When she was elevated to the position of principal dancer with Queensland Ballet three years ago, Neneka Yoshida bought herself a present. A pair of Chanel earrings.
Which seems entirely appropriate and even more so now she is about to take the stage dancing the role of Coco Chanel. Yoshida will star in the much-anticipated ballet Coco Chanel: The Life of a Fashion Icon, which comes to the Playhouse at QPAC from October 4.
This is a co-production of Queensland Ballet, Hong Kong Ballet and Atlanta Ballet, first performed in Hong Kong in March last year. It has since been performed in Atlanta, in the US, and now we are about to get it. Consider it one of former artistic director Li Cunxin’s parting gifts.
For Yoshida, now in her eleventh year with the company, it’s a chance to sink her teeth into a role that is as complex as it is interesting. There will be several casts for the production but Yoshida will be the lead Coco. It’s a role she is perfectly suited to and not just because of her Chanel earrings.
Coco Chanel was, of course, French and Yoshida spent three years living in Paris as a teenager learning her craft. Paris has been a constant in the Japanese-born dancer’s life and she has a basic understanding of the language.
“And my parents live there now,” she says. “They moved to Paris and I need to visit them soon. I hope to be going at Christmas.”
Being a Francophile with a love of the language and Parisian style is a fine foundation for building a role such as this, a role she prepared for by reading books about Chanel and watching films.
“She went through a lot in her life, starting out as a seamstress and a cabaret performer,” Yoshida says. “She fought for her success, she fought to get the life she wanted. She had a complicated life and I wanted to know all about that. I felt the audience wouldn’t believe me If I hadn’t studied her.”
Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel lived a life of light and dark, glamour and controversy, amid the glitz and dynamism of Jazz Age Paris. The firebrand businesswoman redefined the world of fashion and created stylish clothing for a new generation of modern women who were ambitious, intelligent and rebellious. Her iconic little black dress (an image of Audrey Hepburn springs to mind) and bouclé jackets and skirts are now classic style staples seen all over the world. More than a century later, her legacy continues.
In this ballet, acclaimed Belgian-Colombian choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa delves into the creativity, triumph, immorality and dark opportunism of Chanel’s complex life, from orphan to fashion legend, in this full-length narrative ballet steeped in realism and beauty.
Featuring an original score by Peter Salem, elegant sets and costumes by the award-winning Jerome Kaplan and artistic collaboration by Nancy Meckler, this evocative ballet explores one woman’s elusive rise to the top, at any cost.
Ochoa, who lives in Amsterdam, is in Brisbane to see the production through its final rehearsals as she has done in Hong Kong and Atlanta. After Brisbane the production will go back to the US.
“Atlanta wants it again with an interest in touring it,” she says, happy that she’s finally in Brisbane after postponements due to Covid along the way.
Ochoa has a penchant for making works about women achievers and has previously done works based on the lives of Frida Kahlo and Eva Peron, among others.
“I like complex, interesting women,” she says. “The difference with a real historical figure is that it is not clear what is bad and what is good. There’s a dualism. Chanel’s drive came from her abandonment as a child and that really informed how she behaved.”
The choreographer hasn’t shied away from the dark side of Chanel and has even created a shadow Coco role to depict that in the ballet.
In Chanel’s case that darker side includes a romantic affair with a Nazi spy who helped her continue a lavish lifestyle during Germany’s occupation of France during World War II. In light of some heavier content and the frequent brandishing of cigarettes (stage cigarettes, not real ones), a habit that was in vogue at the time, the ballet is recommended for audiences aged 15-plus.
Queensland Ballet has also provided staff and dancers (and will provide audience members) with a range of educational resources about the Holocaust from the Queensland Holocaust Museum, pointing out the devastating impacts of antisemitism.
Ochoa explores the designer’s flaws but also her strengths in a ballet that is also about “the evolution of the position of women in society”.
She spent a couple of years researching Chanel and admits the Covid postponements might have been positive because they gave her more time to finesse the ballet. “It gave me more time to work out how to tell the story,” she says.
The sets are largely black and white, a nod to Chanel’s classic, simple yet elegant designs. There is one scene that is a favourite of both Ochoa and Yoshida: Chanel is creating a new fragrance and is presented with a number of options for her signature scent and it is the fifth one that she decides on. And so, Chanel No.5 is born.
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But Lopez wants to make a final point about her ballet and it’s a fair one.
“The piece is not about the brand,” she says. “It’s about the woman behind it.”
Coco Chanel: The Life of a Fashion Icon will play the QPAC Playhouse, October 4-19.
queenslandballet.com.au
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