© Dance Umbrella 'Serenade' reviews '2 Human' reviews 'Dangerous Liaisons' reviews 'If You Couldn't See Me' reviews Yanowsky in reviews McGregor in reviews Mark Morris in reviews Oaks in reviews Edur in reviews recent Dance Umbrella reviews more Lynette Halewood reviews

Scottish Ballet kicked off the proceedings with an excerpt from Alston’s Dangerous Liaisons. This was an opportunity to see the relaunched company in its new “modern ballet” direction under Ashley Page. Of all the items in the evening, this one showed the most balletic influence in the carriage of the arms - less of the usual Alston scything gestures. The four women here seemed to be more at home in the choreography in terms of precision and presence than the two men. It’s not a good enough look to get more than an impression of how Scottish Ballet are taking to their new direction: they seemed hard working, but the piece somehow failed to gel.

Trisha Brown performed an intriguing solo from If You Couldn’t See Me. This was performed with her back to the audience throughout, as if she was performing to the back of the stage. For someone who has been appearing on stage for forty years she is amazingly flexible and lithe, and exerted remarkable charisma - even though she was wilfully turned away. It built up a peculiar tension: when she finally turned round at the end of the piece, what would we see ? Well, it was a big smile and a flash of her elegant legs to the audience. I haven’t been a fan of other Trisha Brown works performed by other companies, but as well as its assured performance I enjoyed the careful construction of this piece, which within its tight constraints managed not to be repetitious in this ten minute extract.

2 Human, the next item got one of the biggest audience reactions on the shriekometer. This had been included one assumes more for its choreographer, Wayne McGregor, and his association with Dance Umbrella, than for the dancers, Thomas Edur and Agnes Oaks of English National Ballet. This was made for them earlier this year and McGregor clearly had fun finding out just how far he could push his usual speedy, spiky, angular style when one of the dancers is on pointe. Edur and Oaks rip through it in some style, and she looked particularly effective. Edur’s partnering was quietly heroic as usual.

There was just a tiny three minute solo from Bill T. Jones, Ionisation. It was a reminder though of just how effective the older dancer can be. Trapped in a small pool of light, he has something of the caged animal about him, or perhaps a prison yard. Movement seemed to well up from the ground like the embodiment of some kind of earthquake, shaking though his body in great ripples. All this done with a sly humour and an eye cocked at the audience in complicity. A perfect small taster, leaving you intrigued enough to want more. Another audience favourite. This was followed by an extract from Shobana Jeyasingh’s Polar Sequence, a recent creation for Random Dance Company. This seemed pleasant enough at the time, but made no lasting impression other than blandness for me. Perhaps the short extract (six minutes) didn’t do it justice.

The second half featured a further seven items, a generous total. Students of The Place opened it in Nine Person Precision Ball Passing – at last an item that exactly matches its title. This was a sweetly dippy piece, nine students arranged in three rows on a platform doing – precision ball passing. Just that. Very tightly choreographed with an amazing variety of interchanges, and lots of laughter from the audience. A happy Val Bourne, Dance Umbrella’s AD in a brief appearance afterwards said like a proud Mum that she’d never seen them get though it without dropping one.

This was followed by Mark Morris in a solo, Serenade, which featured the only live music of the evening, with two onstage musicians. Morris always has a great feel for danceable music and this was evident here, using Lou Harrison’s Serenade for Guitar. The sense of interaction between dancer and music was a real plus, immediately making you aware of what you were missing with the recorded music of other performers. It didn’t strike me as one of his strongest works (the very dim lighting didn’t help) but it had charm none the less, with a vaguely Indian feel to some of the gestures and poses, helped by Morris’s additions on finger cymbals.

Matthew Bourne’s Spitfire
© Dance Umbrella

There were two pieces from the Siobhan Davies Dance Company, an interesting alternative take on the Dying Swan music for a male dancer danced with restraint and calm by Laurent Cavanna, and a longer item, She bit Her Tongue to a witty spoken text by Caryl Churchill. The text may have come off best in the end: it was difficult to concentrate on both this and the dancing / signing that was happening at the same time.

Two short solos had been made specially for this gala. William Tuckett of the Royal Ballet had made one for Zenaida Yanowsky, which featured her in a corset and stockings gyrating to What’s New Pussycat. It didn’t really seem to fit within the context of the gala and would have looked much more at home on the ballet stage – odd when Yanowsky is usually so compelling in modern works. Wayne McGregor appeared in short solo: his long lean body seems to have the most extraordinarily long arms which his choreography exploits to the full, making something quite otherworldly and unearthly.

The closing item was a short excerpt – too short for the audience – from Matthew Bourne’s Spitfire featuring Adam Cooper and others in a fabulous display of men’s underwear circa 1960. I should imagine that when he was a boy one of Matthew Bourne’s aunties probably had the sort of big mail order catalogue which had all possible clothes and household objects inside including a section on underwear, peopled by manly chaps posing solemnly in their long johns. Or alternatively, lots of knitting patterns with firm jawed models posing in their cardigans. Now imagine that set to ballet music (Minkus and Glazunov), absolutely straight faced with the dancers in a variety of white undies, six men solemnly partnering each other through cod ballet moves. Terrific fun. There’s much more dance in this early Bourne work (1988) than in some of his later works : less theatricality but lots of dance jokes. A great favourite with the audience, and a good closer for the evening.