Dave St-Pierre, A little tenderness for crying out loud, Warwick Arts Centre, April 26
The final scene in A little tenderness, for crying out loud (photo: Dave St-Pierre)
‘Tough, romantic, desperate, angry, funny and full of longing…disarmingly frank and yet often profoundly private, animated by a playful and ironic wit’. These words could well describe Dave St-Pierre’s A little tenderness for crying out loud, but they were in fact applied to the retrospective of Tracy Emin’s work at the Hayward Gallery last year, which happened to coincide with the appearance of Dave St-Pierre’s company at Sadler’s Wells in June. Perhaps because Emin’s work is visual art, the words seem rather dry for the sexual subject matter, but there is a seriousness to the tone of the description, if not reverence. It is evidently more difficult to take seriously a choreographer who unleashes naked men with falsetto voices and blonde wigs into the auditorium, but unless we can get past such antics and take Dave St-Pierre seriously, his contribution to contemporary dance can all too easily be misunderstood as gratuitously provocative. There was a welcome opportunity to see St-Pierre’s A little tenderness for crying out loud once again on these shores just last week, at the Warwick Arts Centre, as part of the International Dance Festival Birmingham.
In his hometown of Montreal, Dave St-Pierre is an iconic figure in the dance universe (and the dance universe in Montreal is rich and varied). He is not a prolific choreographer, but he has just completed a new work, the final part of a trilogy that in 2009 St-Pierre did not know if he would be able to complete. St-Pierre has cystic fibrosis and was then waiting for a lung transplant (which he has since received). He used two weeks of that time to create Over My Dead Body, a work that viewed his own departure from those he loved, his death and burial (with the incomparable Éric Robidoux, in a blonde wig and gorilla suit, as gravedigger, chief mourner and jester). For most of the performance St-Pierre was attached by a breathing tube to an oxygen tank, taking the metaphor of attachment, which pervades his work, to another level of meaning. But there was no sense of self-pity in this work; it was a masterful dosage of heartbreak, fortitude, and irreverent laughter as he mercilessly lampooned Quebec’s most visible icon, Céline Dion, in her role as celebrity patron of the Cystic Fibrosis Society of Canada. The ending was St-Pierre, unplugged from the breathing tube, dancing slowly, ecstatically, upstage through two enormous gates (heaven or hell, you choose) which slowly close behind him. St-Pierre’s fierce spirit to live his art to the very end was what triumphed. Which leads quite naturally to the performance last Thursday at the Warwick Arts Centre.
St-Pierre is uncompromising in presenting his ideas. The aspect of his works most widely enjoyed, discussed and criticized (sometimes, one suspects, all together) is the element of nakedness (not to be confused with nudity). In any performance of his you can guarantee that everyone in the cast will have left their clothes in the wings, or dropped them on stage. For St-Pierre, clothing is another form of emotional attachment. Nakedness is his metaphor.
As the audience arrives, Éric Robidoux, unashamedly naked in a blonde wig, seated on one of a long line of chairs at the back of the (evidently) bare stage, waves and says hello to anybody whose eye he can catch. He maintains a falsetto banter with the audience while other members of the company shuffle and push along rows in the auditorium, sitting in empty seats until the ticket holder arrives, sitting on laps, ruffling hair. They play like kids (the dancers are referred to throughout as girls and boys), only returning home to the stage at the sound of a bell, when Sabrina (the inimitable Enrica Boucher), the mistress of ceremonies, walks icily across the stage to take up court and begin the show. Her role is to comment on the action, and to stimulate audience participation. From the seats at the back of the stage, a girl and boy get up to face each other. In what seems like an eternity, she tries to elicit a response from her partner, who remains totally impassive. Her vocal and physical gestures increase in desperation until she finally gives up. “I’m tired” she says and walks back to her chair. It happens again with another couple. She goes one step further, flinging herself on her impassive partner, flailing wildly as she turns her violent gestures on herself. She, too, has to desist and returns dejectedly to her chair. Sabrina brings her microphone to centre stage and in her dominatrix, smooth voice, comments disdainfully, “I used to be just like her. It hurts just to look at her.” She turns to the audience. “Let’s talk about you now. You are awfully quiet. Shall we talk about tenderness? I think I can smell fear. There is no fourth wall, so when I ask you something, you have to respond.” It is at this point that naked boys are unleashed into the auditorium while the girls fight near the stage. The girls are screaming, tearing at each other’s clothes, throwing shoes, kicking and scratching. The men are by contrast having fun cavorting with the audience before returning to their seats at the back of the stage and masturbating in unison under the cover of their wigs before once more putting on their clothes.
“Congratulations!” exclaims Sabrina. “You have just survived the first twenty minutes of the show.” A boy enters with a cake for her. “What should I eat, the boy or the cake?” The audience expectantly chooses the boy. “I see there are cannibal tendencies in the audience.” She removes her thong and sits on the cake, ravishing it. “Who wants the cherry?”
A lesson in mathematics follows, a brief dissertation on the origins and significance of the number 2, at the end of which Sabrina states, “I hate the number 2”. The dancers form couples, and it becomes immediately clear from the manipulation of the girls in a grunting, brutish set of lifts and embraces why Sabrina prefers the indivisible number 1.
The boys are undressed and in their wigs again, which means falsetto voices. Another lesson in basic mathematics. Each boy in turn runs on to the stage with their bundle of clothes and announces their number. Numbers 1 through 4 manage the exercise, but number 5 (Robidoux, of course) messes up the game by miming his number and keeping numbers 6 through 8 unable to complete the game. Robidoux is a powerful force within the company, a gifted mime who improvises his role to brilliant comic effect. After several permutations of the game, the boys put on their clothes again and what follows is a ritual of violent self-denigration, a series of face slapping to the repeated chant of frappe-moi (hit me). One can see the reddening marks on their stoical faces as they increase the impact of the slaps.
In a small rectangle of light, a girl dances her personal crisis with such natural, ingenuous gesture that we could be seeing her in her room. The gestures amplify over the course of the music, a plaintive love song. During this private moment of disillusion and growing despair, each boy walks over to her, drawn to her pain and longing, to give her a kiss on the cheek, a gesture of comfort. It is one of the few moments of tenderness in the entire work. The girl walks out of her rectangle along a sliver of light across the stage, distracted, falling into the arms of whoever is there to catch her. Everyone is walking up and down the stage, like pedestrians on the street, ignoring her, caught up in their own lives. The rhythm of the walks increases to running, a panic, as the girl’s inner storm affects those around her.
Sabrina, the model of cynical self-control, is herself affected. It is her turn to break down. In using her cynicism to counter a loss of tenderness, she has missed out on the very emotion she craves. “I am so tired. I can’t entertain you anymore. You have to entertain yourselves now.” The cast brings plastic bottles of water on to the stage, holding one in each hand. Sabrina sneers at the audience. “You are shitting yourselves now, aren’t you?”
To Arvo Pärt’s hauntingly beautiful Spiegel im Spiegel, the company raises the bottles over their heads, emptying the water. The poignancy of the music imbues the movement with an almost transcendent beauty, and the movement gives a physical form to the music. While the cast slither slowly to the back, Sabrina walks among the discarded bottles, like searching for the wounded in the aftermath of a battle. Resigned to change, she removes the last vestige of her isolation – her clothes – and launches herself smoothly across the floor, gliding through the film of water like a swan. When the others join her, she sits at the side of the stage and watches the naked, frolicking, bodies losing themselves in guileless play until they each come to rest in the slippery arms of a partner. Sabrina launches herself once again, sailing around the islands of couples, in search of a welcome harbor. Finding none, she curls up by herself in the watery dark.
‘How about a little fucking tenderness’ would be a more accurate translation of the French title of this work, and in keeping with its raw meaning, the movement vocabulary is drawn directly from sexual arousal, a grammar of the private place, the explosive inner territory of the passions. St-Pierre doesn’t have far to go to find such physical expressions, but it takes a strong commitment from a company to perform in his language and they deserve the standing ovation they receive. There is something heroic in the performance, a passionate, full-on, effusive, wild and tender journey that resolves in a final apotheosis that works precisely because of what has gone before. It is a moment in the process of opening up, not the ending.
Dave St-Pierre will be presenting the final work in his trilogy, tentatively titled coup de foudre, on July 3 and 4 at Julidans in Amsterdam.
After publishing my review of William Forsythe’s Artifact (Inside the mind of William Forsythe, April 22), I got an email from Kathryn Bennetts with a comment about the curtain in Part 2. I had suggested that the curtain made too much noise, and that surely Forsythe would have wanted something less clumsy that did not detract from the music. Bennetts said she had received messages from people who had seen the original production, who complained the curtain did not come down loudly enough. Could this have been simply because the curtain in 1984 was controlled manually, or because Forsythe the enfant terrible was deliberately flouting theatrical convention (as he does elsewhere during the evening) to keep his audience off guard? If the latter, it reveals a deep seam of wit and conceit throughout the work. Interestingly, Clement Crisp loses patience with precisely this kind of conceit in his review of Artifact for the Financial Times (on.ft.com/I8B7LP).
Perhaps we should be careful not to take William Forsythe too seriously after all. Going back to that photographic portrait of him in the Sadler’s Wells program, isn’t there on that intelligent face the smile of a court jester?
Royal Ballet Flanders, William Forsythe’s Artifact at Sadler’s Wells, Saturday April 21.
There is a photograph of William Forsythe in the Sadler’s Wells program, a beautifully lit portrait in which his disembodied head and hands emerge from the darkness. If you take a quick glance at the portrait, he is smiling, welcoming; but if you focus on his left eye it is quite severe, dark, critical, and the right one shows love, forgiveness and humour. Focus on the smiling mouth, and it rises up at the right into the possibility of a smirk. What exactly is going on inside William Forsythe’s head at that moment?
In 1984, when Forsythe was given the direction of the Ballett Frankfurt, he created a new work for his company, which he called Artifact. It is a work about what was going on inside his head during that brief, three-week period of heightened creativity that was required to bring it out. The work is essentially a portrait, though of course it is created, edited, somewhat artificial. An artifact.
Part 1 of this ballet in four parts opens with the enigmatically named The Other Person (first soloist Eva Dewaele) appearing in a procession of one across the bare stage on a diagonal from downstage right to upstage left, arms calmly rising, like the woman in Balanchine’s Serenade who leads off the final procession from downstage left to upstage right. As an opening statement, it is both an acknowledgement and an undoing: we may have come from there, Forsythe seems to say, but we are not going in the same direction. Once The Other Person has disappeared, enter the Character in Historical Costume (Kate Strong), a baroque presence with a flourish of welcome. To counteract this voluble female force is The Man with a Megaphone (Nicholas Champion), a 20th-century, nagging, rational male with a low battery. The unlikely scene is set. We are invited to step inside the mind of William Forsythe.
Here is the first broad sweep of movement across the stage in which the dancers of Royal Ballet Flanders give us a first taste of the kind of unity they can bring to their ensemble work. The group re-forms around the stage, and from it escapes the first duet by principals Aki Saito and Wim Vanlessen. This is the first time we see Forsythe’s language of pulled out lines and off balance lifts and promenades, the breaking of the classical lines. A second duet of first soloist Yurie Matsuura and corps member David Jonathan is more restrained but with the same neo-classical grammar. This appears to be familiar choreographic territory, but we are seeing it almost 30 years on, after several imitators have picked up Forsythe’s formal ideas without the intention. Despite its age, Artifact maintains its interest precisely because the intention is still very much alive and vibrant.
Part 2 is set to J.S. Bach’s hauntingly beautiful Chaconne in D Minor, the final movement of the Partita in D Minor, played in a recording by Nathan Milstein, to the accompaniment of his heavy breathing. The actors have retired; this is the movement of the dance untrammeled by any nattering dialectic. The corps de ballet lines the stage and the same two couples repeat material from their first movement duets, but here the music adds its own flowing lines to theirs, transforming it with its intimacy and complexity. The duets end magically as the four dancers merge into the two lines of the corps as they exit across the stage. Whatever Forsythe’s reason for bringing in the curtain during this second act, he surely would never have wanted the sound of the curtain hitting the stage to obtrude as much as it did at Sadler’s Wells.
Part 3 starts without warning; surprised audience members shuffle back to their seats as the action continues on stage. This is not the first time Forsythe seems to step out of his role of choreographer to comment on audience conventions, before diving back into the action. And dive he does. After an opening off-balance, inside-out solo by corps member, Joseph Hernandez, the action descends into madness, stage elements are knocked down and the dance form deconstructed to the accompaniment of Forsythe’s own soundscape in which Bach’s Chaconne appears to be played backwards and The Character in Historical Costume repeats her phrases as rapidly as an auctioneer. The curtain comes down to applause and a solitary and unapologetic boo.
The solo piano, played throughout by the redoubtable Margot Kazimirska, returns with Part 4. Dance form reasserts itself as repeated patterns build up in a remarkable spatial complexity. Towards the end, The Other Person seems to draw into her body all the madness and chaos of the preceding movement. The two speaking characters continue their declamations, to less purpose. The storm has passed; calm is restored. The journey over, and it is time to step outside. The light has gone; all is silence.
This is the kind of work that draws out all the resources of a company and Royal Ballet Flanders has risen to the challenge admirably. The work has been carefully and lovingly put together by the director, Kathryn Bennetts, who was Forsythe’s rehearsal director for 15 years. There will never be abstract dance as long as the dance emanates from the mind of a person, even if not all of its content is readily understandable. Because Forsythe laid bare so much of himself in this seminal work for his new company, by the end of Artifact you feel you have made a journey of discovery that brings you closer to the human condition. It is a credit to the company that they have managed to achieve this so convincingly.
Usually one receives presents on one’s birthday, but legendary BBC dance producer, Bob Lockyer, decided to celebrate his 70th birthday by asking his dance friends to commission a work or select one of their own to present at an evening of dance at The Place. There was a private showing on April 12th, and an opportunity for the public to see the works the following evening. Bob stipulated that the proceeds from the two evenings would benefit one of two charities: the Royal Philharmonic Society Drummond Fund and The Place’s Pioneering Fund. Among the Lockyer luminaries who contributed to the program were Dame Monica Mason, Robert Cohan, Mark Baldwin, Richard Alston, Siobhan Davies and Wayne McGregor.
The public evening gets underway with Drone, danced by two students from the London Contemporary Dance School, Drew Hawkins and the choreographer, Andy Macleman, to music of The Haxan Cloak. The costumes have the elegance of Quaker simplicity, and the movement itself alternates quiet austerity with bursts of energy. The two dancers set up an intense but sympathetic dynamic between them in both spirit and touch. It is a work of surprising maturity.
It is not often that pointe shoes and classical ballet steps grace the stage at The Place, but Dame Monica Mason’s commission, Papillon, by Royal Ballet School dancer and choreographer, Sebastian Goffin, reminds us just how far the language of dance has developed since the 1830s. Using Dvorak’s Silent Woods, played on stage by Rebecca Herman and Andrew Saunders, Goffin creates a romantic picture of young love and abandoned scholarship in rustic Kensington Gardens with the delightful Mayara Magri and Skyler Martin, both dancers at the Royal Ballet School.
Mark Baldwin’s contribution is Prayer, for four girls from the Rambert Dance Company, each revealing their respective lyrical qualities in a series of solos and forming a remarkably harmonious ensemble. Hannah Rudd’s solo would make any heart melt and the fiddler, Stephen Upshaw, plays a solo within a solo during a section of Julian Anderson’s score, while the dancers look on. His movements are unchoreographed and utterly true to form. A revelation.
Richard Alston is clearly an esteemed colleague of Bob Lockyer because he is responsible for two offerings of the evening. Jo Kondo’s music, Isthmus, sets the tone for the first little gem. And it is little, although the dancers – all from the Richard Alston Dance Company – make it seem so much bigger.
The Way it Works is This… could have been the beginning of Eddie Nixon’s opening discourse, but Orlando Gough uses it as a starting point to frame a series of isolated phrases in a soundscape for Charlie Morrissey’s consummate dance of the same name. Brilliant. Siobahn Davies commissioned this, and chose the projected images from the work of Étienne-Jules Maray representing some of the earliest attempts to record movement photographically (I’m reading from the notes). Morissey’s thoughtful work, like Gough’s soundscape, is a lot of fun and its roots go way back to the minimalist contemporary dance of New York’s Judson Dance Theatre, something Bob would appreciate.
Robert Cohan’s choice is significant for both Bobs. These two go back a long way, which may be why In Memory is chosen, but it also clearly holds memories for Cohan, and there is a passion in the work that is life size. Set to a gorgeous score by Hindemith, his Sonata for unaccompanied viola (played beautifully on stage by Alistair Scahill), this extract of the work sees four men from Alston’s company dancing together until a girl in red with Cleopatra eyes, Nancy Nerantzi, arrives, which is where the passion really begins.
Wayne McGregor offers one of the most beautiful commissions of the evening, Lake Maligne, by Royal Ballet choreographic apprentice, Robert Binet. It is inspired by the paintings of Lawren Harris, one of Canada’s iconic Group of Seven and known for his luminous paintings of the Great White North. Well, the luminosity comes through in the dancing of Daniela Neugebauer of Random Dance. Binet’s choreography is fluid and suits Neugebauer’s qualities beautifully. Her hands and arms turn and reach and then come to perfect rest, articulating shapes that stay in the imagination, while the sonorous voice of Bill Callahan is like dark clouds on a summer day. Neugebauer is totally convincing, her eyes know exactly where and how to focus. Everything is just right, and the audience senses it.
Richard Alston’s big, final present is Shuffle It Right, to the irrepressible music of Hoagy Carmichael. Performed by eight of Alston’s dancers, everyone enters into the swing of the music, on stage and in the audience. This is a great way to end a memorable evening.
This is the kind of performance that could and should be shown on the BBC. It would be a fitting tribute to the man who devised it, but since there has been an evident change in thinking about what public broadcasting can present since Bob Lockyer’s pioneering days, what is familiarly known as Bob’s Bash will have to wait in the wings for a reappraisal of the value of dance production on public television.
The Royal Ballet: Triple Bill (Wheeldon, Scarlett & McGregor)
I wrote part of this review before I had seen the performance. It is an interesting exercise. We all have our preconceptions, however hard we try to hide them. Leo Stein, the keenly perceptive art critic who was eclipsed by his younger sister, Gertrude, said ‘Criticism makes, explains and justifies discriminations.’ But I am relieved to say that the Royal Ballet Triple Bill produced reactions that I had not contemplated and forced me to ditch most of what I had written and start again.
By now you all know who presented what at the #ROHTriple, and for those who still don’t, it’s possibly too late to remember. Much has already been said about the performances, but for this tortoise of a writer, analyzing the evening kept serving up new perceptions that made me return to the printed program, to my notes, to the book I was reading at the time, and back to this page. One of the premises of quantum theory is that by the very act of watching, the observer affects the observed reality. Here, then, are my final thoughts. For now.
Christopher Wheeldon’s Polyphonia opens the evening. This is a revival, first performed by the Royal Ballet in 2003, and originally created for New York City Ballet. The acknowledgement to Balanchine is clear as soon as the curtain rises. Everything is stripped down, and it is a question of watching the music, which is also stripped down to solo piano works by György Ligeti. Wheeldon saw in these a ‘complex, twisted, layered world’ that he presents brilliantly in a series of dances for four couples that rely for their effect on musical and spatial timings. This particular performance is not helped, however, by a less than rigorous execution with the notable exception of Itziar Mendizabal and Dawid Trzensimiech who finish the 8th variation together with a glorious flourish. Overall, however, there is something missing. I happen to be sitting next to the former headmistress of a prestigious boarding school for girls who had seen Polyphonia in its original production for the Royal Ballet and had loved it. With that skillful eye and practiced tone of a wise pedagogue, she articulates the problem precisely. “Yes, it’s a little rough around the edges.”
Next up is Sweet Violets, the new work of soloist Liam Scarlett. For those who saw his Asphodel Meadows last year, this is a departure into narrative with a decidedly emotional palette. I don’t think it is particularly successful in itself, for the reasons outlined below, but it is an important step for a young choreographer developing the range of his art.
Sweet Violets, I learned, was the Irish song the prostitute Mary Kelly was heard singing in the early hours of the morning she was murdered. Tackling Jack the Ripper’s psychopathic killing of prostitutes in the late 19th century’s grimy London poses a particular challenge to a company with beautiful dancers who are all good looking, fit, refined, and graceful. Their costumes are bright and neatly laundered, Health and Safety have washed and starched the sheets, and the artist’s studio is beautifully lit and clean. No trace here of the grubby, stifling atmosphere of Sickert’s paintings. Most remarkably, in the aftermath of the two grizzly murders, there is not a drop of blood on the sheets (Health and Safety again, no doubt). If this wasn’t enough of a challenge, the score, Rachmaninoff’s beautifully played Trio élégaique, is just too elegantly passionate to support the story of a psychopathic killer and his coterie of low-life friends and prostitutes. What comes out at best was sweet violence.
But there is a much more fundamental problem with the work, and it concerns the plot itself. A reprinted article in the program by the eminent art critic, Martin Gayford, ridicules Patricia Cornwell’s book (which I was reading at the time) accusing Walter Sickert himself of being the Ripper, and Scarlett insists in his Performance Note that the various claims of Sickert’s involvement in the crimes have all now been ‘widely discredited’. So why is one of the most convoluted of the discredited theories – the so-called royal conspiracy involving Queen Victoria’s grandson, Eddy – woven into the plot of Sweet Violets even though Eddy, at the time of the murder of Emily Dimmock, had been dead some fifteen years and the aristocratic, face-slapping prime minister, Lord Salisbury, had died four years before? This is important because by adopting this conflation of a plot, and by avoiding any suggestion that Sickert was the Ripper, Scarlett is now burdened with an implausible cast of characters who do not form a cohesive narrative.
What a shame that in a company of such apparent resources as the Royal Ballet, no dramaturg, no outside eye, seems to have worked with the choreographer during the creation of Sweet Violets to flag these potential problems, for it is the plot’s flaw that undermines all other aspects of the production. John Macfarlane’s sets and David Finn‘s lighting are strikingly beautiful (even if the studio is too clean and bright), but the numerous set changes just sap the energy of the work. The real tragedy is that Scarlett’s choreography is lost in the fray, victim of too many ill-defined characters (and wonderful dancers) in search of something to do.
Who comes off best of the evening? It is without a doubt Wayne McGregor’s Carbon Life, the work that closes the evening to applause from a young (you could tell by the cheers) and enthusiastic audience. Not that I like the choreography particularly, but it delivers where the other two pieces, for different reasons, do not. It is the one work that is slick, well produced (brilliantly inventive lighting by Lucy Carter), well danced, well rehearsed and seems to achieve what it sets out to do. Whatever that is.
It will soon be in the hands of Kevin O’Hare to plot the future artistic course of the Royal Ballet. Having Wayne McGregor as resident choreographer brings to the company elements that other choreographers of a more classical stripe could use: dynamism, brilliant production values, and raw energy wrapped in a contemporary idiom. But McGregor can by no means claim the high ground in choreographic language and is evidently not interested in narrative work, in which the Royal Ballet has traditionally excelled. Seeing this program is to see three creators who offer excellent and complementary qualities. Bringing them together might be just the kind of legacy Dame Monica Mason is proud to leave, and finding a judicious path that can embrace their diverse talents and nurture their development will keep Kevin O’Hare occupied for a good while.
Reading the Sunday Telegraph Seven magazine today for coverage of the arts, where there is a lovely picture of Susan Sarandon on the cover. “Will she ever act her age?” Should any of us act our age? What on earth does it mean? Inside there is an article on the vanishing garden, a report on Daniel Everett’s fascinating work on language based on his experience with the Piraha tribe in the Amazon, a lengthy criticism of Damien Hirst’s retrospective at Tate Modern by Andrew Graham-Dixon, five pages of book reviews, and four single pages of criticism, one each on Theatre, Opera, Film and finally Dance. This last, by Louise Levene, is called Failure to Fly. Could this be a metaphor for the state of dance coverage?
With all due respect, who really cares if critics like a show or not if they do not take us beyond the gate of their own judgment and out into the field of well written appreciation? I am a fan of the restaurant reviews (not so much the general rants) of Giles Coren, who makes no bones about what he likes and what he doesn’t, but he says so in the context of the provenance and preparation of food in general, which he clearly loves. So even a bad review is uplifting to read, and a good one is a treat. A review that points only at the state of the reviewer is a downer. One egregious example in the dance sphere is Luke Jennings’ review of Dave St-Pierre at Sadler’s Wells*. After his fit of pique at the opening salvo of naked men cavorting among the audience, he should never have attempted a review, because all that came out was his tantrum.
After managing tours for a company of 14 dancers where one of the nagging concerns at each venue was if there would be enough people in the audience, I attended my first literary festival two years ago and was amazed to find a theatre sold out to listen to an author being interviewed on stage. Well, it was Melvyn Bragg, but subsequent literary festivals attest to the same attraction beyond the book between authors and readers. It is incredibly stimulating. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a discussion about dance at these festivals to raise the level of appreciation? Dame Monica Mason at Hay next year? Yes please.
In listening to BBC Radio 3, it occurs to me that it is not only a great champion of classical music, composers and musicians but also an enormous and effective marketing machine for the dissemination of classical music concerts throughout the country. More discussion about dance on the radio would be welcome, but dance performance belongs clearly with TV. But where is the coverage? I’m afraid So You Think You Can Dance does not do it. That belongs more to a cultural coliseum where the thumbs up or down of judges elevate or humiliate a given dance gladiator. I may be wrong, but I don’t think this is generating new audiences for ballet or contemporary dance. The broadcast to art house cinemas of live performances of dance, however, is a promising step in the right direction.
But there is always the writing about dance that can help raise the profile of the art in the national press and thus in the mind of the general public. There are some great examples in the past and in the present. Failure to fly in this field is not an option if dance is to re-forge its place beside the other arts.
* Soon after writing this Luke reminded me of something I had forgotten: that we had known each other when he was in the year above me at the Rambert School. We have since met and talked, though not yet about this.
I think Southern Railways is taxing evening shows in London. The last cheap online train ticket leaving London is for the 21:47, so I booked it hoping the New Dance Commissions at the Linbury Studio Theatre on March 29 would be short enough that I could sneak out right at the end and still catch the train. The price of the next two trains goes up by £10 and with these advance off peak tickets, if you miss a train and come across a surly collector at the barrier, you are sent to the ticket counter where you have to pay for a new ticket at the full price of £25. When I arrive at the Linbury and ask when the performance will finish, I realise if I am going to catch that 21:47 I will miss Freddie Opoku-Addaie’s new work, so I decide to take the risk and take a later train. What is the point of going to see new work and leaving before the end? I convince myself it is worth the extra £25 (otherwise the sudden shock of having to pay £25 on top of what you have already paid has a strong chance of ruining the evening).
When not in London, I am looking after my mother on the south coast and the television in the house is quite often on for long tracts of time. I moved up into the attic because the volume on the TV is quite high even though my mother can hear the cat flap open and close three rooms away. In the attic I am insulated against the antiques game commentary and the other three antiques knock-off programs during the day, not to mention the cooking programs and the endless news. So Sarah Dowling’s Remote strikes a nerve and I am in turn agreeing with the proposition (that the remote makes us remote) and railing against its manifestation on stage. Yes, it’s all so false, illusionary, reality-deprived, crass nonsense. Much as I want the dancers to smash the TVs, these sets are too cleverly designed (by Tim Adnitt and Becs Andrews) as lighting sources and sound consoles to destroy them, and besides there are 2 more performances. I spend too much time wondering why the costumes are like that to enjoy the movement, as if the costumes have a narrative that the movement does not support, or the movement is so successfully disembodied and emotionally estranged that the costumes are a distraction. And then after the duets it all stops, as if my mother had turned off the remote mid-program in time for dinner.
Laïla Diallo is beautiful. I saw her in Montreal in Sense of Self with Mélanie Demers where she wears a black gorilla head for some of the time, but I much prefer seeing her as she is here, a fellow traveler in her latest work, Hold Everything Dear. The themes of migration and the dislocation of travel are so beautifully captured from the first moment. The way the dancers cross the stage and leave a different pattern of strewn persons and baggage is as if in a dream (another quality of constant travel). And remember that Guy Hoare is lighting it, so it looks exactly like it is supposed to. Everyone is in transit, even the musicians, which is why Jules Maxwell, the pianist and music director, can never sit at his keyboard. The music is just right, a gypsy flavour, with an air of traveling, moving, never quite belonging. And then the walking transforms into dance, beautifully evocative solos of looseness and freedom. I am reading Andrew Graham-Dixon’s biography of Caravaggio (whom Guy Hoare may well have helped to light his subjects in an earlier existence). Caravaggio’s central figures are beautifully lit, while the secondary figures fade into the blackness, features barely visible, yet present. Look at The Calling of Saint Matthew and the second version of his St. Matthew and the Angel for examples. Similarly, Laïla’s solo fades from light into dusk, yet you see it all, because what is essential can be seen, moving. At one point the strikingly rich voice of Gabi Froden cuts through the shadows, the voice as a beacon in the dark, leading you, encouraging you. Solo dances just drift into being in the crossing patterns. Theo Clinkard (whose colours and costumes are an integral part of the beauty of the piece) and Helka Kaski dance with equal fluidity and sinuousness. I remember the stillness of Laïla standing on a pier, looking out over the water. How many times have you been there, dreaming, feeling the breeze on a summer evening? Then imperceptibly I am watching a duet with Laïla and Theo and I say to myself no, that’s not supposed to happen here, there’s a link missing. Time stops drifting and even the fluidity of the duet cannot bring back the dreamlike passing of time. It feels like a later part of the project has been stitched on to the earlier mosaic, a few pages missing in between. Perhaps it will find its own place in the fullness of the work that will be developed during a residency at Bath ICIA in May. I have confidence Laïla can do it.
Now I am in risk territory, because I am staying to watch Freddie’s piece, Absent Made Present, and know I may have to cough up the £25, but I am prepared. And when the stage reveals the harmony of the vertical white cords with weights of clay I say yes, I’m glad I stayed. Katherine Morling’s (or is it James Button’s?) set hangs there and is beautiful to watch in its poise, lit by David W. Kidd. Dancers (they are playing about at this time and haven’t yet shown their stuff) change the equilibrium of the finely balanced clay weights, lob them in from the wings to be caught with panache in the janitor’s bucket. The stage is divided into three zones, right, left and centre. Centre is surrounded on three sides by the white cords. So the left and right side have delicate cords on one side and heavy black velvet wings at the back and sides. It is in these awkward physical spaces that the best parts are happening, where the dark velvet wings prove almost overpowering. The dance spreads through the cords and over the middle section, and this is fluid, funny (Freddie has a great sense of humour, a smile that is always there), intricate and breathtaking (especially for the dancers as they knock each other over with grace and precision, with no roughness, no loss of gentleness). There is so much action with the clay weights (spattered on the ground, demarking the supine dancers, unbalancing the cords, tying them up, untying them again), that they should have a curtain call at the end. They might have had a curtain call, but I have to leave quickly to catch my train. I walk over Waterloo Bridge, take the Clapham Junction train, make my connection and wait with some apprehension for the ticket collector to make his rounds. The misgivings of having to pay £25 return. When he arrives I show him my ticket and say I am sorry I missed my earlier train. He must have been at the Linbury too and is full of calm and light and he says, oh don’t worry about that.
