RAMBERT DANCE COMPANY – LABYRITH OF LOVE TOUR
Theatre Royal Brighton
Review by Andrew Marc.
“In this strange Labyrinth how shall I turn?
Ways on all sides, while the way I miss:
If to the right hand, there in love I burn; let me go forward, therein danger is;
If to the left, suspicious hinders bliss.”
Truly exquisite. With their well-earned reputation preceding them, and as Mark Baldwin, their artistic director, boasted with good cause: “Our dancers are faster, they dance harder and bigger and better than any other company I can think of” (see full interview here), audience expectations were high. Rambert delivered in fine style.
LABYRINTH OF LOVE
In Brighton last night as part of their acclaimed Labyrinth of Love tour, the four piece repertoire show included some stunning performances by the highly trained Rambert Dancers, a live orchestra and soloist Kirsty Hopkins. The evening opened with the title piece, Labyrinth of Love. Concept dance pieces were set to seven love related poems, written by women throughout the ages.
Soprano Kirsty Hopkins rendered the lyrics with her superb voice, and sometimes playful manner, never just a static vocalist, but often becoming part of the dance routines. Further beat-box type sounds and effects were provided by the dancer Miguel Altunaga to interesting and curious effect.
Sublime, strangely erotic and entrancing visuals by acclaimed video artist Matt Collishaw were employed wonderfully; fire, a tantalising snake; writhing, morphing formless shapes; splattering, crashing effects, but used judiciously enough as not to overwhelm the live performers. The director of ballet at the Saarländischen Staatstheater in Germany, Margueritte Donlon, took charge of the movement with exceptional choreography for all seven parts; fresh, exciting and endlessly dynamic.
Conor Murphy’s costumes were delightful and together with an inspiring score by Grammy award winning composer Michael Daugherty ensured Labyrinth was a remarkable spectacle. The audience were entranced throughout.
Rambert Dance Company are the only dance company in Britain to tour with a live orchestra, and as such, performances are that much more powerful. Seated at the front, it was a real pleasure to be able to see both the musicians and dancers at once.
A sensational and highly evocative opening piece – never saccharine but transfixing, surprising and charged, leaving very strong impressions.
MONOLITH
This was Tim Rushton’s debut piece for Rambert, which he describes as “inspired by places of monumental greatness and the people who formed them with their presence, beliefs and mysteries.”
The brooding and dynamic score, a string Quartet, is by the Latvian Pēteris Vasks. It’s bold and powerful, though does tend to slow somewhat in the middle. However, it partners well with Tim Rushton’s complex choreography which featuring solo pieces, partnering and thoughtful use of space in the patterned dancing. The demanding routines were handled well by the performers, requiring as they do great athleticism and verve – and the ending was quite moving.
L’APRÈS-MIDI D’UN FAUNE (The
Afternoon of The Faun)
Flute, strings and harp embody Claude Debussy’s soaring, magical piece Prélude à l’après-midi d’un Faune written in 1894, and the ballet of the same name was originally choreographed and performed by Vaslav Nijinsky.
It was revived for Rambert by Ann Whitley in 1967 and was included in their shows as part of its centenary last year. It is a curious sexual dance, performed in profile, featuring the faun (Miguel Altunaga), and nymphs, with the lead role going to Pieter Symonds.
The Faun is a difficult role to play, with tricky staccato movements, but Miguel gave as strong and enigmatic performance, full of poise and simmering power. Pieter was superb as the nymph.
Considered by some as just a historical curiosity, I found it charming for the very fact of its understated sexual content and graceful allusion to physical love -just the antidote to today’s sometimes base, crass and overt sexual explicitness.
WHAT WILD ECSTACY
Artistic director Mark Baldwin has partnered Afternoon of the Faun with a contemporary re-imagining called What Wild Ecstasy, written by Gavin Higgins, and based on the 1819 John Keats Poem, Pan Myth.
It’s brash and colourful – day-glo shorts and wild wigs – flamboyant with a jarring, sometimes primal soundtrack, reminiscent of a 70s sci-fi film score. Part Planet of the Apes, part Logan’s Run; deliciously unconventional, disturbing in places, dominated by wind and brass.
It’s partly inspired by noises Higgins heard at nights whilst leaving in the Forest of Dean – copulating foxes in the distance, rhythmic pounding from some illegal rave on the horizon. It’s hedonistic and frenetic – physically intimate, a sensory overload. Several large insect models hang from the ceiling – a motif I didn’t really understand – but it didn’t matter.
An almost riotous display of movement and colour with a surprise ending – an amusing finale, which took a little time to work out, but was a clever reference to the “lascivious shenanigans of mythological fauns” and the “hidden sexual selection in the material”, which Higgins discussed with Professor Nicola Clayton, Rambert’s advisor. Naughty.
An unforgettable evening with world class performances throughout. Highly innovative and inspiring – there was a large group of hugely excited teen girls from Heathfield Community College along, possibly due to Rambert’s on-going dance workshops with schools and colleges, and it was lovely to see young people take such an interest in modern dance and theatre. I’m sure the evening had a profound effect on them all.
For more information on Rambert’s learning program and community involvement, visit:
http://www.rambert.org/learning