Coco Chanel : The Life of a Fashion Icon
Exploring her rise to fame, fall from grace and triumphant return this full length ballet traces Chanel's life from impoverished seamstress to iconic designer through her loves, losses and enduring obsession with fashion.
Reviews:
Peter Salem’s imaginative score added atmosphere and impetus as the Atlanta Ballet Orchestra brought it to life last weekend under Jonathan McPhee’s baton.
For depth, though, we need to go to Salem’s score. It’s a monster of a thing, asking for the biggest orchestra ever fitted into QPAC’s Playhouse (three percussionists and two pianists gamely play from under the stage). There are also sampled and synthesised percussion sounds and some electronic manipulation and enhancement of the live musicians. It used to be that electronically produced sounds were considered something apart from an orchestra; even a little suspect. Now they are another important weapon in the armoury. As QB’s music director and chief conductor Nigel Gaynor has said, technology provides “a very effective means of using a far broader sound palate than a symphony orchestra [alone]”.
Gaynor conducts Camerata Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra in this mammoth undertaking, bringing to vivid life nightclubs from a century ago, frivolity and war, the seaside at Deauville where Chanel’s sailor look was born, a regimented workshop, the romance of a fragrance, the sophistication of a brand and more.
I went to Gaynor for greater detail about the orchestra and orchestration as unfortunately QB’s program for Coco Chanel didn’t include a music note. As well as the usual forces found in a conventional orchestra Salem’s kit includes vibraphone, large glockenspiel, woodblocks, shakers, tam tam, cowbell, a snare drum and metal plates being struck and amplified. QB principal pianist Roger Cui plays a grand piano while a second keyboardist, Yuko Yoshioka, is heard in various guises, including playing sampled sounds.
At the beginning of the ballet Yoshioka plays a detuned upright piano sound that acts as a wistful theme weaving through the ballet. In addition, the upright “is reminiscent of instruments in French (and European) nightclubs in 1920s and 1930s”, says Gaynor.
This is where the collage fashioned from Chanel’s life has real resonance.
