Dance
Salt (Sadler's Wells)
Game of contrasts
Giannandrea Poesio
In the old ballet world, a female dancer with both an extraordinarily powerful tech- nique and an ability to sail fearlessly through the trickiest intricacies of various classics was inevitably nicknamed `pointes of steel'. Obsolete and artistically incorrect as it may sound, that definition kept spring- ing to mind while I was watching the dancers of the Quebec-based modern com- pany La La La Human Steps and their superb performance in Salt. Created in 1998, the one hour and 40 minutes-long dance focuses on, though not exclusively, dazzling feats and balletically based or inspired virtuosity. It is not, however, the kind of bravura one sees in choreographi- cally circus-like classics such as Don Quixote, Le Corsair or La Bayadere.
Salt is based on a thoroughly measured subversion of the principles set by eminent ballet masters at different times; its demanding technicalities have none of the slightly lackadaisical and ornamental man- nerisms so often associated with the ballet idiom. And so they lack the gratuitous, purely ornamental features that inform most of the challenging numbers and sequences from the old ballet repertoire.
In line with the rediscovery of choreo- graphic possibilities offered by the ballet vocabulary and its radical re-reading, Eduard Lock's choreography develops through a fast-paced and visually stimulat- ing series of sections where the dancers seem to go beyond the limits of endurance. The movement vocabulary has little in common with that used by other ballet revisionists of today, such as William Forsythe or any of his followers/imitators, and stands out for its highly distinctive approach.
The mesmerising blend of idiosyncratic characteristics from the old movement style with elements stemming from radical use of fundamentals from the old technique does not blur each ballet mode. On the contrary, the unmistakable balletic deriva- tion of the whole dance remains clear and can be recognised throughout the work. While all the female dancers perform every step on pointes, their male colleagues throw themselves into equally breathtaking sequences punctuated by easily recognis- able male virtuoso ballet steps. Even the choreographic layout and the structure of the dance seem to have been inspired by the laws of architectural symmetry that reg- ulated most of Petipa's 19th-century cre- ations — to which many choreographers, whether ballet ones or not, have referred since.
It would not be fair to state, though, that Salt is just pure dance at its best. The visu- ally violent, seemingly faster-than-light movements performed by the dancers accompanied by effective sporadic projec- tions — prompt a range of audience reac- tions. One might feel exhilarated by the action, while another might interpret the display of physical prowess and effort two features that should never be seen in a `proper' ballet — as synonymous with today's neurotic lifestyle. And there might be those who, probably inspired by the stereotype image of a woman flapping her arms while balancing on pointes, manage to find in each section specific references to well-known ballets.
I did not bother to look for references or quotations of any kind, being far more interested in the structure of the whole and its strongly effective game of contrasts between one section and another. I only wish, however, that the performance had been 30 to 40 minutes shorter, for I found that after one hour the choreography start- ed to become far too repetitive.
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