BALLET
Magic man
CLEMENT CRISP
The Dance Theatre of Alwin Nikolais is just about the nicest thing that has hap- pened to dancing in Britain this year; it has dispelled that lingering odour of arsenic and old pretension that has hung around much of the ballet seen recently at Sadler's Wells. and it has given us a tantalising glimpse of a master magician.
Nikolais is the creator of a theatre of marvels; he uses every trick in the now
fashionable multi-media game (which I sus- pect he invented) to delight the eye with a firework display of ideas so effortlessly clever and pretty that you wonder—as with the best conjurers---how he manages it. His theme, I would hazard, is that things are not what they seem; for him there is no barrier between the real and the imaginary, and objects as well as people are what you make them. A Walt Disney with Paul Klee's imagination and a huge sense of fun, he designs costumes, sets, dances, props, light- ing, with equal skill and also concocts the electronic sound accompaniment that burps and twitters in the background.
Nikolais's opening programme contained one long work. Imago, which is a guided tour through the eleven sections of 'The City Curious' (the piece's sub-title) situated some- where on the other side of the galaxy. Like all the best guides. Nikolais is never press- ing or insistent; with a slight wave of the hand and an amused comment, he shows us the inhabitants at work and play. There are dignitaries like animated deck-chairs. and a group of mantis-men, arms elongated with suckers, who dance and watch and bend with strange purposefulness. Down the arcade move ladies in huge bell-shaped robes while attendants carry coloured gela- tines over their heads; they pass in front of some lights, and suddenly shadows and colours are more important than people. Here are three men who have a mysterious relationship with the kites attached to their limbs; and on the boulevard at rush hour everybody is enveloped in brilliantly coloured silk bags, scurrying, colliding and occasionally thoroughly and hilariously be- wildered by the speed of it all.
And so on, and so on; it is all marvellous, witty, with a child-like delight in the un- expected and surprising. In between times, just to show that he can choreograph pleasingly for dancers tout court, Nikolais inserts a solo, and his company's visit would have been worthwhile just for the presence of Murray Louis who is a superb per- former, as controlled down to the smallest gesture as an Indian dancer, alert, subtle; a grand artist.
The second programme—a divertissement that included one major piece, Tent—was even better, or maybe we were now hooked on Nikolais, whom I find habit-forming, in the nicest possible way. In Noumenon we met three mattresses with immortal souls, struggling for expression (or maybe it was three Isadoras caught up in giant scarlet bolstercases, writing those hilarious memoirs). Tensile Involvement meant ten dancers and miles of white ribbon as the ingredients for instant sculpture of the most touching evanescent beauty.
Tent is quite simply a great ballet. It is about—if anything by Nikolais can be said to be 'about'—a vast white parachute that serves as canopy, cover, peephole, drapery and home to its cast. You can find in Tent almost anything you want—but what you actually see is beauty of light, beauty of form constantly changing and constantly renewed. By contrast Tower, part of a larger work, is a straightforward condemnation of urban America. Using a severely restricted dance language, Nikolais shows us his dancers building Babel; full of fun at first, the piece gradually grows more and more neurotic until finally the tower has been constructed. Decked with flags like a general in a Chinese opera, hung with banners initialled with all the follies of our time, it teeters for a moment with its load of humanity; then an explosion rocks the stage, bringing the curtain (and we may presume the tower) down. As a cartoon-strip it is markedly effective. In his own sweet way Nikolais must be one of the greatest theatrical talents of our time. Alas, I fear that our local lads are going to try and copy him; we, and they, had better look out.
Meanwhile, back in the grey outside world, Festival Ballet have taken up resi- dence at the Coliseum, where they look good, particularly in that lepidopterist's paradise, Pi?ge de Lumiere, which suits them very well. Unfortunately they have also chosen to bury Berlioz and his Nuits d'Ete on The Unknown Island, a spot that should have remained uncharted and is not recommended for tourists, unless you are interested in the quaint gear sported by the inhabitants, who apparently earn their livings in a mod pyjama factory. But Festi- val also pulled off a coup by luring Lynn Seymour back to London to dance one ravishing performance in their Sleeping Beauty. Miss Seymour looked gorgeous, dancing with absolute majesty; it is time someone induced her to return to London permanently, and showed her in Anastasia (among a score of other ballets), Mac- Millan's thrilling recent dramatic role for her. As ever she contrives to make most of our resident dancers look politely dull— which is bully for her, though hard luck on them—but it is scandalous that an artist of her magnitude should not be working full- time in this country.
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