There can’t be many occasions when a company performs at The Royal Opera House with a larger ensemble than The Royal Ballet itself but that was the case when around 100 students from the second and third years of the Rambert School hit Covent Garden with an eclectic mixed programme of nine works.
The choreography in the Linbury Theatre ranged from excerpts of the familiar to entirely new work in a composite tapestry that expertly interweaved multiple dance styles and cultures. The familiar came via three excerpts of Akram Khan’s choreography and the hottest new work came in Robbie Ordoña’s Polaris and the pulsating colourful exercise in rhythm and non-stop movement that Arthur Pita has created in Celestine.
The programme opened with an excerpt from Khan’s KAASH, which prefaced the dance with one performer standing stock still upstage, his back to the audience as they took their seats and ended abruptly (seemingly in the middle of a bar of Nitin Sawhney’s music). The 20+ dancers of the second year were impressively synchronised for most of the time although the challenging uniformity did occasionally unravel.
An excerpt from Khan’s Mud of Sorrow featured five couples (same and mixed gender), one dancer clamped to the other – back to the audience – pincered by their legs around the partner’s lower waist. Given the extreme tension in this physical connection, the five second-year pairs moved calmly and fluidly before the supported partner was swung around onto her/their partner’s back, only stepping onto the stage just before the work’s closure. It was impressively performed.
The voiceover for Impermanence’s Fortuna concerned a young woman’s desire to take part in, and eventually win, the Palio di Provenzano, the crazy open streets horse race held in Sienna every Summer (it was actually raced on the day following this performance). A bunch of plain coloured banners and embroidered costumes gave some sense of time and place and another 20 or so dancers (from the third year) gave an absorbing account of the sketchy story.
Faye Tan’s Timelapse with choreography co-credited with the third-year performers seemed the least arresting of the offerings with much running around (my pet hate in modern dance). Cunningham influences were strong. This piece, the third to be shown, was rather overwhelmed within the overall programme, not least because it was followed by the visually striking Mud of Sorrow and then the first act closure in Polaris. Assisted by Joshua Shanny-Wynter and Deavion Brown, and inspired by both the anime film, The Promised Neverland, and the guiding force of the Polaris star, Ordoña has created an uplifting, joyful and escapist work, which conveyed a formidable sense of hope. For me, it – and Ordoña – was the find of the evening. The 14 third-year dancers threw themselves into the challenges of Takahiro Obata’s music (from The Promised Neverland) with an infectious clarity.
I have been an admirer of Adrian Look for many years and he brought his profound sense of tanztheater to the show with From a Time When a Butterfly Lifted a Stone to save itself from Vanity. His title’s similarity to the nomenclature of Pina Bausch (how about her como el musguito en la piedra, ay si, si, si!) flowed through into a plethora of Bauschian references in the early part of the piece, in spoken text, audience interaction, eclectic musical mix and repetitive gestural group movement. Just when one might think that the pastiche was running thin, Look hits you with some dynamic ensemble dance, which these third-year dancers (essentially the same group as in Timelapse) delivered with aplomb.
Up until now, most of the movement had been performed barefoot (with just the occasional protection of socks) but Naia Bautista brought the novelty of pointe shoes for some of the performers in her F2F (the same group that had performed Fortuna). It was an interesting mix of styles but lacked the vital spark that the works around it possessed.
The programme concluded with two excerpts from Khan’s Jungle Book Reimagined, performed by second year students: the early sequence of Bagheera’s Vision; and a coruscating finale in the Where We Came From episode. Up until this point this mixed bag was bound for a three-star review but this was a five-star ending by any measure and absolutely as riveting as if performed by seasoned professional dancers. Congratulations to Thomasin Gülgeç for his excellent staging.
Inevitably with so many dancers on stage through nine works, mostly performing just twice, it would be both impossible and invidious to single any performers out by name and although there were plenty of individual moments in the spotlight this was a show where the whole School was the star and wherever unity and synchronisation was required it was generally delivered with pinpoint precision.
At the end, I wondered with some sadness how many of these young dancers were already experiencing a highlight of their dance career. So much talent, but so few jobs.
