Choreographer Richard Alston is now 70 and his latest outing at Sadler’s Wells is a greatest hits medley. As with all clip shows, some of it is super, some soporific and some merely meh. We begin with Martin Lawrance’s Detour, first performed last year. The piece is a powerful hybrid of fluid dance and martial arts: kung fu meets pas de deux. The raking lamps by designer Zeynep Kepekli spotlight dancers in washed indigo and ochre tunics. The final image of a male dancer spinning his female partner like a storm-warning weather vane is striking. The trouble with minimalist soundscapes (very Tubular Bells) is that unless the dancers control both breathing and landings, it all gets a bit huffy, puffy, thud.
Quartermark is a series of four short extracts made over the 25 years since the founding of Richard Alston Dance Company. In Fever (2001) Monique Jonas is a sun goddess in radiant bronze dress. Shimmer (2004) sees Joshua Harriette dance a melancholy swansong. In his blue sequinned tunic, Harriette is like an aging grande dame lamenting lost youth. In Bach Dances (2018) Jennifer Hayes and Ellen Yilma — the night’s standout star — shimmy with sprightly gymslip grace. Their perky precision is cheering to watch, though the piece tips perilously close to Olympic mat routine. The Signal of a Shake (2000) is a frolicsome affair. Alston’s dancers are often most effective as an ensemble. Seeing the choreographer juggle one baton or a pair is never as exciting as seeing ten members of the company in the air.
Proverb (2006) is all intellect, no intuition. To a recorded reading from Wittgenstein — ‘how small a thought it takes to fill a whole life’ — dancers in Carnaby Street costumes scatter across the stage like a Paul Klee painting brought to life.
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