It’s not clear why English National Ballet School and Rambert School drew the short straw of sharing a programme in this Next Generation Festival. Or perhaps it was the long straw since combining the diverse training of these elite ballet and contemporary schools produced a suitably eclectic programme: just seven works compared to the broad-brush approach of The Royal Ballet School, which presented a marathon of 18 pieces in the previous programme.
The unparalleled highlight was a reminder of the excellence of Sir Richard Alston’s choreography in a slightly revised revival of his Waltzes in Disorder for the second-year Rambert students; initially made as a birthday present from Dance Umbrella in 1998, to Johannes Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzer. The intuitive musicality in Alston’s choreography fits the Brahms’ song cycle like a velvet glove as the smooth, unhurried movement flows through each sequence without any break in its arresting fascination.
Twelve dancers, men in black, women in pastel tunics, are periodically visited by a bird-like figure of a man in white. There are homages to Merce Cunningham in the male poses, with off-kilter arabesques, heads bent towards the floor, and deep pliés. The performance potential was pure elegance and the Rambert students did full credit to it. It reminded me of how much we miss new Alston choreography and how shameful it is that his company was forced into premature closure.
ENB School had opened proceedings with Etudes on a Theme of Satie, a class-based spoof in seven sequences set to Eric Satie’s Gnossiennes. Turning the barre into an exercise for classical performance is nothing new and neither is choreography to Satie’s ubiquitous music. So, one looks for something different in any new attempts at either and this different slant introduced a hybrid of gymnastics and comedy as a backdrop to classical barre routines.
Six of the pieces were choreographed by Lynne Charles with a duet choreographed by Juan Eymar. It opened with four women on either side, small girls on one side, tall on the other, holding barres slanted diagonally away from a centre barre occupied by a single dancer (Lily Moran). She became a leitmotif through the piece, always dancing solo in contrast to the small groups around her, but becoming increasingly disorientated, hanging off the barre in a kind of drunken stupor and closing the piece by folding herself over it, rocking like a metronome secured by her midriff. Eymar’s duet, expressively performed by Iori Muira and Zai Calliste was a highlight.
Calliste is obviously a reliable and secure partner amongst this cohort of graduating dancers from ENB School because he was also selected to partner Haru Yokoo in Aphiēmi, also choreographed by Charles. The title means ‘forgiveness’ and the choreography is apparently an innovative take on the fourth act pas de deux in Swan Lake, also performed to Tchaikovsky, albeit the lesser-known Elegy for Strings. He composed it in honour of Ivan Samarin, to celebrate the latter’s half-century on the Moscow stage. It was a tender duet, sensitively performed by the busy Calliste and his charming partner.
The final ENB School piece was Ruff Celts by Marguerite Donlon, which might easily have been made on the Rambert students since it was an eclectic work of plotless dance theatre, performed with flair and humour to a mixed Irish-themed score. This work for thirteen performers, included another duet for the exceptionally busy Calliste and Muira.
The first of the Rambert School pieces had been The Inn Between, choreographed for the third year by Julian Nichols. Each of the thirteen dancers came on stage with a black fold-up chair, beginning the work in a line of conjoined legs like a human centipede. The theme appeared to be about individual choices overseen by some form of unseen authoritarianism, although it was never quite clear what the choices were!
Miguel Altunaga’s The Hilkravrs led the audience into the interval with a fusion of Cuban rhythms and contemporary dance, also made on third-year students but on an even larger scale, performed to the vintage Latin sound of Benny Moré’s Esta Noche Corazón and an original score by David Preston. As Altunaga has already shown with his work for Rambert and Birmingham Royal Ballet, he is adept at creating fluid structures and a distinctive rhythmic choreography possessing flair and humour.
The final Rambert work was by fast-emerging choreographer Faye Stoeser with another large-scale piece for the third-year students, entitled Lunar Tales, which presented an excellent showcase for Stoeser’s closely connected organic choreography, especially in a sensuous duet where the two bodies appeared to move as one entity spliced in two.
This mixed bag of generally interesting choreography was elevated to the exceptional by Richard Alston, and all works were performed with excellence by the dancers of these two schools.
Über unsere Stern-Bewertung