Magic moments
Giannandrea Poesio
Rambert Dance Company Sadler’s Wells Theatre Sleeping Beauty Royal Opera House
One of the many strengths of Rambert Dance Company is excellent programming. Look, for instance, at the triple bill presented last week at Sadler’s Wells, an absolute winner in terms of artistic quality, variety and sheer entertainment It kicks off with Aletta Collins’s bloom, an amusing and thought-provoking new creation that keeps crossing and recrossing the boundaries between excellent modern dance and state-of-the-art postmodern dance theatre.
Set to a winning combination of prerecorded Romanian gypsy music by Taraf de Haidouks and live music by Robert Millet, played on stage by a colourful, slightly ‘old-time’ band, bloom aims, in the words of its creator, to ‘explore the idea of creating the perfect romantic moment’. Indeed, the well-devised choreography builds on the intercutting of different narratives between a number of couples, thus taking full advantage of the commendable skills of the company’s excellent individual artists. The work sends its message out loud and clear. In a society living in the fast lane, it is not impossible to create a ‘perfect romantic’ moment, even though things might not always go the way we expect.
As the eminent dance historian Jane Pritchard remarks in her programme note, many think that Merce Cunningham’s ‘works are simply a display of challenging dance of a given length in a random setting’. Creations such as Pond Way, first presented in London last week, cannot be dismissed as purely abstract pieces, for beyond its apparent abstraction the viewer can easily discover a subtle, Chinese artlike portrait of nature in action. None of the various and visually engaging ideas reproduces faithfully the wildlife that populates a pond. And yet the movements, the placing of the dancers and the intentionally non-literal choreographic sequences immediately evoke familiar images relating to an enclosed watery environment.
This performance of Pond Way confirmed once more that Rambert dancers are among the best interpreters of Cunningham one is likely to see today. Their attention to detail and their response to the familiar and unmistakable signature features of that choreographic style are simply stunning, thus offering a unique opportunity to savour in full Cunningham’s art.
Created one year ago, Constant Speed remains an utterly superb example of contemporary dance-making. It is known by many as the ‘Einstein dance’ — the work was commissioned by the Institute of Physics as part of the Einstein Year celebrations. Rambert’s artistic director, Mark Baldwin, derived the powerfully constructed choreographic layout from Einstein’s theory on Brownian motion, while Michael Howell’s stunning designs stemmed from the theory of the photoelectric effect. One year down the line, I still find this work something to rave about.
As promised, I went back to take a second look at the Royal Ballet’s new production of Sleeping Beauty, and I am glad I did. It is now more than two weeks since the opening night, and things looked much better and more in place. Despite some persistent problems of line-keeping and musicality among the corps de ballet and some soloists, the dancing came across as more sparkling and far more stylistically consistent than on the first night.
My attention, however, was constantly captured by the incandescent performance of Marianela Nuñez as Princess Aurora. The young ballerina displayed a unique approach to the role, bestowing it with a long-unseen interpretative depth. Not many contemporary ballerinas are able to ‘act’ while performing the Rose Adage in Act I, one of the most virtuoso numbers in ballet history. Yet Nuñez established a constant rapport with the other members of the cast, thus bringing the role of the young, excited Princess fully to life. And by adding the acting layer she brought back the Rose Adage to what it originally was, namely a pas d’action, instead of turning it into the usual circus number it has long become. Her radiance matched beautifully her muchadmired technique, which is of the purest kind. In the ‘vision’ scene in Act II, she truly looked from another dimension. Her ‘calling’ gestures were irresistible and her solo stood out for sheer classical perfection.
Next to her, the dashing Thiago Soares was a splendidly Byron-esque Prince. Although he needs to fine-tune his technical approach to the noble part, his acting was excellent. As for the rest of the cast, I wish the various solo parts had been more than just competently dealt with. The sole exception was Belinda Hatley, a dancer who has a deep understanding of what style is.
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