When most I wink...
David Mead speaks to Jessica Lang about her new ballet Wink, inspired by Shakespeare’s sonnets
After the success of Jessica Lang’s Lyric
Pieces, her first work in Britain and her
first for Birmingham Royal Ballet, it
was no surprise when David Bintley
asked her back to make a second piece,
Wink, to be premiered as part of the
Shakespeare triple bill in summer 2016.
Jessica recalled David explaining
that the company was celebrating
Shakespeare in dance to mark the 400th
anniversary of his death, and that one
aspect of his work that hadn’t been
widely touched on in choreography was
the sonnets. He didn’t tell her to use
them, she emphasised, but said they were
available as inspiration should she like
to. ‘In fact, I really appreciate it when
there’s some sort of broad theme given,’
said Jessica, ‘and I quickly said, yes’.
But where to start? There are, after
all, 154 sonnets to choose from. Although
she was familiar with the famous ones,
Jessica didn’t want to let anything slip
by, so she listened to them all. ‘You
know, it was really difficult to just read
them. It’s an overwhelming number and
a lot of poetry. First I pulled the ones
that I loved, then I looked for some sort
Jessica Lang; image by Daniel Garcia, Courtesy of Content Magazine
of theme. We ended up with just five that
have sort of very grand themes within
them.’
Jessica also dug into the history of
the sonnets, looking up scholars who
have written about them. Is there a story?
Did Shakespeare really write them? Were
they meant to be published? Who was
W.H.? All of those little quirks about
them that are really special,’ she said.
Everyone asks about the title, Wink.
‘It’s from the first sonnet that I use,
sonnet 43,’ explained Jessica. ‘“When
most I wink, then do mine eyes best see.”
It’s literally just the first text that you
hear. Also, we are marking his death.
“Wink” has connections with sleep, and
to sleep can be seen as to die, so it’s a
play on words.’
While Wink is a response to
Shakespeare’s words, Jessica said not
to expect to simply see them reflected
directly in movement. Rather the dance
looks beyond them, to their spirit, mood
and emotion. And while she admitted to
a nod towards reccuring characters that
feature in the sonnets, such as the Dark
Lady (sonnets 127-154), the Rival Poet
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(sonnets 78-86), the Fair Youth (sonnets 1-126),
and the Narrator, ‘if you want to see them,
they’re there. If you don’t, you don’t have to. It’s
not important,’ she said. ‘Well, it is, but it isn’t,’
she added with a smile.
Finding the right music is always important
for Jessica. When she was a youngster, she took
dance classes, ‘but really what I was attracted
to was the music. I wanted to be a violinist,’ so
much so that she studied the instrument for ten
years alongside her dance studies. ‘But I was
better at dance,’ she joked.
Finding the right music for Wink proved
problematic though. Not only did almost
nothing appear to have been inspired directly
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by the sonnets, but she couldn’t find anything
else that would be appropriate for the ballet,
and for the length she was looking for. ‘I didn’t
want to introduce a contemporary composer
who was disconnected to the theme, that’s
not the way I work, and I didn’t want to use a
classical composer who was disconnected to the
history.’
The answer was to commission a score.
Jessica turned to Polish-American Jakub
Ciupinski who she first worked with in 2010
when they were paired in a project at the New
York Choreographic Institute, creating Droplet
on New York City Ballet dancers Wendy Whelan
and Craig Hall. What drew her to his music
was, ‘the rhythm, drive and emotional content
in it,’ she said. They later worked together
several times, including, Eighty One for Ballet
San Jose in 2013; Anonymous for Dance St. Louis
in 2012 and Ink for Jessica Lang Dance in 2011.
Coincidentally, Jakub has a strong Birmingham
connection. Before studying with Krzysztof
Penderecki in Poland and Christopher Rouse
in the USA, he studied for his first degree
at Birmingham Conservatoire with Edwin
Roxburgh and Joe Cutler.
Jessica described their collaborative
relationship as, ‘wonderful, so easy and genuine.
We share ideas and always come to a point of
mutual artistic desire. We see and hear the same
Wink in rehearsal; photos: Birmingham Royal Ballet
way.’ She said what he composed has a lot of respect for the form
of the sonnets, the poet and the dance. Without giving too much
away, she explained it’s orchestral, all strings and a piano, but
that it definitely has a contemporary sound.
Jakub and Jessica worked really hard at not just
understanding the themes, mood and feeling of the sonnets,
but also their whole structure: ten syllables per line, 14 lines
per sonnet divided into three quatrains, each of four lines, and
a concluding two-line couplet. Those numbers became a point
of departure for the music. For example said Jessica, ‘in the
first quartet, if you listen closely, you will hear ten notes that
repeat fourteen times, but I’m not expecting anyone to sit there
counting. I hope they’re not!’
The choreography is based on the same numbers. The ballet
has five sections, a nod to the fact that Shakespeare’s plays have
a five-act structure. The first and second sections are different
quartets, with the third another quartet with two dancers from
each of the first two. Think of them as three choreographic
quatrains. ‘In between each section there’s a different sonnet of
spoken word; that’s the narrator, the poet if you want to call him
something,’ she said.
The poet then dances in the concluding duet, the
choreographic couplet, that in a modern take on things is an allmale affair. Jessica says she did consider following the classical
tradition of the main pas de deux being between a man and a
woman, not least because of the Dark Lady and her themes that
are woven into the sonnets, but says she was more attracted to
Shakespeare and his muse, the Youth, and to investigate that
relationship. The ballet is rounded off with an ensemble finale.
‘I also kind of rhymed the movement,’ continued Jessica.
‘So what is front is also back. There are different endings to the
same phrase. I’m not expecting anyone to see that, but what you
will see is poetry. You don’t read a Shakespeare sonnet to be
technical, you read it for the spirit.’
When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
For all the day they view things unrespected;
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
And darkly bright are bright in dark directed;
T hen thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,
How would thy shadow’ s form form happy show
To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so?
How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made
By looking on thee in the living day,
When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade
T hrough heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay?
All days are nights to see till I see thee,
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.
William Shakespeare
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She may be a choreographer, but Jessica
said, ‘it’s a visual art world and the context
of the whole concept, the full picture in the
frame, is important to me.’ As such, actively
incorporating set designs into the dance is very
much a feature of her work.
For Wink, she and set designer Mimi Lien
focused in on sonnet 43 and the idea of winking,
of closing your eyes and opening them, to have
a dark and light aspect. A recipient of one of the
2015 MacArthur Foundation Fellowships, Mimi
is noted for using set pieces that move in such a
way that they become participants in the drama.
She brought the initial idea to life through ten
panels, black on one side, white on the other,
each about three and a half feet tall by six feet
wide, that stand on little stands that allow the
dancers to spin them. ‘They kind of look like
pieces of paper, or a book, or they can be non-
literal and just be objects, special dividers. And
we will use lighting popping on and off, much
like you’re blinking,’ said Jessica. The costumes
will be designed by Birmingham Royal Ballet’s
Head of Costume and Costume Supervisor,
Elaine Garlick.
Playing with the performance space is
typical of Jessica who admitted, ‘I am constantly
looking at the theatre box and asking what else
can we do with it other that put humans in it.
Where does our imagination lead us?’
Her imagination led to Wink, a ballet
‘theatrical in a poetic way;’ about Shakespeare
but, as she said, ‘very much in the spirit of being
human, alive, and living in the contemporary
today’.
Wink in rehearsal; photo: Birmingham Royal Ballet
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Jessica Lang’s Lyric Pieces, created for Birmingham Royal Ballet in 2012; photos: Bill Cooper and Roy Smiljanic