Recurring Images - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 51

performance is an event. I love its sheer standing as a great cultural icon, but probably I love it
for being about transformation, not just in its narrative but in its performance. That we can give
the illusion of being something else is what drives me, and stop motion goes some way towards
realising that idea. Delicate positioning of a dancer's arm to suggest a swan's neck is what keeps
me doing what I do. Seeing the swan and the human, the performer and the performance, the
puppet and the puppeteer, strikes a strong emotional and artistic chord in me.
Swan Lake is rooted in tradition, and the original is breathtaking, but I wish that such pieces
were freer to move with developments in staging and production. I can identify with Matthew
Bourne's innovated reinventions of pieces, especially his Swan Lake . Freeing it from tradition,
while still respecting the music, he has created an astonishingly powerful piece of modern
dance theatre. I would like to approach animation in the same way as he has reinvented dance.
It may be grand and tantamount to hubris, but I would love, as a result of my i lms yet to be
made, to be responsible for a child's enthusiasm for classical music, or culture or myths. Just
to get a child excited, stimulated, challenged, inspired and transformed through art … that
would be satisfying. I'm not sure that I've achieved any of those; entertained perhaps, or kept
them out of mischief for a while, but I doubt I've given anyone the rush I experience at a great
production of Swan Lake or those other epics milestones of culture … now I've used that word
'culture' and hear tongues accusing me of being lofty. Not at all. I'm not for making art élitist,
but I am all for creating something powerful, sublime and transforming. I know that animation
has the power to do that.
With the sheer passion of the music rel ecting something of Tchaikovsky's own torments, the
icon saying something about the creator, Swan Lake brings together all the themes that interest
and excite me.
Puppets elsewhere
Opera
Julie Taymor has often introduced puppets into opera, but I am sure this is primarily about a
theatrically interesting way to tell a story. In the New York Times (20 November 2006) she says,
'Only when a human being in its simplest form cannot do what is suggested in the libretto
should you use a mask or puppet. Unless a piece requires it, why bother?' Her production of
Magic Flute had visible puppeteers operating the animals. A recent London production by
the i lm director Anthony Minghella introduced puppets into a Kabuki-inl uenced Madama
Butterl y , and in that context, a puppet for Cio Cio San's son seems appropriate, although in
the same article he says 'The puppets in “ Madama Butterl y ” emerged from my resistance to
seeing young children onstage, moving under direction and incapable of course of conveying
an inner life; treated, actually, like puppets. Whereas it seemed to us that a real puppet can
appear to listen, rel ect and engage with complete focus and innocence. That
puppets can be more expressive than human actors is certainly true, but young
boys in the role in Butterl y can perform amazingly. Serious productions such as
Oedipus Rex , Hansel and Gretel and A Midsummer Marriage have all used puppets. A
Midsummer Night's Dream has seen the fairies as puppets operated by Oberon and
Titania, which has some theatrical logic to it. This year all of the major theatrical
companies are building productions around puppets. I hope that it won't be long