BAT J .ET
Yawnography
CLEMENT CRISP
Let me state at once that I am a great admirer of Glen Tetley's choreography; his ballets seem to me to be among the most exciting and rewarding works produced during the last decade. In this same period Nederlands Dans Theater has established itself as a bold and adventurous troupe with a staggering record of creativity : ten ballets a year is the norm. Inevitably, there must have been some stinkers among them, though until the opening programme of the company's visit to Sadler's Wells last week, we had not seen anything too dispiriting.
To get the worst over first : the world premiere of Hans van Manen's Twice intro- duced a thing that seems to me to be one of the most loathsome pieces staged by a re- putable company since those dark days when Bal des Voleurs and labez and the Devil lurched in and out of the Royal Ballet's repertory. Twice is devoted to the relent- less jiggling usually seen on those mindless TV programmes featuring pop singers; it is danced to 'soul music', an inaccurate enough term for a vulgar din that is plainly un- musical and entirely soulless, which reaches a nadir of awfulness when a male voice bawls unintelligibly about a sex machine. As an introduction to dancing for stone- deaf and retarded adolescents it might just do; on any other terms it is insufferable. The other ballet, Glen Tetley's Mutations, with film clips choreographed by Hans van Manen, has gained notoriety with that irre- sistible bait for the new permissive audi- ence: full frontal nudity—a supposedly piquant sauce that I fear is going to be served up far too often in the future to dis- guise any amount of stale old meat. Muta- tions, indeed, is a disappointment precisely because Tetley has reworked ideas that he has already expressed, succinctly and beau- tifully, in Arena. Ricercare and Freef all. He has also sought, I surmise, to develop
the contrast between 'natural' freedom and the stilted conventions of costume, and to study the distance that exists—intellectually and physically—between dancers and audience, and between dancers on film and dancers on stage. But he has not succeeded in welding these various themes into a con- vincing whole.
As for the nudity, a slow motion film reveals that a nude male dancer has com- plete control over every muscle except one, while the stage activity combines the terrible solemnity of bare bottoms brandished like the flags of the new freedom with a coy 'now you see it, now you don't' air that recalls the dear dead days of fan dancers. (One film clip even shows a duet between a nude male and a clothed female: a quaint distinction.) • Well, like justice, it has not only been done, but has been seen to be done, and let us hope that there's an end of it. Any- one for nude opera?
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