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Royal Ballet,Rambert Dance Company RB: Rambert: November 2008 London, Covent Garden, London, Sadler's Wells © Jeffery Taylor Former dancer, Dance Critic and an Arts feature writer for the |
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Every move she makes quivers with the music’s spiritual striving. Marianela Nunez and Voluntaries, set to Poulenc’s Organ Concerto, looks as though choreographer Glen Tetley made the 1973 piece with her in mind. The pale blue stage and body tights leave no room for technical stutters and I saw very few last Thursday from a superbly but sensitively rehearsed group of dancers. Full blooded dancing by the ensemble and the thrilling supporting threesome of Mara Galeazzi, Sergei Polunin and Thiago Soares made for a satisfying exercise in pure dance. But while Nunez’s partner, Rupert Pennefather also blossoms in the current technical surge she deserves a livelier foil than a man with all the charisma of a wardrobe. The Lesson by Danish star Fleming Flindt is Gothic horror set in a ballet studio. Johan Kobborg is the fruitcake of a ballet teacher, sexually repressed and teasingly sadistic like a Tarantino anti hero. I must have met them all when a student. His adoring pupil turned victim is Roberta Marquez, suitably willing and dancing exquisitely. She comes to a sticky end as the next innocent rings the door bell for attention. The RB’s Resident Choreographer, Wayne McGregor, must have thought Christmas came early this year. To have been given a bunch of artists of the calibre and intelligence of Leanne Benjamin, Marianela Nunez, Eric Underwood and Edward Watson, to name just a few, who breathe life into his repetitive, shapeless and profoundly contrived movement makes him the luckiest man alive. The BBC filmed Infra for transmission on 22 November, see what you think.
 © John Ross
Midway through its UK tour, Rambert at the Wells gave the London premiere of director Mark Baldwin’s Eternal Light. Set to Hugh Goodalls’s eponymous medieval church music, it is a stunning, life-affirming piece. Two Solos as a tribute to Norman Morrice, superbly danced by Miguel Altanuga and Alexander Whitley, are choreographic extensions of boss Baldwin’s fluid and lyrical style while Garry Stewart’s Infinity is curiously old-fashioned. In a thoroughly enjoyable romp through a bloodstained, jerking, crawling and convulsing Apocalypse, both sexes wear the same wrap-around skirts, a design statement radical fifteen years ago. But however unimaginatively dressed, Baldwin’s current bunch of dancers is simply a joy to watch.
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