Finally she is back on stage. After her painful farewell to Dutch National Ballet, where she danced for almost 25 years, Igone de Jongh (42) eager to make a new start as an independent dancer. Decide for herself what she would do, how, and with whom – she would follow in the footsteps of her great example Alexandra Radius. But before she could take the step, the corona crisis broke out. In Theater Carré last summer she presented a ‘corona test’ (the words are from her management), the premiere of her official, first program I – Igone de Jonghhad to be postponed several times.
Now the time has come, while the next project is already on the roll. And she is happy, she says just before the end of the premiere performance in Alkmaar during a chat with the audience, during which there is an opportunity to ask questions. According to her, it feels good to perform separately from a company, assisted by two Ukrainian dancers selected by herself, Alexis Tutunnique and Stanislav Olshanskyi.
The program is partly accompanied by three musicians under a ‘tea dome’ in the shape of a globe. Tenor Walther Deubel (not yet fully in voice after a corona infection) also moves through space during his part.
De Jongh’s dream of a life after dance under the Tuscan sun, away from the cold, Dutch wind, occasionally crops up in the program, in dance and songs. In the opening scene she appears in a chubby padded dress à la Sofia Loren in Una Giornata Particolare, finally sated by pasta and wine. Pasta is a recurring theme in De Jongh’s voice-over (text Thijs Römer).
Old-fashioned modern
Then she crawls back into her trusted dancer skin. Starting with the classic Dying Swan, which De Jongh says he has never performed before – now it is possible. Then it goes through her classic favorites Giselle and Le Corsaire after the contemporary dancer De Jongh. Closing piece is a melancholy duet by the Italian choreographer couple Sasha Riva and Simone Repele, in which ‘grey man’ Tutunnique – De Jongh with coat and suitcase and Olshanskyi as an allegorical representation of the time – has to portray the transience of love.
Also read: Dancer Igone de Jongh furious at Dutch National Ballet
It is a pity that the program with all those short songs is very short of breath. Despite the guiding principle of ‘the Tuscan dream’, director Ruut Weissman has not been able to forge unity there. Moreover, the specially made choreographies (in addition to Riva and Repele also Pim Veulings) are rather ‘old-fashioned modern’, with emphatic angularity, semaphore arms, curved postures and corny humour. De Jongh, with her track record, really deserved better (advice) there.
Really disturbing is the abominable lighting, which is all the more important in such a fragmentary whole. Now, for example, the viewer might wonder what that fat man (singer Deubel) in his casual shirt is doing behind Giselle’s ghost. The lighting designers and director Weissman can, no, have to do something about this quickly.