All in the mind | 21 July 2016

Mark Morris, the most musically communicative and naturally lyrical of choreographers of the past 30 years (and an absentee from London theatres for too long), made L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, a dance masterpiece of a Handel oratorio using John Milton’s words. It was a miracle of pastoral sweetness, in rustic, human, amorous dancing, bodies singing the words and all the orchestral folderols too. It came unhelpfully to mind as I watched Mark Baldwin’s new creation for Rambert to Haydn’s oratorio using Milton’s words, The Creation.

I have a lot of time for Baldwin. Under his leadership for the past 14 years, Britain’s oldest dance company has got rather good at sneaking up behind the more generously funded ships of the ballet line and landing large fish. If you walk through the bombastic South Bank, you can hardly fail to have your breath stopped by the serenely minimal new Rambert HQ, a remarkable architectural beauty made for under £20 million, fundraised by a company on a mingey £2.2 million grant. It’s Baldwin’s Rambert, rather than the richer ballet companies, that most ambitiously commissions today’s composers, so it isn’t altogether surprising to see him leaping out of the mainstream again, joining hands with Garsington Opera for The Creation.

Garsington has a stunning glass opera house sailing on green hills, offering its productions in an unusually dazzling setting with the glories of nature visible through the walls, the evening sunbeams acting as stage lighting for the first half until gradually the darkness allows the illuminator’s art to shine. In the case of The Creation, you listen to the creation of nature with the glorious products themselves visible all around. Baldwin’s dance has a heck of a lot of competition.

Dance is the main event, placed in front of the excellent Garsington Opera orchestra and chorus, who are tucked behind designer Pablo Bronstein’s splendid medieval altar screen, with trombonists and violinists glimpsed through the piercings and the solo singers appearing like angels in niches.