Choreographic legacies are tough to handle; there is always the risk of turning a once vibrant dance into a theatrically dead museum piece. The preservation of choreographic milestones is certainly paramount, but so is the need to provide artists with new challenges, especially within those companies that, having formed and thrived around a prominent artistic figure, remain too attached to their long-deceased founders’ aesthetics.
Luckily, renewal is in the air for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, as demonstrated by the 2010 piece The Hunt, choreographed by Robert Battle, who will become the company’s new artistic director in July 2011. The Hunt is a superbly fast-paced and powerfully engaging piece that moves away from the well-established canons of Ailey’s art. Only in the third and final movement can citations of his most distinctive motifs be spotted. And it is difficult to state whether this is good or bad, for while these echoes pay tribute to the company’s performance tradition, they also detract from the intense and radically innovative vibrancy of the two previous movements. Indeed, it is thanks to those subtle echoes that the innovative piece sits comfortably with the more Ailey-esque remainder of the programme, which includes his monumental Revelations (1960), George W. Faison’s dated Suite Otis (1971) and Ronald K.Brown’s 2009 Dancing Spirit — a piece that relies too much on an overstretched reutilisation of Ailey’s canons.
Performance tradition is also central to the performances by Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo — better known as the ‘Trocks’. Their unquestionable reverence for the past manifests itself through a series of hysterically funny all-male renditions of dance classics. The indefatigable, muscled and hairy-chested ballerinas are back in London with new and old goodies. Their first programme started with a version of Fokine’s Chopiniana (called here ChopEniana) that made everyone roll with laughter from the very opening.
As always the Trocks draw upon an admirably deep knowledge of the original choreography, of the ballet’s stylistic requirements and, most of all, of famous performances by contemporary and well-known artists. It is difficult for the seasoned ballet-goer not to recognise who inspired the spaced-out, deadpan premier danseur or the bully ballerina.
We were then treated to an equally irresistible rendition of a Cunningham-inspired piece, complete with two scene-stealing musicians playing all sorts of things — in line with the strictest precepts of postmodern music. This programme’s novelty, however, is the pas de six from La Vivandière starring what looked like a six-foot-five ballerina — Joshua Grant aka Katerina Bychkova — with square jaw and one of the most effective smiles ever seen. More laughter accompanied Paul Ghiselin’s, aka Ida Nevasayneva, insuperable Dying Swan. I only wish I could express the same enthusiasm for the Grand Pas Classique, which was performed in a more serious-ish way. Indeed, the technique of the male-ballerina — Chase Johnsey aka Yakatarina Verbosovich — looked impressive, but the overall performance, devoid of caricature, was far from being as exciting as it should have been.
Fortunately, this was the only fly in the ointment in a programme that concluded with a crazy send-up of the final act from the otherwise cumbersome 1898 ballet Raymonda. I can hardly wait for the second programme, which will see the Trocks engaging with an old ballet rarity — Petipa’s Harlequinade — and an old warhorse of Soviet ballet, the Walpurgisnacht ballet from the opera Faust.
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