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English National BalletJuly 2003 London, Sadler's Wells © Jeffery Taylor Former dancer, Critic and an Arts feature writer for the |
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Streatham born choreographer Michael Corder certainly knows how to get your Zimmer frame quivering. An overture, rarely heard these days at dance performances, blasts melodies from the past round bobbing blue rinses and when the curtain rises on the Bakelite wireless dominating the stage, Home Service and Light Programme clearly visible on the dial, sighs of longing sweep the auditorium.
English National Ballet is nurturing Corder's homegrown talent and boy did he pick out a plum last week with Melody on the Move, an affectionate and exuberant tribute to Middle England circa 1940-1950. Light music composers including Robert Farnon, Eric Coates and Haydon Wood provide buckets of nostalgia for In Town Tonight and Housewive's Choice when it was more Mrs Beaton than Germaine Greer.
Out of designer Mark Bailey's wireless glide the dancing girls in long frocks with Wallis Simpson hairdo's and long white gloves with partners all spruced up in penguin suits. And it is as simple and as accomplished as that. One after another Corder conjures up scenes of an English way of life it is today often fashionable to revile like housewives dedicated to washing up, the Ewbank carpet cleaner and the milkman; a couple of bowler hatted chaps with the ubiquitous rolled up brolly; the typist with a spivvy boss and a dreamy night out at the Savoy with stunning Ages Oaks in diamonds and chiffon wooed by a poetic Thomas Edur. Corder creates his pastiche with the values of the age he lampoons like perfectly timed humour, taste and originality while choreographic cliches are kept to a minimum. Melody on the Move is a high quality creation in a fine tradition of British satire. A welcome addition not only to ENB's repertoire but to our national dance heritage.
The company also perform another modern classic in this programme of contemporary work Kenneth MacMillan s The Rite of Spring. To Stravinsky's bestial throbbing music, out of the primeval slime a single cell splits and starts the whole ruthless, lethal but glorious rush to procreation and death. ENB's dancers attack MacMillan s extraordinarily inventive steps with a slavering enthusiasm and highlight the bewildering gift to turn music into movement the late choreographer possessed.
The evening opened with American modern dance wunderkind, Mark Morris's Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes. Accompanied by an on stage piano playing Virgil Thompson's irritating tinkle masquerading as music, Morris's steps are even more of a sham. Even I was embarrassed for Morris as his work was coldly exposed for what it is by the choreographic talent that followed.
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