Stir Q&A: Idan Cohen talks myths, gods, and clowns, as he reinterprets Orfeo ed Euridice
Opera meets movement in studio showing streaming at Dance Centre
A still from Idan Cohen’s studio showing of his new work based on the classic opera Orfeo ed Euridice.
The Dance Centre presents an Artist-in-Residence showing of Idan Cohen’s Orfeo ed Eurydice, streaming April 6 at 5 pm to April 13 at 5 pm
CHOREOGRAPHER AND OPERA DIRECTOR Idan Cohen ranks as one of the city’s busiest dance artists during this pandemic year.
The Istraeli-born and -trained artist and his Vancouver company Ne. Sans Opera & Dance debuted Hourglass—first at the Chutzpah! Festival and then at the more recent VIDF. Now, working as artist-in-residence at the Dance Centre, he’s ready to give viewers a sneak peak into an ambitious new project based on Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice.
You know the story of the tragic myth. Orpheus, who has near-superhuman skills as a musician, marries his beloved Eurydice, but later that night, she’s bitten by a snake and dies. Overcome with grief, Orpheus travels to the Underworld to bring her back to life. Hades and Persephone agree to let her go on one condition: Orpheus can’t look back at her as he leads back up to Earth. And we all know how that goes.
For Cohen’s innovative contemporary-dance version, Leslie Dala, his collaborator on Hourglass, is music director. Opera singers Heather Pawsey, Heather Molloy, William Grossman, and Tyler Simpson lend their voices as singers, with Shane Hanson singing the role of Orfeo. Meanwhile, Kate Franklin, Jeremy O'Neill, Ted Littlemore, Aiden Cass, Stephanie Cyr, Hana Rutka, and Rachel Meyer dance. Fashion designer extraordinaire Evan Clayton adds historic panache to the costumes, while Ted Littlemore adds extra drama, with makeup and masks.
We asked Cohen about this monumental, genre-melding undertaking, and what he’s found out so far in his research.
Opera and dance come together right in your company name. What do you like about blending the two art forms?
“By definition, opera is a "total work of art"—“gesamtkunstwerk”—but through the ages, it seems to me that it had lost its most significant component, the human body. Too often, in opera productions, the body is confined under impressive costumes and huge sets, overshadowed by the operatic voices. In directing opera, my passion is in both honouring and critiquing the operatic tradition, through a contemporary approach to the operatic story, reinventing it to be a dance creation.
“With dance and the human body at the centre of attention, I look at opera as an assembly of artistic excellence in dance, music, staging, and costume craft, engaging a range of unique and talented artists in an interdisciplinary way.”
What most surprised you as you dug into research on Orfeo ed Euridice?
“The myth of Orpheus is an important representation of artistic and poetic heritage in many cultures. It follows the steps of a divinely gifted musician and poet, who, after losing his wife Eurydice, moves the deities of the Underworld with the beauty of his music and poetry, and is permitted to lead his love back to the world of the living.
“Though it has been told in many ways, the myth of Orpheus primarily speaks of the artist and art’s capacity to cope and inspire engagement with difficult questions in a world turned upside-down by grief. During the research phase it was realized that instead of simply telling the story of Orpheus, my purpose is to deconstruct the myth. In our production, Orpheus will stand in front of us not as a god, but as a performer on stage, an entertainer, a clown. A human who experiences our current times as a part of an ancient story, that received a chilling new global meaning during the past year of the pandemic.”
Masks and makeup help bring Orfeo ed Eurydice to life. Photo by Ted Littlemore
Gluck’s original opera featured ballet. What about Orfeo ed Euridice lends itself to contemporary dance?
“In traditional opera, dance is often pushed to the fringes, as music is the main focus of the performance. In this production, I was committed to staging this opera as a dance piece. I was looking both backward, to the traditional, classical forms of ballet and its historical entanglement with opera, as well as forward, to an updated, contemporary understanding of dance, gender roles, and gender representations.”
In the pandemic world, this is a large-scale work. How have you brought the performers together, and have you had the chance to find out what the energy can be like between the opera singers and dancers?
“My vision for this opera is quite detailed and multilayered, and the research process has required time and space to interrogate and master on the part of the performers. Through the Dance Centre's residency, I was able to do so. While we were all wearing masks and kept social distancing, there was a real sense of intimacy in the studio, and mutual admiration and respect between the dancers and musicians, which I found extremely energizing and invigorating.
“Through the visibility of the dancers and musicians I have worked with, I then created our visual vocabulary, which informed the choreography and the dramaturgical research.”
You’ve approached Orfeo as an artist instead of a god. What can you relate to about his journey, as an artist yourself?
"Presenting Orfeo as an artist, an entertainer, a clown, as opposed to a divine entity, was the first significant choice I made. It is a choice through which I can empathize with Orfeo, but also a dramaturgical choice that creates a sense of performance inside a performance, in which Orfeo is presenting the story to us. It is Orfeo's story, in which there are no illusions, no gods--just a human reality in which we are all lost, and obliged to take responsibility for our choices and actions.
"I would also add that throughout the research I found that Euridice's story interested me at least as much as Orfeo's, if not more. I discovered myself in a two-spirited mode, with an obligation to tell both the stories of Orfeo and Euridice, following not just the libretto, the story as it's been told in the past, but to give it a new, relevant meaning."
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