Sparkle-free birthday

I have always loved Rambert’s artistic eclecticism. The dancers’ ability to adapt to different choreographic styles and demands goes far beyond mere technical bravura and adds greatly to their usually captivating performances. Yet superb technical skills and powerful drive alone cannot secure the success of an evening, especially when the choreography is as unexciting as that of the new mixed bill.

The programme I saw started with a cleverly paced short work. Set to the irresistible final movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, Martin Joyce’s Divine Influence is a visually pleasing duet, though hardly ground-breaking or provocative. Its outstanding quality is, arguably, its brevity, for the fast-paced sequence leaves no time to detect the weaknesses in a choreography that draws on a number of clichés and soon becomes repetitive.

Clichés are also the main ingredients of the, alas, much longer Verge by Cameron McMillan. Chairs have long been used in modern and postmodern dance and it is difficult to make them ‘say’ something that has not been said before. Similarly, gender issues have been repeatedly explored choreographically in every possible manner, and are no longer as innovative as one would like them to be. Anyone still wanting to address these issues today must find a theatrically vibrant approach that dispels the risk of déjà vu. Unfortunately, there was  no  theatrical  tension  in  Verge.

It is never easy to create good theatre, particularly when the chosen medium is ballet’s silent idiom. Look, for instance, at Mark Baldwin’s much-awaited revival of Lady into Fox. Created in 1939 by Andrée Howard, the ballet used to be one of Rambert’s most acclaimed titles. As only the central duet was ever preserved, in a silent film lasting just 12 minutes, Baldwin’s new reading stands somewhere between a reconstruction and a modern-day revisitation of the original.