Dance
Choreography by the metre
Sophie Const anti
The Royal Ballet's new mixed bill is about as exciting as an insurance policy document. That, in fact, is what it is: com- prehensive cover in the likely event of criti- cal fault-finding. Read the small print between the works of its named choreogra- phers — Matthew Hart, William Tuckett, William Forsythe and Kenneth MacMillan — and you become aware of the no-risk strategy. Note the description of contents — 'white-hot and different' — and you feel cheated. Especially so in the case of Hart and Tuckett, who are being marketed as the Royal's young, talented apprentice choreographers. Both have delivered luke- warm, timid ballets.
Fanfare, 21-year-old Hart's first work for the company, is 15 minutes' worth of Everyballet: familiar sequences composed of familiar steps and punctuated with quo- tations from heritage fare. The piece takes its title from Brian Elias's bright and ener- getic score and is danced by three couples. Zoltan Solymosi and Belinda Hatley head the proceedings with minimal authority and reveal the fundamental flaw of Hart's choreography — its monotonous response to the music and its knee-jerk aesthetic.
Similar flaws are evident in William Tuckett's new ballet, If This is Still a Prob- lem. Tuckett, 24, whose earlier works for the Royal — Enclosure and Present Histo- ries — broke few rules but did illustrate the choreographer's ability to create interesting tensions across personal relationships on stage, now seems to have surrendered his last reserves of individuality in an uneasy effort to do the right thing. That means producing ballets which fit the bill, and which mask the symptoms of the Royal Ballet's biggest problem — its lack of new choreographers.
While Hart, perhaps, should not be judged on the basis of a single work, Tuck- ett seems to have hit an important juncture in his career. Either he has run out of steam and turned, literally overnight, into a faceless dancemaker who, if asked, can deliver choreography by the metre. Or, in a calculated move, he has decided that it would be in his best interests to subscribe to the Gospel of Getting On. And watching If This is Still a Problem, one's first and depressing conclusion is that, for all the wrong reasons — floaty dresses in pastel hues, stray hints of artistic confidence — this ballet is likely to have a far longer shelf-life than Tuckett's previous works.
For a start, there is his placing of Lesley Collier in a central role. Until now, Tuckett has worked mainly with a small band of favourite colleagues such as Dana Fouras, Leire Ortueta and Adam Cooper. Sudden- ly, he is observing hierarchy both as a sys- tem — putting Collier and principals Jonathan Cope and Stuart Cassidy at the helm of the work — and as a structure for choreography — framing and contrasting solos, duets and trios with group activity,. Then there is his choice of music, Ravel's tricksy Piano Trio, and the accompanying subliminal message that the eye is seeing something which is of equivalent status to what the ear can hear. But neither Tuckett nor Hart's choreography is musically inter- esting, and their new-arrangements-of-old- steps ballets which incorporate serious music and expensive designs (Fanfare has a set and costumes by Yolanda Sonnabend,) register as soulless examples of a tired old formula.
In tandem with its attempts to convince us that a new and glorious era of in-house choreography is dawning, the Royal is busi- ly updating its image. Eighteen months ago the company acquired William Forsythe's brash, brutal and very 1990s In the middle, somewhat elevated. Now a second Forsythe ballet, Herman Schmerman, has entered the repertoire. Its first, dimly-lit section is 'Mine says, "A cat will enter your life and take over".' for three women (Nicola Tranah, Deborah Bull, Benazir Hussein) and two men (Nunn and Tetsuya Kumakawa), who capture the menace and petulance of Forsythe's phras- es and work their bodies around every smooth dislocation of his physical lan- guage.
In the subsequent duet, Sylvie Guillern and Adam Cooper engage in some light- hearted competition, challenging each other with snatches of dance, deserting each other in mid-motion and vying for attention in Gianni Versace's costumes. Cooper ends up wearing only a yellow, accordion-pleated miniskirt; Guillem wears one too, but the gauzy, transparent top of her black leotard and the perfect breasts which it barely conceals are, understand- ably, the real attraction of the evening.
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