Christopher Hampson Diaries ENB reviews

Musical!
There, I've said it, the word that everybody first grabs when describing Christopher Hampson's work. I had a bet with myself, and English National Ballet, that I'd avoid using it but it’s just impossible: seeing Double Concerto in the studio it just hits you again as music and limbs flow, echo and combine to perfection.

If his musicality is the first thing that grabs you, another constant is the often unbounded joy of his movement. It’s loose, never twee, often surprising but is always rooted in classical technique. Indeed Hampson’s adherence to classical vocabulary - 'pure' ballet - marks him out from many choreographers and he shows time and time again that ballet is a far from tired or mined-out art form. And in the doing he's enthralled his audiences, be they in London, New Zealand, Czechoslovakia or Swindon.

Since 1997 and his first work for English National Ballet - Perpetuum Mobile, a recently revived effervescent romp for 9 dancers - he has created some 20 works all the way through to the full length A Christmas Carol at the Royal Festival Hall in 2000. All that time he's kept a diary for us and on occasion we've been known to share a drink as I try to tease out of him the answer we all want to know - how does he dream up the steps?! I usually get nowhere - other than gently inebriated but recently he started talking about joining dots: "I always walk into the studio with a "dot to dot" image of the entire piece, but as is the nature of these puzzles, I don't know what the picture will be once the dots are joined"

Whatever he does with the dots, Double Concerto at 24 minutes may not be his longest work, but in many respects it’s

...dancers erupt on stage, swirl, meander, mix and are gone as the next jet of dancers issues forth...

his biggest work to date. Nigh on the full Company turns out in a breathless, for them and us, display of speed and dance pyrotechnics, and in the most gorgeous iridescent tutus to boot. It's rather as if there’s a volcano in each of the wings and dancers erupt on stage, swirl, meander, mix and are gone as the next jet of dancers issues forth. If you are anything like me you will feel happily dazed and dazzled by the end and want to rewind because so much has happened and you can't take it all in. It’s a piece that will endure and repay several viewings.

The music - Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra - by Poulenc, is rather special too. Written in 1932, it’s a kaleidoscope of styles and not for nothing has Poulenc been referred to as the Sid Vicious of his pre-war era. By turn thundering chords, pastoral lullabies, with hints of Mozart and Stravinsky and popular cabaret and vaudeville, it turns on a sixpence and includes what I swear is a Keystone Cops car chase. Hampson’s choreography makes its own quotes too, you note, as a bit of 19th Century Raymonda hurtles by.

So we get free and thrilling invention from the pit and rousing, boundless, exhausting fun and exuberance from the stage above - a Double Concerto indeed. Oh, and it’s musical too of course!