'Steptext' reviews GPD 'Steptext' reviews 'Critical Mass' reviews Nunn in reviews Trevitt in reviews recent GPD reviews

It is an interesting cocktail with some very disparate ingredients. William Forsythe’s Steptext was an appropriate prelude. While it has a clear anchor in classicism, it steps in and out of traditional grammar, and in and out of conventional notions of performance. We are never quite certain if the dancers are in class, in rehearsal, or “on stage”. Steptext shuttles backwards and forwards between a language that is traditionally balletic, and one that is semaphoric and disjointed. Last night’s performers with Nunn and Trevitt were Christopher Marney and the very impressive Oxana Panchenko.

Moments of Plastic Jubilation, choreographed by Nunn and Trevitt, and Tangoid, choreographed by Trevitt, owed much to the traditions of show dance, cabaret and, perhaps most of all, light entertainment television. Moments was an interesting exercise in choreographing live dancers in close synch with material projected on a giant video-wall at the back of the stage. While it had no great artistic pretensions, it was fun to watch and showed Nunn and Trevitt to have sound entertainment values. These are not dishonourable: Ashton learnt his trade in the cabarets of the 1920s and 1930s and de Valois much of hers in the variety theatre of the early 20th century.

The evening was punctuated with shamelessly self-referential videos, material from previous series of “Ballet Boyz”, and untransmitted material from the series to come. In the funniest clip, we see Trevitt trying (and failing) to navigate his way out of Manhattan. Cut to a walking shot as the camera tracks along a forest trail, and a Blair Witch Project like voiceover: “Two ballet dancers took a camera into the woods of Vermont: they were never seen again”.

Paul Lightfoot’s Sigue was an oddly moving duet between a frenetic Panchenko and a Puckish Trevitt, which made impressive demands on both. But it was Russell Maliphant’s “Critical Mass” which proved the highlight of the evening.

The video wall set the scene with a montage of boxer stills, followed by images of Nunn and Trevitt entering a boxing ring. Cut to the stage. Both men wear jeans and blue shirts. The intended images are industrial, perhaps even of prison uniforms? The first section is unyielding, with movement that is unforgivingly synchronised. Think of the Dance of the Cygnets in Swan Lake and raise that synchronicity to the power of twenty. There is no room here for error, and certainly no room for the personal. I could not help but think of the notion of the soul as “the ghost in the machine” (here a fighting machine). The following movement, a tango, charts the beginnings of a journey from the soulless towards a more realised humanity. While in the penultimate section the two men are apart and alone, they join in the mutually supportive lyricism of the close. There are some quite breath-taking lifts in which Nunn raises Trevitt shoulder high. While the lifts are wrenched from the context of the romantic ballet, they are completely appropriate here, and without sexual nuance. When the lights came down on “Critical Mass”, the audience roared its enthusiasm. Michael Nunn and William Trevitt had set themselves a task of brutal complexity and they had a triumph.

The evening raises as many questions as it answers. George Piper Dances is a star vehicle for its two principals. As such it has a finite life. However it is an interesting test-bed for dance programming in which artistic and light entertainment values co-exist with each other. In the long-term Nunn and Trevitt may be carving out a future for themselves as Artistic Directors of larger companies. They have demonstrated their creativity as artists, in taking risks, in using new technologies, and in seeking new audiences. Perhaps they are thinking ahead to a second application for the Artistic Directorship of the Royal Ballet.