Review: Pastoral, Barbican Theatre

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, commonly known by its subtitle, Pastoral Symphony, conjures up lots of imagery. Birdsong, rolling hills, thunder, the songs of shepherds are all brought to mind. There’s a cultural heritage of sounds of nature in classical music, and here Beethoven suggests what we might seek to hear in each movement with titles such as ‘Awakening of cheerful feelings on arrival in the countryside’, but also using direct imitation such as soli woodwind playing the music of birdsong. 

Pastoral is somewhere between cultural successor and remaster of Beethoven’s sixth, and a collaborative piece from three powerhouses of dance, music and art. Choreographer Pam Tanowitz, artist Sarah Crowner and composer Caroline Shaw come together, combining ideas, themes, hints, along with the suggestion of what ‘pastoral’ means and of the early nineteenth-century work. This energising production arrives in London for the first time, after previous runs in New York and Luxembourg, and is an exciting opening for the Barbican Centre’s autumn/winter season.

This production suggests Pastoral through idea and suggestion. There’s enough of a hint to lead the mind in the right direction, but there’s also freedom to allow your own associations to surface. In this way it feels nearly immersive, or at least incredibly enticing.

Fragments of and themes from Beethoven’s symphony are mixed with modern extended techniques of instrument playing, alongside real-world soundscapes in Shaw’s score. Three fabulous live musicians seamlessly perform in tandem with recorded sounds. A carefully choreographed experience of sound is created and in a large way carries the more direct association to Beethoven and a pastoral world.

The visual world created in Crowner’s typical play on colour and space moves alongside the company of seven dancers from Pam Tanowitz Dance and helps to play with the ideas conjured by the choreography. There’s also further suggestion of place and time that move with Davison Scandrett’s meaningful lighting. 

Without mimicking or imitating directly, Tanowitz’s choreography plays with ideas of movement found in nature. There are repetitive but fickle movements like that of animals, there is flow and interruption like water or air. The skilful delivery by the company holds both the playfulness and the jeopardy found in the way our world moves.

There is something really special about the way elements move with and against each other in Pastoral. In one sense, the manner in which the dancers work together and independently is evocative of the capriciousness of the natural world. But more strikingly, the way the set has motion and rhythm, the way the movement flows on sound and in space, and the way the music dances signify a collaboration of different elements that, despite keeping their individuality intact, fuse into a single being. And that could be what makes something ‘pastoral’, after all: the whole scene, the collection of parts, a world of things all together.

Choreography by Pam Tanowitz
Décor by Sarah Crowner
Music by Caroline Shaw
Lighting and Production Design by Davison Scandrett
Costume Design by Reid Bartelme
Sound Design by Justin Ellington

Pastoral has completed its current run at the Barbican.