Review | Hong Kong Ballet’s Frida is a visually powerful production, if lacking in clarity
Ballet adapted from one-act work shows vignettes of artist Frida Kahlo’s life, with striking choreography and costumes, but feels stretched
Hong Kong Ballet’s latest production, Frida, explores the life and art of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo.
The full-length work by choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa was developed from a one-act ballet, Broken Wings, which she created for the English National Ballet in 2019, and the retitled two-act version for the Dutch National Ballet followed in 2020.
Frida is not a narrative ballet as such. Instead, Lopez Ochoa offers a series of snapshots of key moments from Kahlo’s life, interspersed with interludes featuring characters from her paintings. This kaleidoscopic concept would have worked as a one-act ballet, but a 90-minute production needs more clarity and structure to keep the audience engaged.
This is a powerful production visually, full of striking, flamboyant images and there is some good choreography – the first duet for Kahlo and Rivera is outstanding; the scene where she miscarries, her body twisting into terrible contorted poses, is gruesomely dramatic.
However, while Kahlo’s admirers will enjoy the references to her paintings, their symbolism and the way Dieuweke van Reij’s ingenious costume designs bring them to life, those not familiar with the paintings are likely to be left bemused.
Kahlo channelled her suffering – physical and emotional – into her art. She had a limp from childhood polio, and horrific injuries from a traffic accident when she was 18 left her struggling with pain and disability for the rest of her life.