Nemo, heck - Composer Berlioz Found in On-Stage Aquarium
Think puppetry is all wet? You're right. Basil Twist has brought his underwater version of Berlioz' s 1830 "Symphonie Fantastique" to an enormous tank at Lincoln Center, where 6 puppeteers swirl swaths of fabric, plastic, and feathery fringes in a bubbly flurry of hallucinatory choreography.

Robert Greskovic of the Wall Street Journal (May 1, 2003) reminds us of George Balanchine's attempt to describe choreographing dance to music: "It was like an aquarium - music was all around and the dancer was like a fish." Basil Twist, perhaps inspired by that image, has taking it a step further, and more literally. He has choreographed Hector Berlioz' famous piece for a 1,000 gallon fish tank.

No actual fish, though. Twist's site describes this staging as "a one-of-a-kind under-water marvel combining the magic of puppetry with the powerful suggestions of music, dance and abstract art. Symphonie Fantastique is an intimate show set to the five movements of Hector Berlioz’s 19th century classical composition of the same name. The hour-long Symphonie is performed entirely in a specially constructed water tank. The puppeteers manipulate feathers, glitter, plastics, vinyl, mirrors, slides, dyes, blacklight, overhead projections, air bubbles, latex fishing lures to deliver a concert of forms, shapes and moving colors."

"Fantasia" it ain't, and so be it, reports Greskovic. Unlike the Disney movie's "one-for-one, note-for-note" interpretation, Twist's approach is "less literal, more free-spirited." Greskovic imagines that a recurring "character," actually a "gracefully swimming swath of white fabric," takes on the shape of "an eel, a sting ray or a wisp of smoke" at various points in the production. Other characters are more geometric and flat, others more humanlike, still others abstract pompoms or hairy curtains.

The work has been as successful and enduring as it is unique. Originally mounted in 1998 in New York's downtown "HERE" center, revised versions have traveled the world for the past few years (along with some of Twist's other works), most recently in the largest tank yet on one of Lincoln Center's prestigious stages. Ben Brantley of the New York Times (April 27, 2003) is captivated by Twist's "spectral assembly" of aquatic "phantoms," who demand that audiences "listen with their eyes" and follow their "truly orchestral synchronicity."

Visit Basil Twist at his home page and learn more about the Symphonie Fantastique

Read reviews of the earlier versions of the production, from the HERE (the original "downtown" New York show, 1998), San Francisco (1999 at the Zeum), and the UK (2001)

Visit Lincoln Center

Read the NY Times article [fee required]