It’s Dido Jim, but not as we know it: Sasha Waltz’s decadent danced opera proves an occasionally baffling delight.

Lyric Theatre, The Star, Sydney

January 16, 2014

How gratifying for once to be in the middle of something so palpably divisive as Sasha Waltz’s 2004 scintillating adaptation of Dido and Aeneas which is finally seeing its premiere in Sydney. “What’s this got to do with the opera, tell me?” cried one disgruntled punter from the stalls about half an hour into the action. Some, on the other hand, gave the production a standing ovation at the end. Still others – perhaps baffled sponsor guests or those drawn by the glamour of the Festival’s top-price ticket event – voted with their feet, making noisy exits at various points during the show.

The current doyen among German choreographer’s hyperactive vision for Purcell’s opera begins with dancers cavorting in a gigantic fish tank and winds up with the heroine almost drowning in her own tumbling hair. On the way, Waltz’s dazzling imagination and sense of invention steers a course occassionally as wayward as the Stygian ‘sisters’ who plot the Carthaginian Queen’s downfall. At times she goes off-piste, as in a side-tracking sequence on the...