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Michael ClarkOctober 2003 London, Sadler's Wells by Bruce Marriott |
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You could knock me down with a feather but this turned out to be a truly terrific evening of classically inspired dance. OK so not your average mannered classical music perhaps with T Rex, PJ Harvey and the Human League on the Tannoy but all the better for such difference in my book. But above all it was an evening that pushed boundaries but didn't take itself too seriously or confront people with some strange off-putting madness as has perhaps been the case in the past. The night was built around two substantial pieces, though they were broken down into segments, and all five of the works tended to slide into one innovative take on where Clark currently is at. Oh My Goddess, from which the show took its name, was to some dramatic P J Harvey songs including the majestic To Bring You My Love. They stand well enough by themselves but work even better with the edginess of Clark's magic.
 Michael Clark's Oh My Goddess © Jake Walters Clark seems to be a one-off in exploring movement in so many different directions - a Catherine wheel of ideas. While he often contorts and folds bodies, you then find them springing out in some fleeting classical pose before collapsing again. Speed, though, is not so important to him and his mantra might well be 'slow, slow, slow'. But he does amazing rolling bodies and when he dances himself, in a horrid coach-style track suit, he is magnetic to watch even when unceremoniously hunched. And in the middle of all this he conjures, Ashton like, a carriage and four just made out of dancers' bodies, only to have it crash prematurely. There are fleeting images everywhere but too many to take in.
In Satie Studs (to Erik Satie music) the curtain goes up to reveal 4 grand pianos silhouetted at the back of the stage. Each takes it in turn to accompany the free play of ideas out front, one moment Zen simplicity and the next a dancer unceremoniously dragged off stage by her ankles. At other times there is freeze-frame action, dancers in knots like twisted human debris, indeed running all through it are arresting visual images and much ballet 'stuff'. When a fragment of this work was recently performed by George Piper Dances I didn't much like it but here in a larger and different context it all seems so natural, only a little incongruous because others just don't do ballet and dance work like this.
 © Jake Walters
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