There and Back
Again
Paula Rego
26 October 2017 to 15 April 2018
There and Back Again is the title of a ballet presented
in the 1998-1999 season, at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, by
the now defunct Ballet Gulbenkian, with costumes designed by Paula
Rego, choreography by Stijn Celis and music by Louisa Lasdun.
Although Rego often explores disciplinary intersections between
painting, literature, music, cinema and theatre - inspired by the
stories incorporated within these artistic manifestations - this
collaboration with the performing arts was an isolated experience
within her vast oeuvre. Her involvement resulted from the fact that
its entire conception, commencing with the musical composition,
created between 1990 and 1993, was directly inspired by her series
of engravings on nursery rhymes. Produced in 1989, this series
visually recreates the universe of English oral tales, populated
with stories that children tell each other in the form of tongue
twisters, which Paula Rego had also learned during her childhood
years at her English school - St. Julian's School in
Carcavelos.
After the birth of her first granddaughter, nursery rhymes once
again assumed a presence in her daily life, and it was in this
family setting that she put to paper the unusual images contained
in those verses, so often read and captured today, crossing them
with other enigmatic images from her own private universe. In her
own words, when she began working on the engravings, 'all came
pouring out; the stories were there, and I started by doing the
ones that my granddaughter knew (…). I got the Opie book
[Nursery Rhymes], and I used to read a story, a nursery
rhyme at night and in the morning I'd come up with an image, and…
they just came out and out and out and out.' The fantastic
creatures that inhabit these works and the way that they interact
conjure up an oneiric universe - a world of dreams of magnetic
enchantment, towards which we are inexorably dragged.
The ballet There and Back Again used music and dance to
explore this dimension of fantasy and mystery that Paula Rego
placed in her 'Nursery Rhymes.' The movement and dynamism that many
of the engravings transmit were brought to life in the dizzying
succession of characters, who danced, interacted with each other
and were transformed on stage. The most striking moment in the
performance was when the children became birds.
In addition to the engravings of the 'Nursery Rhymes' series and
the costumes designed by the artist, the exhibition presents stage
costumes, set design elements, and photographs that document the
creative process behind the performance, as well as other
documental records from the ballet's backstage preparations and
rehearsals, thanks to the collaboration established with the
Gulbenkian Archives and with the Museu Nacional do Teatro e da
Dança.
Catarina Alfaro
Programming and Conservation Coordinator of the CHPR