Tewja revolves around a Ukrainian shtetl at the beginning of the century and is a dance adaptation of the Broadway musical hit Fiddler on the Roof that played to enthusiastic audiences in the s.
It was a high order to adapt a musical so rife with associations. In brief, the poor Tewje and his wife, devoutly committed to preserving their religious tradition, fully expect to have their three eligible daughters marry members of the faith.
While the eldest two are matched nicely to acceptable boys, the youngest falls in love with β and wants to marry β a Christian, which her parents refuse to allow. When the girl weds him anyway, she is shunned by her father, an act that tortures him visibly. And motion it was: all the couples and the some members of the corps de ballet wind, twist and dive around one another, and bend back from the waist to be intercepted by a partner.
Bodies functioned like rope, making lassos, passing one over another, under, through the cocked arms or legs dancer supplied. Where one body made a space, another seemed compelled to fill it. In short, less might well have been more. But with time, with such constant battering of downbeats at confounding volume, my ears were hard put to sustain it. In a bombastic wrap that even included big band and jazz sound, I found variety all too rare.
Later, when the villagers are forced to leave the shtetl , the sombre procession is driven by a burdened, slow-moving score that is quiet, but shattering.
