Background+Information

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Ghost Dances
= media type="youtube" key="H9acm4mIIjE" height="351" width="432" align="right" = Ghost Dances (choreographed by Christopher Bruce for Rambert in 1981) came about as a result of a letter received by Christopher Bruce from a widow of a Chilean folk singer who had been murdered. He was asked to do a work for the Chilean Human Rights Committee and was given a lot of South American music with which he fell in love. This stirred him to be sympathetic towards the cause of the Committee who were against unnecessary killings taking place throughout their country.

In the 1970s, the focus for Bruce and many others was South America and Pinochet’s bloody coop against the elected Allende government in Chile. South America, at the time Christopher Bruce choreographed Ghost Dances, was a tragic place with terrible things happening to the poorer, common people: fathers taken away from their families and shot or thrown away in cells and tortured to death. Friends were murdered and children taken away.Bruce recalls the powerful impact of meeting Joan Jara, the widow of the musician and composer Victor, who was tortured and murdered by Pinochet’s forces. This meeting led him to choreograph, Ghost Dances. He described how he took the theme of the Day of the Dead, simple symbolism and indigenous dance movements as a basis to convey the plight of the innocent people of South American down the ages and their courage in the face of adversity.

Certainly, Ghost Dances has a tremendous impact and audiences in many countries have delighted in its distinctive, rhythmic movement performed to haunting South American tunes. However, it is the representation of the oppression of ordinary people, symbolised by the sinister ghost figures, which give the work much of its resonance.

Christopher Bruce
Christopher Bruce’s position as Britain’s leading choreographer working with both classical and contemporary companies worldwide was acknowledged in March 1993 when he received the International Theatre Institute Award for excellence in international dance. This follows a host of other awards throughout a rich career including the first Evening Standard Award for Dance in 1974 for his contribution to British Dance as both a performer and as a choreographer.

An interest in varied forms of choreography developed early in his career from his own exposure to classical, contemporary and popular dance. Born in Leicester, Bruce grew up in Scarborough where his father encouraged him to take classes in ballet and tap. He won a scholarship to the Ballet Rambert School at the age of 13 and after a brief period with Walter Gore’s London Ballet he joined Ballet Rambert in 1963. He began to perform solo roles while Rambert was still primarily a classical company and in 1965 created his first role in Norman Morrice’s Realms of Choice. After the Company’s reformation to become a more creative company in 1966 Bruce emerged firstly as its leading dancer – he was described as the ‘Nureyev of Modern Ballet’ – and a few years later as one of its major choreographers, the last to be nurtured by the Company’s founder, Marie Rambert.

As a dancer Bruce was recognised as an artist of intense dramatic power and is particularly remembered for his impressive interpretations of the title roles in Glen Tetley’s Pierrot Lunaire, Vaslav Fokine’s Petrouchka. Also for the roles he created including, in full-evening works, the Poet in his own Cruel Garden (choreographed and produced with Lindsay Kemp) and Prospero in Tetley’s The Tempest.

As a choreographer Bruce was undoubtedly stimulated by the variety and experimentation of Ballet Rambert in the 1960s and in particular the work of choreographers Glen Tetley and Norman Morrice who shared a similar background that combined a knowledge of academic and contemporary techniques. His first work in 1969, George Frideric, a response to a sonata by Handel, was followed by twenty further creations for Rambert with whom he also regularly performed until the end of the 1970s. Between 1975 and 1979 he was Associate Director of the Company and then, as he was increasingly in demand internationally as a choreographer, became Ballet Rambert’s Associate Choreographer (1979 – 87).

Although his productions have been mounted on numerous companies Bruce prefers to gradually build up a relationship with groups of dancers and return to work and choreograph with them on a regular basis. He has been associated in this way with Nederlands Dans Theater; the Royal Danish Ballet; Cullberg Ballet; English National Ballet (where he was Associate Choreographer 1986 – 1991); Geneva Ballet and Houstan Ballet (of which he has been Resident Choreographer since 1989). Bruce has choreographed for a wide range of productions including musicals (among them the original professional production of Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat and David Essex’s Mutiny); plays for the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company; Operas (working as producer and choreographer for Kent Opera); for television and videos.

As a choreographer Bruce has shown awareness, idealism and sensitivity rare in dance. He has created works that are directly concerned with social, political and ecological issues. For Those Who Die as Cattle (1972) was a statement about the horror of war; Cruel Garden (1977) is based on the life, literature and art of the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca who championed the cause of the gypsies during the fascist regime in Spain; Berlin Requiem (1982) looked at the decadence and fall of the Weimar Republic in Germany. Ghost Dances (1981) for Rambert; Silence is the End of Our Song (1985) a television production for the Royal Danish Ballet; and Land (1984) to Arne Nordheim’s Warsaw and Swansong (1987) both for London Festival Ballet; were expressions of Bruce’s attitude towards political oppression.

Bruce’s serious works have their lighter aspects and most of his productions have at least an underlying emotional content. Many are deliberately open to a range of interpretations rather than having a fixed story-line. His personal range of stimuli is extensive including a wide range of literature and music. Although a number of his early works were performed without accompaniment or had music added after they were choreographed he has repeatedly used scores by George Crumb and more recently choreographed to masterpieces by Igor Stravinsky (Les Noces and Symphony in Three Movements) and collaborated with composer Philip Chambon. He has also turned to popular music, choreographing to the works of Joan Baez, John Lennon and the Rolling Stones.

Like many choreographers Bruce has regularly collaborated with a group of designers who have been sympathetic to his work and who appreciate the need for dancers to move freely in an uncluttered space. Most of his early productions were designed by Nadine Baylis and lit by John B Reed who together defined Rambert’s visual appearance in the 1970s. Although he has worked with them in more recent years he has also been associated with the Dutch painter Walter Nobbe, Pamela Marre and his wife Marian Bruce. He has also been personally responsible for the design of some of his productions including the Andean setting for Ghost Dances and Swansong.

Christopher Bruce has performed and choreographed for television. He was himself the subject of a BBC television documentary in the Omnibus series ‘Voices of Children’ (1978) which included one of his works to George Crumb’s music, Ancient Voices of Children. Among Bruce’s best known creations are Cruel Garden, Ghost Dances, Sergeant Early’s Dream, Intimate Pages, The Dream is Over and Swansong, all of which have been televised. His most recent choreography includes creations for Houston Ballet – Nature Dances, a collaboration with Philip Chambon; and Geneva Ballet – Rooster to the songs of the Rolling Stones and Kingdom inspired by Max Ernst’s painting ‘Europe after the rain’. Earlier this year he also created his first work Moonshine for Nederlands Dans 3 and Waiting for London Contemporary Dance Theatre.

source: [|Curriculum Support NSW]