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LA Ballet’s “Memoryhouse” at the Wallis reviewed

Two performances remain for Memoryhouse, a haunting modern ballet now at The Wallis in Beverly Hills.

On Saturday February 1, 2025 there will be a Talkback and Audience Q&A immediately following 2:00PM matinee performance. An evening performance of Memoryhouse, also on Feb 1st, at 7.30PM will complete the brief season. Tickets are available here.

Created by the Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Ballet, Melissa Barak, and first staged at The BroadStage over three nights in 2023, the work is an interpretation of German-born British composer and pianist Max Richter’s neoclassical album Memoryhouse.

From information gained at the LA Ballet’s website, the work “was performed at BroadStage in Santa Monica for three nights, June 15-17, 2023, as the concluding pieces of Barak’s first season as Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Ballet.”

Richter’s composition is haunting and ethereal, with flashes of dramatic arcs. Marking Richter’s solo debut, Memoryhouse is an experimental album of “documentary music” that was recorded with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in 2002. The album explores real and imaginary stories and histories. Several of the tracks, such as “Sarajevo,” “November”, “Arbenita”, and “Last Days,” deal with the aftermath of the Kosovo conflict, while others are evoke childhood memories.

The subject of the ballet Memoryhouse is more specifically identified as the Holocaust, yet the music informs the choreography and its staging in an impressionistic manner. The ballet has been described in reviews “as a work that uses a series of vignettes (or scenes or movements) to convey a spectrum of Jewish experience during the Holocaust.”

Production photos from The Wallis.

Sebastian Peschiera’s production and projection design is an essential element to this staging. Employing a scrim downstage for the entirety of Act One, the minimalist yet evocative scenic design transforms seamlessly. Monochrome hues in both the projected images and the dancers’ costuming, as well as the physical barrier of the diaphanous scrim, create a sense of distance as we view the dance performance through a haze, through rain and through a flock of birds that morph into musical notes on a staff. At times, the setting alters, creating a sharp pang in one’s heart as we recognize the tall overhead lamp poles of the concentration camps, or when the stripes of rainfall become the rain of ash from the sky representing the incinerated remains of the numerous camps’ many victims. The minimalist projected images recall a range of environments that mirror the fluidity of memory itself; sometimes crisp and clear, other times elusive. The lighting is frequently soft and ethereal, and sometimes casts long shadows that seem to duet with the performers, further enhancing the sense of the ballet’s dreamlike introspection.

Seen above, the scenic design also includes (during Act Two) a versatile ramp that converts to a table-top set piece that was created with architect Hagy Belzberg (who is also the architect of Holocaust Museum LA).

From the very first movement, the production draws you in with its haunting beauty and intricate storytelling. The choreography, crafted with remarkable precision and nuance, breathes life into every moment, intertwining memory, loss, and nostalgia in ways that are both thought-provoking and visually stunning.

Memoryhouse is an unforgettable experience, blending the emotional depth of contemporary dance with the grace of classical ballet. It’s a rare and profound experience that lingers long after the final blackout.

From the press release:

The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts and Los Angeles Ballet (LAB) are proud to present Memoryhouse, a full-evening work by LAB’s Artistic Director Melissa Barak, performances will take place in the Bram Goldsmith Theater at the Wallis in Beverly Hills January 30 – February 1, 2025. Tickets are available at thewallis.org.

This presentation of Memoryhouse is the start of a new partnership between The Wallis and Los Angeles Ballet.

Memoryhouse is an abstract work composed of vignettes commemorating World War II and in particular, the Holocaust. Set to Max Richter’s powerful album of the same name, Memoryhouse will reflect on both the somber as well as more heroic moments that illuminate this period in human history.

“The story of the Holocaust has such a darkness and a weight to it, the last thing you would want is for dance to take something of that nature too literally. For me, it was all about keeping it symbolic, removing the personal emotion as performers and to approach it as a ballet that focuses on symbolism and poetry.”

LAB’s Artistic Director Melissa Barak.

Memoryhouse is choreographed to Max Richter’s album Memoryhouse in its entirety and in the order it was meant to be listened to. The ballet has 18 movements which totals the number of tracks on the album.  Some movements connect with others while some live on their own. No alterations have been made to the score. All electronic voices, sounds, and touches are part of the original recording.

Barak partnered with Hagy Belzberg, Founding Partner of BA Collective and the architect of The Holocaust Museum for set design, and Sebastian Peschiera of Narduli Studio for production and projection design. 

Memoryhouse was originally planned to premiere in 2020, the 75th anniversary year of the end of the Holocaust. Melissa Barak had returned from her trip to Germany and Poland and was well into the creative process when production was sidelined by the COVID pandemic. It ultimately premiered at BroadStage in Santa Monica in June 2023.

Pauline Adamek

Pauline Adamek is a Los Angeles-based arts enthusiast with over three decades of experience covering International Film Festivals and reviewing new Theatre productions, Film releases, Art exhibitions, Opera and Restaurants.

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