OrpheusEurydice1.0441

OrpheusEurydice1.0441_BauschGluck

Eurydice pose from Pina Bausch's production of Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice

This stub article requires more research. - CB

"I never have cared much for Eurydice; as far as lost girls go, I always preferred the plight of Persephone, the daughter of Zeus, whose abduction from the woods by Hades contained more adventure and horror. "In many depictions of Orpheus and Eurydice, Eurydice just stands there, passively, looking like, well, a muse. Yet I am transfixed by Pina Bausch’s version of Orpheus’s wife in her dance “Overture to Orpheus and Eurydice,” originally performed in 1975 and set to Christoph Willibald Gluck’s 1762 opera “Orfeo ed Euridice.” Bausch’s work often addresses loss through synchronous and vacant movement. In this dance, she melds those qualities beautifully with the myth that she is interpreting. Set on stilts, in a white gown and headdress, with a chorus of dancers dressed in black moving before her, Eurydice stands perfectly still, towering and horrifically sad. The abstract, gloomy punk movements of the choreography, set to Gluck’s sublime music, capture the feeling of foreboding that hangs over the Orpheus myth. The dancers’ motions have a sense of impossibility — gigantic Eurydice is neither a puppet nor a woman; she’s an uncanny, unwavering, glorious beast. - Rachel Arons, The New Yorker.