Mark Morris Dance Group
Sadler’s Wells
Michael Clark Company
The Barbican
Sleeping Beauty
Royal Opera House
Last week, the 2009 Dance Umbrella season rolled merrily towards its end with performances by two former ‘bad boys’ of the choreographic world. Luckily, neither event looked anything like those boyband comebacks the music industry thrives on these days. After all, Mark Morris and Michael Clark never cease to amaze and enthral audiences, thus remaining, Peter Pan-like, ‘bad boys’ for much longer than actual boyhood. Interestingly, they both presented recent works that allowed seasoned dancegoers to take the pulse of their current artistic creativity.
Those who love Morris’s tongue-in-cheek reading of illustrious scores might be pleased to know that Empire Garden (2009), Charles Ives’s quotations-packed trio for violin, cello and piano, prompts a kaleidoscope of colourful and quirky ideas that surprise with their humorous inventiveness. Yet humour is not this creation’s main ingredient, as delicately darker tones and whiffs of bittersweet self-reflective nostalgia permeate the action. New ideas, hinting visually at a game of social and even political tensions, are subtly juxtaposed with brief choreographic references to some of Morris’s most recognisable signature features. The overall impression is that of an artist who, while creating a new work, has stopped briefly to look back, more or less affectionately, at his younger days’ devil-may-care approach.
Rarely before has Morris’s intentionally elusive narrative looked so splendidly sombre and dense with possibly unsettling meanings. It is indeed the calibrated chiaroscuro of emotions, images and music visualisation that turns Empire Garden into a powerful yet fluidly accessible work. Its choreographic complexity contrasted vividly with the other two items on the programme: Bedtime and V. Both set to intoxicating Romantic music, by Schubert and Schumann respectively, they stood out on account of the evergreen magic of what in the dance world is generally referred to as ‘the Morris effect’, which draws upon the sense of fluid enjoyment generated by Morris’s unique way of composing dances to great music.
Clark’s Come, Been and Gone could also be regarded as a ‘mature’ work. As such it encompasses some of Clark’s most established and recognisable traits as well as what could be seen as a new approach to dance-making. Clark’s geometric lines and movement ideas are thus transplanted to an unusually stylised choreographic environment, dominated by what would appear to be an almost detached, yet carefully vigilant approach to the creation of some breathtaking images. Not unlike Morris, Clark, too, seems to reflect on his own past, weaving into his choreography autobiographical imagery — as in the case of the solo dancer performing with hypodermics sticking, porcupine-like, out of BodyMap’s stunning costume. Set to very loud music by David Bowie, Brian Eno, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, the dance manages to flow along the various songs without ever establishing a too-trite interaction with them. The result is mesmerising. I wish there had been no interval between the two sections, as the intermission detracts from the growing intensity of the whole. Like the first of the two Morris programmes, Michael Clark’s programme included an early work, the redesigned Swamp (1986), which is a perfect introduction to the new piece.
I only wish my enthusiasm for the good contemporary dance I had seen during the week had not been so brutally crushed by a rather disappointing performance of the classic 1890 Sleeping Beauty at the Royal Opera House. I have already expressed my reservations about the current production and, in particular, about the alleged claim that it re-evokes the magic of the old Oliver Messel one — which marked a true turning point in the history of the Royal Ballet. It is not the overall lack of historical accuracy that annoys me — as most people still believe, wrongly, that the ‘British’ version of the ballet remains the nearest to the 1890 Russian original. What really upsets me is the lack of respect for the well-established and historically significant British tradition itself. Look, for instance, at the dance of the six good fairies in the Prologue, where a number of small coloratura steps and movements — treasured by Ninette de Valois and her collaborators — seems to have disappeared altogether. Each of the solos looked like a washed-up and simplified version of what, not so long ago, was still the touchstone for the technical and interpretative skills of every budding ballerina. At the performance I attended Evgenia Obraztsova was Princess Aurora. Alas, she did very little to confirm that she is the up-and-coming new Russian ballet star. Her dancing was untidy, and her interpretation non-existent. If this is what classical ballet has become, it is much better to stick to other forms of theatre dance.
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