Ballet

Rambert breasts

Robin Young

It is many years since Ballet Rarnbert turned into the blind and puzzling alleyways of contemporary dance, and no use regretting it now. They have their following no doubt, but it is a quaint minority in which few of InY acquaintance seem to find themselves. When I have a spare ticket for the Rambert it is damnably difficult to find anyone who is willing to accompany me for the evening while for an evening at the Royal beautiful girls will throw themselves at my feet. It is an acid test of a companY's programming, no doubt, but one's friends are not all philistines by anY means, and even those who take enlightened and tolerant interest in ill-staged foreign and ethnic

cayortings fight shy when it comes to contemporary' dance. I cannot say that the Rambert's latest addition to their repertoire, Escaras, is going to heighten their

Popular appeal one bit. It is choreographed by a Puerto Rican called Manuel Alum, and if I say that it is quite as bad as anything that has been seen in London this year, regular readers will, I hope, recognise that I am not damning it with f,aint criticism. The year, after all, included . . no, we won't go into that again.

Members of the press, but nobody else apparently, had slips in -thenprogramme letting them into

the secret that Escaras means "a

casting of skins." To represent it Members of the Rambert's oddly assorted cast wander around the stage dropping cardigans and sweaters while another slouches

behind with a black plastic bag (household issue, dustmens' Strikes, for the duration of) collecting Up the discarded impedimenta. Eventually Lucy Burge is birought front stage on somebody

else's back and exposes her breasts (she actually has a pair, which will sUrprise sceptics who thought bal let dancers lacked them by definition), arousing prurient curiosity as to what the rest of the

coMpany might be about to show. Idle hope. She covers up and rolls away — the favoured form of exit in contemporary dance — and nothing More comes out.

There is a central section where all the company jump and scrabble around like particularly fractious children at an unruly party (see also Nutcracker, but there the dancers are children, and actually are meant to be misbehaving at a Party, which makes it all right), and Parts of the score, by two Poles if You will excuse my xenophobia, sOund alternately like tigers pur

ling and nightjars screeching. If we ee anything more by Senor Alum in London, I shall be surprised.

The two pieces accompanying Escaras each have something to commend them. That is the Show,

to Berio's Sinfonia, is just about the best of those unisexual allover

White ballets. It is lively, tast Moving, and eventful, even if, for lUost of us, meaningless. Sections lIke the frozen-statue poses, passed

';1\ferhead by the other dancers, or laid on the ground, have a quirkily satisfying originality. Dark Elegies, Which is hardly contemporary any More, is a dirge of distinction (not to set beside Song of the Earth as an interpretation of Mahler though) and gets a satisfactory perfor mance.