Rambert Dance Company‘A workshop season of new choreography’
The Place -
24 January 2006
Rambert has a distinguished history of developing world class choreographers, a tradition that is reinforced through these annual workshops to showcase the choreographic talent emerging from current dancers. Having enjoyed past seasons, I came to The Place full of curious expectation, but left feeling distinctly underwhelmed. The whole evening had the monotonous feel of watching a long-in-the-tooth, log fire, burning dully with just the occasional spark of new ignition.
That is not to say that the performances did not ignite passion elsewhere in the audience: I sat amongst the home crowd, surrounded by dancers’ friends, family and colleagues where each turn was greeted with some partisan whooping and hollering. There was even a breathlessly, climactic exclamation of “Oh my God!” at the end of one piece that made me wonder if I had actually been facing the wrong way? I’m all for friends and family and their understandably touching support but it can sometimes get a little OTT.
Looking back, after an interval of some 24 hours, there is little to suggest that any of these works are developable into the company’s repertoire, in the same way that Mikaela Polley’s ‘Momenta’ deservedly made the transition, last year. For me, the best piece was ‘Transit’, a promising debut solo by Melanie Teall, performing her own choreography initially in slow, silent, controlled movement and then to three tracks from Eric Serra’s soundtrack to the film, ‘Leon’. The 8-minute solo seemed longer - always a sure sign of enjoyment - and demonstrated a strong spatial awareness with interesting patterns of seated and prone movement. A later sequence reminded me of an escapologist trying to break free of unseen chains: somehow these contrasting references articulated the work’s inspiration from a moment on 8 June 2004 when, through her kitchen window, Melanie glimpsed the planet Venus in transit.
The two pieces book-ending the interval were both made on a trio: Mikaela Polley’s ‘Triplicity’ was an all-woman work to the third movement of Copland’s ‘Sextet’; followed by a piece from Ana Luján Sánchez, mysteriously inspired by the life cycle of a fly, for three men. Polley’s choreography was animated directly as a rhythmic response to Copland’s music in such a Balanchine way that it felt momentarily as if it were an abstract exercise inspired by Apollo’s three muses. As we discovered last year, Polley is a choreographer in the making and there was certainly ongoing evidence here of her thoughtful, musical and creative approach to making dance.
To be fair, there were also memorable moments in the works by Sanchez and Alexander Whitley (‘Tipping Point’), especially - in the latter - a hauntingly beautiful opening solo by the mesmeric Amy Hollingsworth in which her lingering arm and hand extensions created the optical illusion of unfurling limbs that seemed to be several inches too long.
Last year, the final three dances were made in collaboration with composers from the Royal Academy of Music and this partnership continued with Cameron McMillan’s ‘Verge’, a 12-minute piece for eight dancers that was made to Elspeth Brook’s electro-acoustic score composed from the sound of the dancers’ own exertions. I’m afraid that, for me, it didn’t approach the quality of McMillan’s 2005 piece, ‘Kiss My Eyes’, a lyrically driven work to Michael Nyman’s Third String Quartet: a reflection which holds equally true in comparing this year’s works by Sanchez, Polley and Whitley with their better efforts in the 2005 workshop. This year’s offerings all have some endearing qualities but none matched the standard of the previous year. Nevertheless, Rambert’s current dancers are – without exception - well worth watching in anything that moves and this was a blessing worth counting even if not quite up there in “Oh my God” territory.
Graham Watts
Printer-friendly copy
Email this topic to a friend
