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Josephine Jewkes,
A Hobble of Invalids | |||||||
Josephine Jewkes, dancer with Rambert and formerly an ENB Principal, writes each month on the "dancing life". Here is a link to the previous column in the series.By the time we reached our final show in Luxembourg on Jan. 31st there were definite signs of a dead horse being flogged. When Paul's knee swelled up alarmingly halfway through the show, a cast of 'walking wounded' was hastily assembled for the final piece ('Rooster') while 'Swansong' was going on. Glenn-with-a-bad-leg did Paul's part, and Matthew-with-shin-splints did Glenn's part. Didy did all the Swansongs because Conor hurt his neck, and so Libby (also with a bad neck) did Didy's part in 'Rooster'. We flew home on the Sunday and I was happily reunited with my husband. On Monday the Rambert fun-bus left on a 5 hour trip down to Truro. Steven Brett made a comeback as Rooster-man because the show on Saturday in Luxembourg was the last straw for Matthew's shins. Chris Bruce surprised and disturbed to see the healthy company he left in Hungary transformed into this hobble of invalids. I suggested to him that the combination of frustrating classes, long hours on coaches, no medical treatment and a mixture of techniques in our repertoire were contributing factors. More generally, we dancers believe that the trend nowadays is for a more aggressive style of movement (taken to the limits by Forsythe in ballet and DV8, Jeremy James and Per Jonsson to name but three in the contemporary world), but the human body meanwhile has not greatly changed; simply that those with less extreme facility are being challenged further by the examples of a few with acrobatic flexibility which was previously labelled 'unclassical'. This is now becoming the norm. (This is known as 'progress'.) The shows in Cornwall were delightedly received and we then piled back on the bus after the Wednesday show for the 5 hour trip back to London. Arrived at 3.30 am, in bed by 4.30 am. Four days off. I decided to stop taking the anti-inflammatory drugs to see how the hip really is. The news is not good. After a tearful goodbye to Tim at Heathrow as he returns to Denmark on Sunday, it's back to the studios on Monday. The hip is angry and inflamed and I can barely complete a sad little turned-in barre. Luckily I only have to prepare one new part this week, which is not due to be performed until America, so I can take it easy in class and have treatment every day. By the end of the week the mobility has increased and the soreness is more bearable. Because I have been out of action since September, the possibility of being in the new pieces coming up was removed and so I finish early most days. My colleagues, however, cannot relax as the Jeremy James work - and one by Rambert's Rafael Bonachela - are due to premiere next week. I resolve to watch no rehearsals for either in order to see them fresh onstage in Newcastle. Another long coach trip to Newcastle and I am reunited with that small, raked stage which was the theatre of my professional debut as a full member of ENB. I well remember hanging on to a wobbly piece of set in a packed class, feeling every shred of hard-earned technical mastery desert me as my body tried to fathom just how to stand up when the slope made one leg inches shorter than the other. (The rake, and the small narrow shape of the stage there, always reminds me of that bus teetering over a cliff edge in that famous Michael Caine film 'The Italian Job'.) Fortunately I find lovely digs with a friendly family in Heaton and am only called upon to dance my inevitable part in 'Rooster'. Taking the 60s theme as my lead, I have evolved a Vidal Sassoon '5point' hairstyle, bat-wing eyeliner and orange, glossed lips. I have decided that my character is like one of the oversexed teenagers out of 'Please Sir'. Definitely the first girl to start smoking at school and show her knickers around the back of the bike shed. Definitely not based on my own life experiences. This ensures that I have lots of fun onstage, which is just as well because I am scheduled to do every show of 'Rooster' for the foreseeable future... I sat in the audience to see the two new pieces: I found Raf's piece beautifully danced but inscrutable; Jeremy James' piece was illuminated for me by the fact that I had read my first Irvine Welch book ('Ecstasy') earlier in the week, which plunges the reader into the twilit underworld of drug culture with its hyperreality and alienated human relationships. The nervous, repetitive (to the point of obsessive) violent gesticulations of the self-absorbed characters onstage brought vividly to life certain elements from the book, though I have no idea of the choreographer's intentions. Rafael's piece was technically difficult to dance with knife-edge balances, relished by the dancers, but watching Jeremy's piece my body ached in sympathy for the dancers onstage as they used punishing muscular force to achieve the required effects. Another long coach journey after the Saturday night show and time to pack Spring/Summer clothes for California for which our plane departed on Tuesday morning for a five week tour. (What does one wear for a tornado?)
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