale the best way is to let it be itself and it will work."
Lorent's commitment to engaging with a whole family – "not necessarily a nuclear family, but certainly something generational"– chimed with Duffy's own approach. "I've lived my life working on different levels. I have a daughter who is now 17 and I have spent all that time trying to think about things as an adult, as an ex-child, a parent and a writer. And this time I was also very aware that the words would be danced and so some of the metaphors are different from those I would normally use." She says there is an image of the wife eating the rampion off her husband's body. "I imagined that would be danced and indeed it is. And I liken the witch to a blackened tree at the end, and that was also danced. It was wonderful to use language that would be rendered physically. And there is also the most amazing music that has you humming it for days afterwards."
Lorent has assembled a team that includes composer Murray Gold, of Doctor Who renown, costume designer Michele Clapton (Emmy nominated for her work on Game of Thrones), as well as Duffy. She says that choreographers often "take what we want, poach and siphon a story for movement. Our agenda is about beauty, spectacle and the motivation for dance. We can be quite irreverent about the story." But this time, working with dramaturge Ben Crompton, was different. "Carol Ann had done something so cohesive and strong that it felt important to really honour the story and not just mine it for dance moments."
In terms of costume, Clapton had not worked in dance before, "but she understood the abuse that dance costumes endure. She could have made simple silhouettes that pretty much do everything. But, instead, we have these hooped dresses that look beautiful and sculptural and work well with Phil Eddolls's set that is both visually stunning, and has a convincing tower that is robust enough to be danced on. It's quite an engineering feat, but there's no point in having a beautiful set that is just a backdrop. You should be able to dance on it, or it should get out of the way. Equally, the lighting is for storytelling and fantasy, not just dance. As a director it is wonderful that no one on the project thinks they are in any way compromising because they are working for children."
Lorent says that it is relatively easy to entertain children and bore adults, or vice versa. "As a child I couldn't have cared less about people who wanted a child and couldn't have one. So what? It doesn't hit home in any sort of cognitive emotional way. But children will engage with the romance and the rescue, and the idea that the witch loves Rapunzel so much that she locks her up in a tower and doesn't want to leave her. I thought a child would understand and fear that sense of suffocating protection. But mostly this is about dance, and there is a capacity within that art form to evoke so many beautiful and visual things that can be read by a child on one level, and hit home to an adult in a very different way. It's made with three generations of the same family, sitting together, in mind, and whether you are making a seven-year-old thrilled and excited, or bringing a 47-year-old to tears, both eventualities are worth the work." Reported by guardian.co.uk 1 day ago.
The story of Rapunzel, the girl who was locked in a tower and used her long hair as a rope for a prince to climb up and rescue her, is a resilient one. The ancient tale was first collected by the Brothers Grimm 200 years ago and most recently used in the 2010 Disney adaptation Tangled. In the interim, that iconic image of the hair flowing down from the top of the tower has become embedded in the popular imagination and has proved to be almost endlessly reworkable: one of several memorable New Yorker cartoons of the scene is captioned "Rapunzel? Rapunzel moved out years ago, I'm Bruce …" as a hapless prince discovers he has climbed up a beard.
"But the tower and the hair are usually the only part of the story people know," explains Liv Lorent, founder, director and choreographer of balletLORENT, whose dance version of the tale is currently touring and will be performed at Sadler's Wells, in London, at the end of the month. "The bit that really got to me about the story, and the bit that I'd totally forgotten, was that it is also about a husband and wife longing for a child."
The Grimms' tale begins with a peasant couple who thought they were unable to have children. When the wife does fall pregnant she develops a craving for the vegetable, rampion – also called rapunzel – that leads her husband to trespass in the rampion patch owned by an enchantress. When he is caught, the witch, who also wants a child, agrees to let him keep his life and take as much rampion as he needs on the condition that he delivers his daughter to her when she is born. When Rapunzel is handed over to the witch, she keeps her secure in the tower, prompting the refrain: "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair".
balletLORENT's Angelmoth, a fantasy about a butterfly-like creature who transports children from a dusty library into a world of adventure, was a success at the Lilian Baylis studio at Sadler's Wells in 2008. About the same time, Lorent herself became a parent, "and so doing work for a family audience seemed to matter even more to me. When Sadler's Wells asked us back, the themes of Rapunzel struck me very strongly. I am of that generation of women who have developed their careers, and it doesn't always happen easily that you have your own child. I have very close friends who haven't managed it and have witnessed the suffering involved. And, of course, the other part of Rapunzel is having a child and then losing it. There is no greater horror for a parent, and those two elements were key to me as I wanted a fairytale that could speak powerfully both to the adults and the children in the audience."
Lorent asked poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, who has had a long engagement with the Grimms' and other folk tales, to write a story that might be adapted for dance. In the production it is read as a voiceover narration by Lesley Sharp that "is quite cinematic with the words coming through and being underscored by the music", says Lorent. Among the first things she discussed with Duffy was the fate of the couple who gave Rapunzel away. "None of the versions I read told us what happened to them," she says. "It seemed mad that they just disappear and I didn't think it worked theatrically." Duffy had known Rapunzel since childhood. "It was my mother's favourite and there are mothers and children running right through it. The witch desperately wants to be a mother, as does the wife. So when she takes the baby away, I have the mother tell the rest of the story to herself and to her husband as a sort of consolation, a fantasy that might be a way of healing them. It becomes a story within a story."
Duffy says she has so far seen three performances on the tour and "people have cried every time. I've never seen that before at the ballet. There are horrible resonances with real stories such as that of Madeleine McCann. You can't help but think of them. And this is not because of anything I have done, or Liv has done. It is something that is in the original story and that is what is so fantastic about these old folk tales. They contain so many of our fears. You can do many things with them, and there is a great case for revising them, or doing a feminist version, or whatever. But if you are going to honour a fairytale the best way is to let it be itself and it will work."
Lorent's commitment to engaging with a whole family – "not necessarily a nuclear family, but certainly something generational"– chimed with Duffy's own approach. "I've lived my life working on different levels. I have a daughter who is now 17 and I have spent all that time trying to think about things as an adult, as an ex-child, a parent and a writer. And this time I was also very aware that the words would be danced and so some of the metaphors are different from those I would normally use." She says there is an image of the wife eating the rampion off her husband's body. "I imagined that would be danced and indeed it is. And I liken the witch to a blackened tree at the end, and that was also danced. It was wonderful to use language that would be rendered physically. And there is also the most amazing music that has you humming it for days afterwards."
Lorent has assembled a team that includes composer Murray Gold, of Doctor Who renown, costume designer Michele Clapton (Emmy nominated for her work on Game of Thrones), as well as Duffy. She says that choreographers often "take what we want, poach and siphon a story for movement. Our agenda is about beauty, spectacle and the motivation for dance. We can be quite irreverent about the story." But this time, working with dramaturge Ben Crompton, was different. "Carol Ann had done something so cohesive and strong that it felt important to really honour the story and not just mine it for dance moments."
In terms of costume, Clapton had not worked in dance before, "but she understood the abuse that dance costumes endure. She could have made simple silhouettes that pretty much do everything. But, instead, we have these hooped dresses that look beautiful and sculptural and work well with Phil Eddolls's set that is both visually stunning, and has a convincing tower that is robust enough to be danced on. It's quite an engineering feat, but there's no point in having a beautiful set that is just a backdrop. You should be able to dance on it, or it should get out of the way. Equally, the lighting is for storytelling and fantasy, not just dance. As a director it is wonderful that no one on the project thinks they are in any way compromising because they are working for children."
Lorent says that it is relatively easy to entertain children and bore adults, or vice versa. "As a child I couldn't have cared less about people who wanted a child and couldn't have one. So what? It doesn't hit home in any sort of cognitive emotional way. But children will engage with the romance and the rescue, and the idea that the witch loves Rapunzel so much that she locks her up in a tower and doesn't want to leave her. I thought a child would understand and fear that sense of suffocating protection. But mostly this is about dance, and there is a capacity within that art form to evoke so many beautiful and visual things that can be read by a child on one level, and hit home to an adult in a very different way. It's made with three generations of the same family, sitting together, in mind, and whether you are making a seven-year-old thrilled and excited, or bringing a 47-year-old to tears, both eventualities are worth the work." Reported by guardian.co.uk 1 day ago.