Deeper than words

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The evening begins with Woolf discussing language: “Words do not live in dictionaries, they live in the mind. And how do they live in the mind? Variously and strangely…they are much less bound by ceremony, convention, than we are”. When mental health professionals and others consider Virginia Woolf, we tend to focus upon her mental ill health and eventual suicide rather than her artistic works, conforming to our own conventions. Woolf Works, choreographer Wayne McGregor's first full length ballet for the Royal Opera House, manages to encapsulate her artistic achievements while acknowledging the contribution her emotional experiences made to her work. The ballet is a triptych; each section a portrayal of a Woolf work and very different and yet complimentary of each other. The first piece focuses upon perhaps her best known work, Mrs Dalloway. The stage is set with three large rotating square frames, reminiscent of windows, which are used as minimalist props to relay the narrative and more importantly the emotional intensity of the characters. There are only two vital parts of the novel that concern action, rather than thought; in the first sentence when Clarissa Dalloway decides to “buy the flowers herself” and towards the end when World War One veteran, Septimus Warren Smith, dies by suicide. Clarissa Dalloway's life is portrayed in a series of flowing gentle sections, I Now, I Then, the alternative title for this part of the ballet, aptly describes this almost floating movement in both the physical and narrative sense. This is intermingled with emotionally charged pas de deux between Septimus and his deceased comrade, the now hallucinatory Evans. The energy of these dances is captivating to watch, with infernal red backlighting and the smoke of war and Max Richter's score contrasting between Septimus and Dalloway. This juxtaposition of thought and action is a recurrent theme throughout the three pieces, as is the use of a bell chiming, to denote a change of time, narrative, gender, or social order—be it the 24 hours of Mrs Dalloway, the lifetimes of The Waves, or the timeless quality of 400 years and more of Orlando epitomising nature and longevity. McGregor's characteristic contemporary dance style is a good fit with Orlando or Becomings. The image of an ancient oak tree and the sound of scratched parchment introduce the ballet, which quickly becomes an intense, fast, and physically demanding dance. The portrayal of Orlando, he and she, dancing together overcomes the literal dichotomy of the text and continues the questions of identity introduced in the first act. Lasers cutting across the stage, create an ever changing physical boundary, representing the societal and class conformities that affect the female Orlando most acutely. A repeated theme in Woolf's novels, dramatically illustrated in these ballets, is the idea of capturing an identity in time and holding on to its quality. This theme runs through her writing, where she talks of her wish to flourish and reach her potential, even if nothing else were to happen next. As Woolf herself says in The Waves, “Our flame, the will-o'-the-wisp that dances in a few eyes, is soon to be blown out and all will fade”. The last act also commences with Woolf's words, starkly introduced by a recording of Gillian Anderson reading the suicide note left by the 59 year old Woolf for her husband, Leonard. In it, she expresses her awareness that she is becoming unwell again and no longer wishes to face the madness, which, since the age of 13 years, has interrupted her use of words and her life. In The Waves or Tuesday, ballet is in symbiosis with the nature of the sea—flowing in and out, part of the natural order; the dancers respond to this rhythm. Much as the text flows in a stream of consciousness and uses words to develop, sustain, and alter the ebb and flow of the main characters lives, so the last piece mimics Woolf's existence; the projected waves symbolic of the highs and lows of her life and works. The end, when finally the dancer playing Woolf is lain down in the water by two companions, is a catastrophic moment. It signals the putting to rest of her emotions and that of the audience, who have also been taken on a rollercoaster of emotion during the ballet, which is now over. The rapturous applause which follows represents both a re-awakening of the senses and a moment deeper than words.