Rupert Christiansen

Mel C’s debut as a contemporary dancer is impressive: How did we get here?, at Sadler’s Wells, reviewed

Plus: Royal Ballet's venerable production is a lovely treat – despite some variable dancing and orchestral playing

Grayson Perry sets off to find out what ‘the ancient people could tell us about English culture', hanging out with members of the British Druid Society (founded 1979)

‘We hope you enjoy the performance,’ announced the Tannoy before the lights went down for How did we get here? – the accent being put on ‘hope’, as though enjoyment was unlikely. I took a deep breath in anticipation of modern dance at its most portentous and pretentious, my expectations already depressed after imbibing some hot air from a note in the programme – ‘we feel our power, all the way to the edges of ourselves’ and so forth. How did we get here? Or should that be What am I doing here?

But what transpired was a thing of simple beauty: spare, precise, lucid, free of wanton gimmicks or histrionics. The choreographer Jules Cunningham (they/them) has previously worked with the companies of Merce Cunningham (no relation) and Michael Clark, and their interest in the dynamics of subtle gesture and the slow extension of limbs is something richly explored here. Emotion is not semaphored; nothing is emphatic; the atmosphere is meditative, introverted, with music treated freely. 

Cunningham dances alongside a long-time collaborator Harry Alexander and a debutante, Melanie C, formerly of the Spice Girls no less, who at the rich age of 49 gives a remarkably strong, focused and confident performance for which no allowances need be made. This trio pass through various combinations and divisions: a prayerful response to Nina Simone in which they seem both united and apart; a touchingly tentative solo for Mel C in which she appears to be recalling what she learnt at childhood ballet class; warriors limbering up menacingly for combat; ‘Dido’s Lament’ from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, played out by Cunningham prostrate on the floor; a smoochy duet for Mel C and Alexander to a melancholy song by Janis Ian, with Cunningham jamming and jiving alongside them wielding an electric guitar. Only at the end does the pace quicken and the mood brighten with the descent of a glitterball.  

Melanie C gives a strong, focused and confident performance for which no allowances need be made

Staged in the round on a translucent black surface at the stalls level of Sadler’s Wells, it all lasts an hour by the clock.

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