I’ve been trying to figure out why that is. Is it because the dozen, gender-equal choreographers selected for this project (out of a total of 40+ applicants) and their equally youthful casts were less burdened by the weight of expectation? Or is it simply that the work was by and large less pretentious, better thought-out (perhaps some credit for this is due the professional mentoring that was part of the whole package) and more tonally varied and engaging than that of the more experienced artists attached to big-name companies?

In any event, what follows are some responses to the dances (none lasting more than seven minutes) and dancing on show at the Linbury Studio Theatre, ROH, for one night only.

Unto the Ground by Richard Chappell (from Middlesex and currently training at the Rambert School) used Paradise Lost as the springboard for a quintet that had a sporty yet striving physical tone to it. The standout among the dancers was Jack Thomson, but all five gave strong performances embodying angels (This last bit of information was, I must admit, a surprise; I was wondering why each cast member appeared to be massaging his or her lower back, as if they shared the same ache, but could it have had something to do with a deep-rooted sprouting of wings…?!)

There Is A Grief That Can’t Be Spoken by Molly Roberts (from Worcester, and on the CAT scheme at DanceXchange) was inspired by the emotion and narrative contained in a song from Les Miserables. What I saw was a detailed sketch of a budding relationship between two atypically interesting people (sturdy Stephanie Bentley and tousle haired Rob Ferguson) each of whose school-like uniforms was adorned with what looked like a prize-winner’s floral badge. Maybe the pair didn’t always follow-through on movement marked by a certain muscular sensitivity, but they were never less than affectingly honest in their delivery of it.

Decisions by Henry Ward (from Bedfordshire, and a member of a youth group called U.P.Rising) was a solo showcase for the dancer Joseph Peacock. The latter conveyed a sense of impassioned struggle even if the source of his feelings wasn’t readily apparent. I didn’t understand the use of two piles of paper petals (one white, the other red) save as a visual gimmick (each got strewn about), nor a later materialisation of digital clouds as backdrop. What I did appreciate was the dancer’s valiant attempts to live up to a big, surging slice of music (by Max Richter). So did certain members of the audience – perhaps Peacock’s Bedfordshire fan club, who squealed like bobby-soxers at the curtain call.

Night Time by Chloe Green (from Surrey, and linked with the hip hop group X-plosion) was a female quartet set to a track of the same name by The XX. I liked the length of it – that of a pop song, which is a discipline to which Lea Anderson subscribed back in the 1980s when she launched The Cholmondeleys. (If only more of today’s choreographers practiced such creative economy!) Green herself was the most kinetically emphatic member of a cast clad identically in thigh-length nightshirts and knee-high black socks.

Corridors by James Rosental (from Wigan, and on the CAT programme at The Lowry) featured three females and, downstage right, an open-topped cardboard box that was plainly a symbolic repository of no little significance for each one. A sometimes overheated soundtrack (including Philip Glass) was met with expansive movement meant to convey the consequences of an undefined trauma. While not my favourite piece of the night, it benefited from dancing that was never less than fully committed.

How to Build a Shelf by Dan Hammond (from Cambridge, where he’s part of the group SIN Cru) was the bill’s early high spot. Hammond – a thin, highly flexible and curly-haired glasses-wearer in shirt and jeans – stayed centrestage throughout. That’s a good place for someone this bright and talented to be. Here’s a guy who isn’t afraid to initially show himself falling on his face. What he really did well was inventively break down the low-to-the-ground vocabulary of b-boying as a metaphor for any kind of effort to master or make sense of a situation. This comic solo was pure delight – and that includes the programme note (‘See for yourself!’) Based on the evidence, I look forward to future encounters with Hammond’s engagingly cheeky wit.

Transmutations by Barny Sharratt (from London, and in his seventh year of training at the Royal Ballet School) had a kind of leggy, flamboyant clarity. Inspired by the theme of evolution, this excellently-performed trio was one of the programme’s few pieces that could perhaps be said to betray an influence (Wayne McGregor) but it was none the lesser an accomplishment for all that and, also in its favour, a lot shorter than some of said master’s work.

A Thin Line Between Space and Matter by Charlotte Statham (from Shropshire and CAT Birmingham) was an abstract female trio with a physics bent. This, as I only later realised, determined the piece’s kinetic fragmentation and spatial variability. The dancers – clad in black bodysuits with a silver accent, plus noticeable eye make-up – exuded a lightly unsettled energy that suited the work.

Untitled by Marika Richmond (from London, and a student at The BRIT School) was another representation of evolution, this time for three men (with dots decorating their upper bodies) and one (inexplicably unmarked) woman. While aesthetically I preferred Sharratt’s handling of the subject matter, I couldn’t fail to grasp the deliberately more blunt, rooted intentions of Richmond and her dancers.

My Little Thing by Asmara Cammock (from London, and also from The BRIT School) was a solo for Elsie Cullen that drew on the transition between childhood and the teen-age years. I hadn’t a clue. What I saw was a woman in expressively dealing with her place in a dark, bare space. If my mind strayed during it, this is not to discredit Cullen’s dedicated performance.

Task One by Robert Bridger (from Middlesex, and at the Rambert School) was a slightly surreal, semi-improvised quintet for a cast in long and elegant black dresses. With echoes of Pina Bausch in its treatment of the female presence, this absurdly cryptic and tactile comedy about the self and others made good use of the lyrics of ‘I Will Survive’ as read aloud (in a stumbling yet determined fashion) by a young Asian woman. Altogether it offered proof yet again that audiences respond happily to humour.

Trans by Danielle Campbell (from Wolverhampton and, more specifically, Coppice Performing Arts School and the dance company Flexus) had limbre, bare-chested Aaron Baugh and Harry Ondrak-Wright confronting each other in me-and-my-shadow manner to a soundtack (By GruffMuzik) principally of spacey distortion and clicks. The peculiar symbiotic tension between the pair stemmed from Campbell’s choice of subject matter – organ transplants! Learning this only after watching the piece increased my admiration for its cleverness. Campbell’s intriguing duet built nicely into a series of grappling athletic lifts before shifting (slightly less interestingly, to my mind) into unison, the latter presumably intended as a means of demonstrating the accord possible only once a body has successfully absorbed a new living component.

YDE Young Creatives


Donald Hutera writes regularly about dance, theatre and the arts for The Times, Dance Europe, Animated and many other publications and websites.

Photos: Brian Slater

While rich in imagery, the source material offers only sketchy text to accompany the smoky-dark paintings by Marc Craste of an endangered species meeting its fate. The author dreamt it up in a quest to recreate the quiet of a long forgotten era. “There was once only the sound of bees and the wind in the wiry grass and the song of birds in the high blue sky”, the starting point for the show.

The first scene lulls the audience into a short-lived, playful mood: pleasing to watch. While there is an underlying feeling of strangeness created by the sparse setting and imaginative sound and costume design, the four dancers frolic and play together in the midday sun. They childishly forward-roll and bump and push in smooth moving sequences of choreography, their dark-brown noses twitch in leisure and eyes widen, fawn-like in friendly fun. The backdrop screen projects a beautiful woodland and nature is allowed to breathe.

An easy mood is quickly smashed in scene two and replaced by an abrupt change of pace as the Varmints’ world is blown apart and they take off into hiding. The music breaks from its playful melodies and becomes loud and aggressive and the dancers quick change from soft brown nosed Varmints to nasty drab grey drones slogging back and forth pushing large industrial tyres across the stage that start small and become bigger and more overwhelming as the scene unfolds and the wheels carve up the landscape. Playful movements are replaced with repetitive stamping, grinding, pushing and heads down, faces towards tyres.

What’s so brilliant about this section, and indeed the whole piece, is the way in which the sound composition swings from lyrical and melancholic to hair-raisingly fearful in a bat of an eyelid. When the Varmints turn into industrial drones, the response from the young audience was so dramatic that juniors felt the need to reach out for parental cover as proof.

Self-taught Branson is a magnetic force onstage and as the lead Varmint, inhabits his role with real conviction, not only in the high energy -spinning moments, but in the parts of the piece where there is barely any movement at all except for quiet contemplation as he gazes at his little plant pot, tending to it, donned in his bright yellow raincoat, a splash of colour against a bleak scene.

Costume designs by Holly Waddington offset the narrative as dancers parade about in 1920’s flying hats resembling floppy ears, floral shirts and multi-coloured knitted crochet tank tops, which wouldn’t look out of place in a local tearoom keeping the brew warm as a teacosy, before finding new life chopped and recycled into wearable garments all represent the handmade, the antithesis of their immediate environment under attack.

Colour is also cleverly used to change the mood when bright costumes are replaced by monochrome to evocate a world drained of life and light- all except the hero Varmint who proudly dons his bright yellow raincoat that wouldn’t look out of place in a production of Singin’ in the Rain.

The piece works brilliantly as a metaphor for teaching ecology and the value of nature in one forward roll after another. In fact, the creators believe that it should talk to children who are now living in areas of large-scale regeneration and have no say in their inherited world, a bit like the Varmints.

The author has said of her book that “ it would be nice to think that one day, before it’s too late, non-one will question the need for peace and quiet and time to think and the importance of wild places.” And although this sophisticated, whimsical, eccentric 50-minute wonder leaves many questions open to interpretation, the production imparts this message wholeheartedly and it certainly spoke in volumes to the children in my row.

Varmints is touring the UK and returns to London for performances at Stratford Circus on 20 & 21 June.

‘I was thinking about how in fairy tales things are always transforming: people are transformed as a punishment or a reward, or they’re stuck in between. Really, the drama in Raven Girl is about her own efforts to make herself and her body match up.’ Audrey Niffenegger

‘I always hear this idea that making narrative work is harder than making abstract ballets; there’s an idea that if you’re just making up your own world, that’s easier than working on something specific…bodies are inherently narrative’. Wayne McGregor

Read more in Metro, 22 May 2013

Amy Bell and Valentina Golfieri first appeared on this stage as London Contemporary Dance School students, performing Luca Silvestri’s kitschy sauna-themed nostalgia-fest White Christmas in 2005. The pair returned in 2010, memorably shaking blue-sequinned hotpants in That Was the Time I Stopped. Eyecatching costumes are very much still a part of the duo’s work – I Just Close My Eyes: Here Are The Devils is performed in gold high heels and sky-high blonde beehive wigs – but in the service of a much darker-hued character piece.

The two are billed as “faded divas” and their high-maintenance glamour seems to come from another era; everything about the pair’s physicality screams that they are used to being the centre of attention, but the spotlight has clearly moved on elsewhere. An unplugged stick microphone seems to have a hypnotic pull on the pair; Bell goads her partner by dangling it in a provocatively phallic fashion from her undershorts; Golfieri reaches for it with alternating disgust and desperation.

The divas are stuck in an ugly state of co-dependency; as much as they continue to compete with one another with look-at-me poses, each recognises that attention can now come only from her rival. There’s something of mentor Lea Anderson’s dark humour to the piece; I Just Close My Eyes: Here Are The Devils is an absorbing and skilfully realised piece from these interesting young artists.

Softer Swells is an apt name for Aoife McAtamney’s short solo; it washes over the stage in a series of meandering wave-like ebbs and flows with McAtamney’s supple body curving through the air and undulating on the floor. The dancer’s porcelain face and black-cherry lips speak of Gallic roots, which are reinforced when she breaks into song – snatches of what sound like Chris Brown lyrics set to a ravishing Irish melody. It’s an odd combination and there’s little in either the words or the movement material that help the viewer get a handle on what’s going on; McAtamney is a likeable enough performer, but Softer Swells washed over me rather.

Gary Clarke’s Cameo Cookie is a vibrant, vigorous solo for Eleanor Perry, who portrays American entertainer and activist Anita Bryant. Bryant was a public figure throughout the 1960s and 1970s; not that we’d know it from her costume of Edwardian-style lace blouse and long tweed skirt. The clothing choices are suggestive: Bryant was also an outspoken critic of the emerging gay movement, and although she gained support from conservative communities in the US her views can be seen as outmoded against the contemporary background of growing civil rights.

Perry gives a powerful physical performance as the vociferous Bryant with strong mime sections and a great floor-stomping dance sequence to Bowie’s Suffragette City. Bryant’s commercial work for Coca Cola and Florida Citrus are combined on the soundtrack with audio clips of her often unpalatable public statements; her initially corn-and-candy wholesomeness whittled away over time by an increasingly hostile public attitude to the community she refers to as “the homosexuals”. Gradually Bryant’s public standing is eroded; she loses her music sales, her commercial contracts, and her marriage. We see Perry descend slowly into a hell of her own making, a hand rising limply from a red-lit stage to wave her limply goodbye to a public that increasingly views her as an outdated irrelevance.

Ironically, however, Bryant’s name lives on in the one place she feared most – as a cocktail named after her in protest. Cameo Cookie’s final sequence sees a disco version of Bryant, divested of her buttoned-up outerwear, shouldered by four young tanned men and dancing to Candi Staton. It’s a triumphant finish, not for Bryant as a historical figure but for the movement she fought so hard against. Clarke created the piece in 2011; with marriage equality back on the political agenda this week the historical issues explored by Cameo Cookie have particular resonance in the here and now.

Spring Loaded continues until 22 June
www.theplace.org.uk


Lise Smith is a dance manager and teacher, as well as a regular contributor to londondance.com, londonist & Arts Professional

Presented by the Director of the British Centre, Neville Shulman CBE, Vardimon has been chosen for this prestigious award in recognition of her outstanding choreographic work over recent years.

Born and raised in Central Israel, Jasmin Vardimon trained at the Kibbutz Dance Company then moved to London in 1997 where she founded the Jasmin Vardimon Company. Her company’s works include: Freedom, 7734, Yesterday, Justitia, Park, Lullaby, Ticklish, LureLureLure, Tête, Madame Made and Therapist.

Vardimon was the recipient of the Jerwood Choreography Award in 2000. She is an Associate Artist of Sadler’s Wells (since 2006), Guest Artistic Director of the National Youth Dance Company (2012-13), and was previously a Yorkshire Dance Partner from 1999-2004 and an Associate Artist at The Place in 1998. Recent choreographic commissions include the Royal Opera House (Tannhäuser, 2010) and ROH2’s OperaShots season with composer Graham Fitkin at the Linbury Studio (Home 2012).

www.jasminvardimon.com

Jasmin Vardmin Company will be performing JUSTITIA at the Peacock Theatre 17-22 September. Online booking

National Youth Dance Company will perform (inbetween) as part of a double bill at Sadler’s Wells on 8 June Online booking

I feel I have spent a lot of my life in a seat at Sadler’s Wells so when I started to write a book about the theatre, it surprised me that the earliest programme I could find in my own collection only dated back to 1985, when I saw the Merce Cunningham Dance Company there.

What I chiefly remember was how hot it was in the gods, and how brown the theatre seemed. But it also felt like hallowed ground. If you are a dance fan, Sadler’s Wells is a theatre full of echoes. It was the place where Dame Ninette de Valois founded the company that went on to become the Royal Ballet, where she shaped English style, and created the works that form the basis of the repertoire and are still danced today.

When I started writing Sadler’s Wells:Dance House , it was those years that I principally thought of. I read, to get me in the mood, Lorna Hill’s Veronica of the Wells books, stories based on her daughter’s experiences at the Vic Wells school. These tales, full of temperamental teachers, jealous schoolmates, ironed grey tunics, dedication and sacrifice, filled a generation’s heads with dreams of dancing.

They probably caught, pretty well, the spirit that swept de Valois through the war until her fledgling company was ready to take up residence at Covent Garden. The touring company remained there, though, until 1955, and returned from 1970 to 1990, when it moved to Birmingham and became the Birmingham Royal Ballet. “Overshadowed to some extent from the beginning, Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet was in fact to prove the hidden strength of de Valois’ two organisations,” judged Kathrine Sorley Walker, de Valois’s biographer. “From this smaller group came an army of dance talent, as well as two major choreographers, Kenneth MacMillan and John Cranko.”

The theatre I was writing about was profoundly different in from that historic image. It was the sixth theatre built on the site, although the skeleton of Frank Matcham’s 1931 theatre (which itself contained bricks from its Victorian predecessor) was incorporated behind its new transparent façade. It was light, airy and welcoming.

But it shared one key characteristic with the theatre de Valois knew: it was full of creative vitality. In 2005, the artistic director Alistair Spalding announced his intention to turn the theatre into a place that would commission and champion new work, with its own group of associate artists. “Sadler’s Wells needed to have a focus and it needed to have a brand. I knew in my bones that to make it a creative dance house was the right thing to do,” he said.

I was lucky enough to spend time with them as they made new pieces; I talked to them about the impetus for their choreography, and the way in which working with Sadler’s Wells had allowed them freedom in which they could experiment and thrive. In turn, their work turned the theatre itself into a success story.

Between 2004 and 2012 its audience doubled, yet it has achieved such success by putting originality ahead of playing it safe, and it has been rewarded for its courage by box office success. Even in its more assertively “populist” venue, the Peacock, it has backed original material including the musical extravaganza Shoes. Its early investment in hip hop has been rewarded by its development as a commercial art form in shows such as Some Like It Hip Hop.

Through all this the theatre has retained its capacity to surprise as well as delight. I will never forget the first night of Push, with its magical opening when Sylvie Guillem and Russell Maliphant travel through bands of light; or of William Forsythe’s Rearray in which Guillem and Nicholas Le Riche seemed to examine all the mysterious possibilities of dance itself. Guillem has been the person I have most loved watching at Sadler’s Wells.

But I have too many memories to recount or list. Sadler’s Wells is the place I go to see new dance. Sometimes I come away disappointed, but night after night, I have felt inspired and changed by what I have seen on stage. That is what my book celebrates.

Buy Sadler’s Wells: Dance House online

Sarah Crompton is the Arts Editor in Chief and dance critic of the Daily Telegraph

The award, from Arts Council England has been given to a new consortium of dance organisations for a project called Diversifying Investment in Dance led by Nottingham’s Dance4 alongside East London Dance, Merseyside Dance Initiative and Dance Initiative Greater Manchester.

The funding, from the Arts Council’s Catalyst Arts: building fundraising capacity scheme will see the development and delivery of a two year programme of fundraising activities, ranging from individual giving to applying for sponsorship and foundations.

Kiki Gale, Chief Executive and Artistic Director of East London Dance said:

‘We are delighted to have this opportunity to work with our peers in this new consortium; to research & develop new ways of supporting our vibrant dance community here in east London and to continue to support it to flourish’.

Each member of the consortium already has established, international reputations for supporting, producing and developing dance, yet know that to secure their future they need to make a firm commitment to diversifying their income streams. The aim of this programme is to develop the confidence and knowledge needed to develop these skills and in turn the artists and practitioners they work with across the UK’s dance sector.

East London Dance
Dance4
Merseyside Dance
Dance Initiative Greater Manchester

The Company will move to its £19.6 million headquarters, designed by award-winning architects Allies and Morrison, in the heart of the cultural hub on the South Bank this autumn. When it opens the building will be a state-of-the-art working, training and rehabilitation facility for the Company and a centre for choreographic development, as well as serving it’s local community with a vastly increased participation and engagement programme.

Also in attendance were Iain Tuckett and Scott Rice (Chair) from Coin St Community Builders, who generously donated the plot of land on which the headquarters are being built in return for a commitment to lead a significant dance programme in the local area. Rambert’s new home is the first stage of a wider development, which will include a public swimming pool and indoor leisure centre, flats, and educational/ office building and a new town square.

Take a look at the live feed to see what Rambert’s new home is looking like right now.

The piece that worked best for me was Dane Hurst’s curtain-raiser, Primitive. Hurst himself materialised first, his head and entire body – save for a bare chest and a bit of back – shrouded in black fabric; this unidentifiable but arresting figure (Death? If not, something darkly symbolic…) writhed slowly in an overhead light before disappearing. Subsequently the rest of the cast – eight others, all in flesh-coloured underwear courtesy of designer Georg Meyer-Wiel, assisted by Caroline Hagley – seemed to be enacting a strange, sometimes striking ritual carried along by an undercurrent of sexualised threat.

My interpretation isn’t far off the mark as what motivated Hurst to make the piece in the first place was witnessing a violent argument between a man and a woman; whether or not he intervened, he did take note of certain primal urges and rages – theirs, and his as bystander. Hurst then translated the experience, and its aftereffect on him, into is a clutch of ambiguous and varyingly effective encounters marked by pulling, catching and what could be called ‘manhandling.’ One of the more memorable had a man rushing up behind one woman holding another in her arms; he pressed and shook against the holder until she slipped down to the floor, a manoeuvre that allowed him to take up the burden of a second woman. In another kinetic novelty a man used a woman like an irritating weapon against another male, batting at him with her torso or limbs. Elsewhere a woman was dragged across the stage; three others slid a fourth about on her feet; two females had an oozy, puppet-like exchange; and a woman was set upon especially by one of three men.

I didn’t always understand the semi-abstract drama unfolding before me (backed up, in a programme note, by stats provided by the agency Rape Crisis), nor did I feel there was an inevitability behind each movement. Maybe, too, Hurst could’ve tried harder to render the women more than mere victims of male abuse, if indeed that’s primarily how they were meant to be perceived. Still, Primitive hooked me in part because of the meaty, Francis Bacon-like hue of the costumes and Paul Green’s lighting (although I don’t get why mainly dormant fairy lights were strung above the stage) and the half-ring of pinkish fabric arcing round the stage (which turned out to be skirts that all but Hurst donned). I was also very much drawn in by Tommy Evans’ haunted jazz score (recorded, alas, rather than live).

Miguel Altunaga’s Automatic Flesh was a study of contemporary urban anomie, a familiar theme particularly for budding dance-makers. And yet, despite the less-than-original subject matter, several of Altunaga’s kinetic stage pictures caught my eye. At the start ten dancers moved about on a small-scale, like a quietly shifting human cityscape; meanwhile a lone, patently frustrated man executed fast, violent moves including dropping down from handstand onto elbow followed by an abrupt, thudding collapse. A petite woman vocalised a sing-song tune in a foreign tongue as another woman leapt off men’s shoulders into a crowd waiting, luckily enough, to catch her. The singer then defiantly grappled with a bigger man in what could be deemed a duet of conflicted intimates. Another body was dragged across the floor. The steady rhythmic stomp of a wedge of citizens was accompanied by their own audible breathing. This was followed by a lot of swift, low-sweeping ensemble unison.

Altunaga’s vision of the machinated dehumanisation of modern life contained a brief moment of tenderness when couples briefly embraced. But such evidence of sympathetic interconnection was short-lived. Soon there was mocking group laughter at the expense of someone (female) at the centre of a circle, and a solo – like a troubled reverie – for Malgorzata Dzierzon, I believe, as everyone else stood frozen in a stage right queue, some leaning sideways until eventually they began to fall out of rank and down onto the floor. (And here came the flaw in Alex Harwood’s otherwise unobtrusive score for piano and string quartet, as the music began telegraphing the supposed poignancy of their collective condition.) Surprisingly, and despite an inability to surrender to Altunaga’s work, I may’ve gotten more out of it than I realised as I was scribbling in the dark watching it. I think he shows promise (although I’d advise cutting a couple of bits of business involving the loss of women’s knickers), and certainly the dancers seemed committed to the work.

The second half of the night was more problematic. Patricia Okenwa’s Longing had something to do with the order that arises out of naturally occurring patterns, and what happens when they collide or merge… The programme note was as woolly-minded as the dance itself. What I saw was eight dancers passing through vague, undercooked motions that seemed neither particularly attractive nor significant. It happens sometimes, a failure to connect with a work on virtually any level including, in this case, Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s score Memoria, a slightly tortured (though not torturous) composition for strings, piano and oboe/cor anglais. I wound up watching Meyer-Wiel and Hagley’s costumes – stylish and black with variously coloured (pink, white, red, lavender, aqua, etc) accents in the form of stripes, waves and other patterns – more than the dancers inside them. Could that possibly have been intentional? If so, it may be that Okenwa’s blurry, seemingly formless Longing deserves more credit than I was willing to give it.

The bill closed with Kirill Burlov’s septet Woman and her Riding Hood , a would-be antic reboot of the fairy tale that was rather bonkers without actually being much fun. Olga Lowenstein’s costumes were a cross between pseudo-medieval and neo-hippie garb, with eyes instead of nipples on the women’s chests and even guest conductor Tim Murray and his eight musicians (all stationed behind an upstage scrim, as they’d been throughout the night) donning pointy stocking hats. Some of the dancers’ clothing was adorned with cut-out letters identifying them as Granny, Mum and so on but, if there was characterisation or narrative at work here, the choreography itself betrayed no discernible structure. Might a greater rigour in that regard have been a better springboard for the work’s intended playfulness? Much of the arch absurdity was of a sexual nature – hands on crotches or bums, plus slithery crawls and gyrations – but, again, perhaps what was lacking was a surer, more buoyant sense of guidance. Cued to Frances-Hoad’s arrangement of often jaunty, jazzy and carnivaliseque film soundtrack-style music, this peculiarly flat piece’s aura of knowing nonsense operated in a void.

www.rambert.org.uk


Donald Hutera writes regularly about dance, theatre and the arts for The Times, Dance Europe, Animated and many other publications and websites.

Photos: John Ross and Chantal Guevara

With the impeccable timing that eludes almost every major character in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, Northern Ballet’s production of The Great Gatsby concludes its UK tour at Sadler’s Wells just as Baz Luhrmann’s 3D movie goes on general release.  Indeed, this London premiere of the ballet occurred on the same night that the film opened the Cannes Film Festival.  

Fitzgerald’s novel had a slow start to literary life, selling poorly in the year of its publication (1925) and only becoming a classic after the author’s death in 1940. But that initial slow burn popularity accelerated to make the novel an essential icon of America in the roaring twenties and Gatsby’s enduring popularity, boosted by the publicity for Luhrmann’s film, ensured sell-out audiences for this London run.

Northern Ballet’s Artistic Director, David Nixon, is easily the most prolific choreographer of narrative ballets at work in Britain today (if not the world).  The number of his original full-length ballets extends well into double figures and he has a penchant for taking big stories from literature and interpreting them in movement (Wuthering Heights, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Dracula and Hamlet are all in his back catalogue).
 
In terms of the complexity of human relationships and the subtle symbolism in Fitzgerald’s writing, The Great Gatsby offers a serious challenge to the choreographer.  And praise is due to Nixon for expertly presenting an accurate sketch of the novel with a clarity that enabled those of us having only a passing acquaintance with the book to keep up, whilst not offending the aficionados for whom it is The Great American Story. It’s a fine balance to achieve and Nixon and his team have done it well.  I went with someone who has loved the novel since school and revisited it many times as an adult.  In my experience this is often a platform from which to find faults, but not so with my friend, who followed every second avidly and with an expert understanding.  The unfortunate counterpart would be someone without any prior knowledge of the plot, in which case investing in a programme and cramming in the detail of the lengthy synopsis would be an essential pre-requisite. 

The downside of this authenticity is that the story had to unfold at a breakneck pace, which made the detailed building of character (even for the principals) a tough ask.  There are two marriages blighted by adultery, two other love affairs, sundry other interlaced friendships, all overlaying the central theme of Gatsby’s lost love for Daisy Buchanan.  The broader context of events taking place in the long hot summer of 1922 – full of flamboyant parties and idyllic, hazy days – is a little lost in translation although some key symbols are well defined, such as the green light on the opposite side of the bay that beguiles Gatsby as a beacon for his beloved Daisy, who lives across the water.   Sinister men in greatcoats hang around the periphery and hint at Gatsby’s wealth coming from ill-gotten gains (although I was confused when one mobster beats up a party guest, since I couldn’t place the relevance to the text). 

Jerôme Kaplan’s set designs capture the mood with a delicate touch and the coalescence of Sir Richard Rodney Bennett’s music seems more bespoke composition than patchwork compilation.  Whether excised from film scores (extracts come from Nicholas and Alexandra, Murder on the Orient Express and Lady Caroline Lamb), his symphonic work or popular songs, it all works as if intended for these purposes.  The composer was consulted on the musical choices but sadly died (on Christmas Eve, last year) before seeing the final outcome.  It seems to me to be an appropriately elegant elegy.  The ballet’s epilogue to the gorgeously haunting song “I Never Went Away” presents an especially emotional conclusion. 

The ensemble gave an appealing portrayal of the roaring twenties, injecting the core discipline of classical ballet with tastes of the dance crazes that flavoured the flapper age (from Charleston to Tango) although it was far tougher for them to fill their characterisations with any great depth.  This was hardest of all for Tobias Batley in the title role and Martha Leebolt as Daisy although their mutual chemistry sparked in the delicious pas de deux that closed the first Act (to the Lullaby from Rodney Bennett’s Partita: 2). Some of the other main characters remained relatively anonymous and the strongest dramatic performances were those of Victoria Sibson (as Myrtle Wilson) and Benjamin Mitchell (as her cuckolded husband, George).  Their gymnastic version of a bedroom pas de deux was a passionate highlight of the choreography.    

The production never gets beyond a superficial evocation of the story’s extremes, either in the roaring flamboyance of extravagant parties or the seedy undercurrent of crime and adultery.  But, just as Kaplan’s sets give an uncomplicated flavour of the age, so we might say that the ballet as a whole presents a headline summary of a great novel, which nonetheless provides an enjoyable evening’s entertainment.           

northernballet.com

Graham Watts writes for londondance.com, Dance Tabs, Dancing Times and other magazines and websites in Europe, Japan and the USA. He is Chairman of the Dance Section of the Critics’ Circle in the UK.

Tara Saclier d’Arquian, Mimbre and a collaboration by Robin Dingemans and Nick Bryson will be the inaugural recipients of the Arts Council England supported Compass Commissions programme. They will create three new pieces of work for presentation during 2013-2014 – an outdoor/site sensitive work; a family friendly work; and a theatre-based work respectively.

Tara D’Arquian, from Belgium is a Trinity Laban Dance Theatre alumnus. She develops her research through different mediums such as live performance and film making, and her work is an intermingling of conceptual layers and remains very physical. Her ‘site-sensitive’ work will combine live performance and film making to question the limits and relationships between animals, human beings and gods. The live performance will take place in the Peckham Asylum Chapel .

Mimbre is a local and international circus and street theatre company, producing innovative and extraordinary acrobatic performance work and promoting a positive, strong image of women. Their Bench is a show about the everyday dance of life, our urban landscape, and a cavalcade of characters that come and go; viewed through the eyes of an observing woman.

Robin Dingemans is a multi-award winning choreographer, performer and teacher. He has danced with companies including Fevered Sleep, Station House Opera, DV8 Physical Theatre, Requardt & Rosenberg, Ricochet, Protein and many more. Nick Bryson trained as a dancer at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Leeds and as a choreographer at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam, and was choreographer in residence at the Firkin Crane in Cork. Their work, The point at which it last made sense, is an exploration of beauty, from the profound to the superficial and everything in between, infiltrating and grappling with the image culture, modern and primal. To be performed by Paralympian James O’Shea and Netherlands-based Rosa Vreeling.

Each artist will receive between £5,000 -7,500 financial support, performance opportunities at both Greenwich Dance and Laban Theatre; rehearsal space and production development support in Trinity Laban’s newly created Performance Laboratory, which is being formed through the revitalisation of the Laurie Grove Studio Theatre in New Cross.

The selection panel (which included Kat Bridge, Interim Artistic Director at Greenwich Dance and Brian Brady, Head of Laban Theatre Programme, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance) received 135 entries.

Mirella Bartrip, Director of Dance at Trinity Laban, said: “Compass Commissions is a significant cultural offering, not available elsewhere in London. It supports these dance makers in the creation of innovative work and provides them with the opportunity to engage with other artists who will be brought together for this project. The UK is at the forefront of contemporary dance practice, and it is wonderful to be in receipt of Arts Council funding through the National Portfolio Programme that enables the Greenwich Dance & Trinity Laban Partnership to foster the artists of the future.”

Performances will take place between Autumn 2013 and Summer 2014.

Explaining what I mean is probably best achieved by picking through my responses to the dances themselves. First up was Flexer’s Undoing ‘Undone’ a revamp of a work dating from 2009. As a long-time fan of hers I was surprised how hard I found it to warm to the piece. Following Alys North’s brief, slightly brittle spoken introduction she and her cohorts, all clad (by Florence Hendriks) in neat combinations of burgundy, grey and black, launched into a generally swift, well-considered arrangement of slices, scoops, lunges, spins and kicks – the kinds of actions dancers often do, used here to convey something about the connections between them and, according to a programme note, us. And Nye Parry’s soundtrack – Arabic and Hebrew texts plus radio channel-surfing underscored by both pulsations and pensive chords – was a not uninteresting aural backdrop.

As with each of the three short, full-company dances presented pre-interval, the cast (all, with one exception, blonde and Caucasian) functioned more as a team than distinct individuals. They looked fit and capable. Most of the time they had in place what I call ‘the mask’ – a rather rigid look of concentration/composure dancers often adopt that betrays little or no emotion. This observation coloured my perception of a piece that was essentially humourless – abstract dance, after all, can be quite a serious business – but never less than efficient.

Next came Charlie Morrissey’s All of this is possible. Here the cast sported, courtesy of Hendriks, white button-down shirts above orange trousers with thin black belts. Initially they stood gazing silently, perhaps internally, before slowly shifting downstage; there, attended by clenching and quivering, each seemed to inflate with air. From an all-in-a-row position they migrated into a kind of flock imbued with a follow-the-leader tension, although who was actually leading was ambiguous. They hunched over as if praying (I heard the whispered words ‘Stage one…stage two…’), hung forward, arched back and jumped about before, eventually, edging away upstage.

I’ll concede that Morrissey’s work had an air of mystery but, really, what was it about? Again, the programme provides assistance. In it the dancers are described as ‘a sorority for the exploration of neglected phenomena – watch carefully, and be converted.’ But, uh, to what exactly? Here was another dance ostensibly directed at us but, crucially, without seeming unduly concerned about truly connecting with us. As I remarked to a friend, ‘I think only dancers, or dance insiders, would care about this.’ This dance insider hardly cared at all.

Set to a non-intrusive commissioned score by Sellotape Sounds of what sounded like strings, drums and guitars, Jorge Crecis’ Labyrinth of Hewara, scarcely countered my feelings of detachment. This time the cast, all in blue shifts (by Holly Murray), intermittently redistributed many white juggling balls: placing them in piles, plopping them down in neat rows and using them to create a labyrinth. Or, rather, the dancers themselves apparently (thanks once more, programme note) were meant to be the labyrinth.

Huh? A fancy concept, that, but it meant nada to me. What I saw was possibly a study in cookie-cutter conformity. A couple of times the dancers, facing upstage, swayed – all alike, in symmetry, sans complexity. Twice, I think, Jenna Owles stood downstage mouthing unheard instructions to others moving in rote-like formation. Rebecca Ankers grabbed at an increasingly effortful solo, ‘the mask’ in place and perhaps even purposely so. It’s worth mentioning North again, briefly astride a few of the others’ backs as if surveying territory. Eventually the pace doubled as the movement waxed sporty, random, even chaotic – suggesting, perhaps, a breaking out of, or through, circumscribed routines. Fists were held anxiously to mouths (all at the same time, albeit in slightly different ways) but the stream of unison gestures remained fast.

Glimpses of the dancers’ personalities were subsumed by what I guess should be called a choreographic vision. Fair enough; it’s the choreographer’s job to impose order upon what he or she has created, and it’s this that dancers are traditionally meant to serve. But I couldn’t help but wonder where the magnificence inside these young women was. Where was their creativity or, beyond them, the wildness of the inexpressible that art sometimes manages to harness? Where was revelation, let alone revolution? What I saw and experienced was something well-constructed yet also vaguely formulaic, and more or less guaranteed to help produce little dance-machines.

Whether that was or wasn’t this work’s point, it certainly seemed a by-product of the evening’s first half. It was the late Nigel Charnock who came to my rescue, post-interval, with XX. Charnock was one of the UK’s most fearless, unabashed choreographic voices. Flexer says this dance, premiered last year, was in content and style something of a warm-up for his Ten Men. Can’t say; didn’t see it. What I do know is that it was the one piece on the bill that mattered to me. Why? Because of its breakneck energy, ironic vulgarity and voracious vitality, and an unapologetic, almost desperate yet liberating desire to hit us between the eyes, in the heart, the gut or lower down and, when possible, all at once.

Even at its most obvious, or when making a bee-line for cheap laughs, Charnock’s material retains a disarming potency. Dressed (by Murray again) like schoolgirls in black shorts, white shirts and ties, mapdance’s members were finally allowed to go ape to a soundtrack that hopped (but not carelessly) from girl-group classics to classical music (Bach, Mozart) and back again to pop. In a headlong display the dancers sniffed, licked, leapt, screamed, gurned and gorged their way through a deliberately rough, messy layering of mime and movement that could be accused of flaunting a slightly warped, goofy yet right-on feminist viewpoint. Sometimes they channelled the crude, brute behaviour of exaggerated male stereotypes, but they also incarnated the latter’s abused victims as when jerking, slapping and falling about to Tammy Wynette’s Stand By Your Man. Similarly, a fragment of Goffin and King’s He hit me and it felt like a kiss was no throwaway musical choice. (Recorded by The Crystals in 1962, this overlooked gem still packs a punch in terms of gender politics.) The theme of ‘hold me, slug me but, dammit, notice me’ spilled over into duets set to baroque music, while Amy Winehouse’s rendering of To Know Him Is To Love Him had a poignant undertow especially in light of her (and Charnock’s) premature death.

XX climaxes by segueing from a passionate gestural interpretation of Shakespeare’s sonnet My love is as a fever into an ecstatic free-for-all to the frantic rhythms of Elvis Presley’s Bossa Nova Baby. Would I have valued this dance, which is at times a tad choreographically blunt, as much if Charnock were still alive? Maybe, maybe not; certainly on this programme it was a welcome relief. Anyway, whether or not it’s vintage Charnock, it’s an invaluable reminder of how keenly he’s missed. You can catch mapdance in XX as part of Greenwich Dance’s 20th Birthday Cabaret on Friday 17 May.

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Donald Hutera writes regularly about dance, theatre and the arts for The Times, Dance Europe, Animated and many other publications and websites