Manon

Everyone knows that actors have weird rituals around the naming of Shakespeare’s Scottish play but how many have heard about the more beautiful theatrical superstition of the ghost light – the single lamp that is reverently left to illuminate a stage at all hours when nobody is present? This beacon is the inspiration for a strangely haunting work by the Hamburg-based choreographer John Neumeier, conceived during the Covid epidemic when the authorities licensed him to work in the studio for only an hour each day, using lone individuals or couples who lived together. Ghost Light is set to a series of quietly meditative piano pieces by Schubert interspersed with episodes of silence. Gently but painfully, it evokes the isolation of lockdown.