Playing safe

Rambert Dance Company, Sadler’s Wells

I am more and more convinced that getting easily bored is symptomatic of growing old. Twenty years ago, when I was 24, I stopped being a ballet boy and devoted myself to writing about dance; I seldom suffered from boredom, even when watching delectable rubbish. Nowadays, as soon as I realise that things are not exactly exciting, I plunge into a disheartened state. Indeed, what I consider to be a symptom of age, others might regard as ‘experience’. And, in the end, ‘experience’ is something one acquires only by growing old. We all know that critics are supposed to be cantankerous creatures by default, but I also think there is a particular moment in the life of a critic when the ‘been there, seen that’ feeling — otherwise politely known as ‘knowledge’ or ‘experience’ — kicks in unmercifully, no matter that I have always hated, and still do, the ‘in the old days things were much better’ attitude.

Take, for instance, Rambert Dance Company’s new programme, which elicited noisily rapturous ovations from the many youngsters in the audience, as I and other fossils and dinosaurs were leaving mumbling their discontent. Rambert is a damn good company, with some technically fine-tuned artists, and I have often praised their efforts. Yet, this time I felt completely let down by a programme that came across as being flat as a deflated party balloon. What made it so, in my view, was the overall lack of daring experimentation that underscored the two London premières on the bill. Melanie Teall’s L’Eveil indulged in a constant juxtaposition of neoclassical formulae with more post-modern ones set to jazzy songs, by Kurt Weill and Leslie Bricusse (the well-known ‘Feeling Good’), performed live, though not too excitingly, by Melanie Marshall.