photos Michael Slobodian
White Act from Fernando Magadan on Vimeo.
Inspired by the Romantic era and, in particular, by the great Romantic Ballet La Sylphide, one of the world's oldest surviving ballets where tragedy occurs between a mortal, terrestrial man and a supernatural woman, White Act explores the idea of the unattainable and the dream of inaccessible ideas. Our inherent temptation for the unknown, our intent to embody the supernatural through the human form, and our insatiable desire to find true love, sometimes with dramatic consequences.
... White Act, created by Fernando Hernando Magadan, was the world premiere of the evening. This piece was by far my favourite: not only of the three, but of my entire experience of dance to date. I literally could not speak for a full minute after the curtain fell. This piece reached in, cracked open my heart and clogged up my throat with its poetic beauty. I could not possibly describe it.
... The World Premiere of “White Act” by Spanish-born choreographer Fernando Hernando Magadan was the perfect centrepiece. There are moments here of complete stillness that will chill in the most captivating and beautiful of ways.
... Magadan turns it all into a surreal delirium of unattainable love set to Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden and Estonian Urmas Sisask’s hymnlike Oremus XXII. At another haunting moment, von Riedemann’s silhouette appears to enter into Harmen Straatman’s video scenography, his figure seeming to walk down its road to “the other side”. Eerily beautiful.