Feet of endurance

Entity
Random Dance, Sadler’s Wells

In between, the dancers’ bodies move out of any classical tradition to engage in a series of ideas that, in this particular choreography, seem to derive more from dance forms that are not specifically theatrical, such as street dance and the latest movement trends one finds in disco/clubbing culture. Starting from a perfectly achieved fifth position, the dancers bend, wriggle, hunch, contract, literally and metaphorically stepping out of the norm, namely ballet’s rigid syntax. The movements, therefore, are surprisingly unpredictable, and provide an engaging feast for the viewer’s eyes. Alas, the tension created by this unpredictability and the cyclical structure of the phrasing does not hold for the whole duration of this one-hour-long dance piece. By the time the music shifts from Joby Talbot’s daunting score to Jon Hopkins’s more thumping rhythms, the dance has become a repetition of what has been seen before, with dire consequences. Unlike Chroma, in which the crescendo of the various choreographic ideas draws upon an almost mathematically conceived game of themes and variations, in Entity this same game is played in full in the first part only, which leaves the second deflated and without drive. Even a number of projections, which appear on the swinging walls that surround the dance space, fail to compensate for the repetitiveness of the dancing. Oddly enough, the films portray molecular and bacterial behaviour (which is what Entity draws upon): constantly renewed but never repetitious.

The whole work is a splendid vehicle for Random Dance, a company that stands out for fine precision and superb technical abilities. Encased in Patrick Burnier’s monumentally spacious, though dauntingly confining set, the dancers go through what seems to be a humanly unsustainable task, never slacking or losing momentum. Indeed, it is difficult to establish to what extent the thunderous ovation at the end of the world première was a tribute to their admirable efforts rather than to the work itself.

Pure dance is difficult to handle, especially in such large quantities. In the past McGregor has clearly demonstrated his ability to create theatrically vibrant works, but I am afraid that this time he has gone more than a step or two too far.