Quantum Leaps
Birmingham Royal Ballet, Sadler’s Wells
Despite the clever in-joke/reference, Quantum Leaps is not exactly a crowd-pulling title for a ballet evening. Last week, outside Sadler’s Wells, a couple of passers-by had trouble imagining how someone could turn a television hit into a ballet. And, on the opening night, a lady was heard querying whether the programme had something to do with James Bond. Yet such an ambiguous title — Latin and scientific terms are seldom popular — fits the bill perfectly, as it encapsulates the essence of the energetic, thought-provoking modern ballet that is on offer.
Stanton Welch created Powder in 1998 to Mozart’s haunting Clarinet Concerto in A major. The ballet, which has not lost its engaging freshness, could be numbered alongside the many other choreographic tributes to the composer’s genius. Still, it is not just another dance tribute to the immortal Amadeus, but a clever dance piece that stands out for inventiveness, both in terms of structure and dramaturgy as well. Although it remains, intentionally, unclear whether the powder of the title is the powder that gentlemen and gentlewomen of Mozart’s time used for vanity purposes or the dust of history, the work is a witty reading of 18th-century mannerisms, filtered through a post-modern perspective.
According to the programme note, the female dancers represent the muses who inspired the composer, brought back to life by his own music. The mythological theme, however, is used for a number of choreographically well-conceived numbers, which stress the facetiousness, the angst and the omnipresent aura of debauchery that underscored that time and Mozart’s life in particular. Thus there is a considerable display of bare midriffs by the ladies, and bulging muscles as far as the men are concerned. For me, the most interesting aspect of this enjoyable creation is the use of a vocabulary of gestures that refer, without ever being pedantic, to the gestural codes of the epoch, reread and reinterpreted here with post-modern satire. The ballet is also an excellent vehicle for the artistic qualities of the dancers, who engage with a series of now lyrical, now pyrotechnical demands. As such, it kicked off the evening on a vibrant note.
Energy was also the main ingredient of the first of the ‘scientific’ and ‘quantum’-related ballets of the programme, David Bintley’s 2009 E=mc2, set to a commissioned score by Matthew Hindson. Obviously inspired by and based upon Einstein’s relativity theory, this is a complex four-part work, which marks, in my view, a substantial development in the choreographer’s career. Although Bintley’s familiar canon remains evident in the more lyrical passages and in the symmetrical architectures of the dance layout, the work is dominated by atypically angular, bold ideas. It is in these that the seasoned dance-goer can easily detect Bintley’s own response to the new ballet aesthetics, which challenges linearity and logical fluidity. Fortunately, such a response is never a mere adaptation of now trite formulae, but is built upon a personal, individual and thus unique investigation of the same. The result is powerful, even though there are moments of unevenness — as if a total move to new choreographic horizons had been too daring.
The third section of the ballet, mysteriously and elusively named Manhattan Project, detracts greatly from the energy of the preceding and following movements, with its Westernised and slightly repetitive adaptation of a geisha-like solo dance. Luckily, the action reverts to captivating pyrotechnics in the last part, building to a humorously intentional anti-climactic ending.
I only wish that the third and final ballet on the programme had had any of Bintley’s traits: Garry Stewart does not seem to have reinterpreted the current ballet aesthetic. His The Centre and its Opposite, to pounding music by Huey Benjamin, looks too much like one of those indistinct and unmemorable ballets created in the wake of the successes of William Forsythe and his countless followers/disciples. That is not to say that the final item on the programme is a total let-down, though. Those who are not that familiar with the very popular, and much overrated, post-Forsythe canon might still enjoy the way the choreography poses demanding challenges to both the ballet tradition and the ballet vocabulary. Indeed, The Centre and its Opposite is another perfect vehicle for the company’s talents. Throughout the evening, their dancing, though marred at times by minor imperfections, was informed by what came across as infectious enjoyment — a rare treat.
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