White Oak Reviews

Not particularly a review - just a tale of woe. I'm sure some more rounded and positive thoughts will emerge.

Er... don't have the programme to hand and therefore can't give the names of pieces - luckily they have already been expunged from my memory. (I have now addded these. ed)

First piece was for the girls in White Oak (Glacial Decoy by Trisha Brown). Performed in silence, there was a bit of skipping and a few other random movements. Eventually it developed into 2 girls doing a few movements, and then, rather surprisingly, others joined in from the slips. This most definitely slotted into my "I could choreograph better than this" category. Complete waste of time. The audience did not go wild and some people refused to clap at all. I can think of few worse openings to a night.

Baryshnikov then came out for the first time. A Japanese piece (Dance with Three Drums and Flute by Tamasaburo Bando) in which the vocalist sounded as if he was dreadfully constipated and even with superhuman effort seemed to find no solace. The sounds caused a few giggles, though one suspects it was all meant to be seen in reverent silence. The choreography was pretty grim and pretentious, but Baryshnikov impressed by the quality of his movement - such incredible control and precision. As the piece went on he seemed to take more of us with him. A lesser dancer would have looked very stupid.

First interval. Not very impressed seemed the overall view at that time.

Next piece was for 3 girls (Two Lies by Lucy Guerin) and to a mainly electronic score. What it was about I don't know - but I quite liked some of the music. The girls come on in short hoop skirts and perform some rather unimpressive modern dance in a pool of light. One collapses as if a story is being told. Lights out... not the end though, because the girls then emerge in new costumes and do it all again. Had all the UK's dance fans really turned out for junk like this I thought?

Second Interval. More dark mutterings from people. Somebody with tickets for Saturday night is offering them on. However by this time folks are looking forward to the Mark Morris (The Argument) - hopefully that will make the evening all worthwhile. But I don't overly like Morris and was in no mood to be wooed. Even if Sylvie Guillem had popped out to do Grand pas Classique I would probably not have enjoyed it by this time. So I went off home.

White Oak desperately need some accessible choreography. While Baryshnikov can probably carry off anything, no matter how bad, the reality is that he is not on stage all the time and the dire choice of work does nothing for the other dancers involved, or more importantly the audience. We are not asking him to wind the clock back and forever be the prince, just to appreciate that post-modern dance probably alienates more folks than it pleases. He can of course continue to please himself, please the critics and see his audiences steadily get smaller as as a result. That’s fine, but what a waste of talent.