This was a short programme. Five duets. No interval. 53 minutes all-in. But to paraphrase and reverse a saying of budget tailors back in the day, it was a case of “never mind the width, feel the quality”!
And quality there was a plenty. Two short works by Mats Ek book-ended a sensual duet by Akram Khan, a quirky male pairing from Sharon Eyal, and a witty dance in, on, under and around a sofa by Samantha Lynch, an Australian dancer with Norwegian National Ballet. Her Couch sat well within this programme of work by some of the most revered choreographers of recent decades.
I don’t know if Norway has a thing about using a sofa as a stage, but I was reminded of a filmed piece (Where do the Birds Go?) made by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa in the early days of the pandemic, for Francois Rousseau and Julie Gardette, then about to leave Norwegian National Ballet, after 20-year careers, which also had them dancing on a sofa!
However, that similarity ends with this staging since Lynch’s choreography for her two NNB colleagues – Anaïs Touret and Douwe Dekkers – was eclectically styled over three sequences, matching the tempi and mood of Bizet’s L’Arlésienne (the third part of which is often used for gala displays of male virtuosity). Dressed in black, the dancers performed with split-second synchronicity in the opening sequence based on the sofa, moving with greater freedom when dancing alongside it. Touret, the company’s go-to contemporary dancer who also opened the recent season as Manon, provided the laugh-out-loud moment of mysteriously disappearing inside the sofa’s fabric. Couch showed invention, humour and arresting dance so I can’t wait to see more from this emerging choreographer.
Akram Khan’s duet is entitled Mud of Sorrow although it is a reinvention of the central duet from a longer work that Khan made in 2006 for Sylvie Guillem, entitled Sacred Monsters.
This capsule is ten minutes of pure magic, danced here with palpable connection by Aishwarya Raut (late of Rambert) and Claudio Cangialosi. The long, opening sequence has both dancers so conjoined that in the dim light it looked like one pair of legs with two bodies (the sacred monster?). Raut’s legs are firmly locked behind her partner’s back and the tension on her inner thighs and core as her torso planked directly out from his midriff must have been agonising for that length of time. Eventually, they dance together on both pairs of feet in close harmony to a multifarious mix of music produced by a solo cello and human voices. Like the original work that it has been carved from, Mud of Sorrow is superb.
Sharon Eyal’s productions are always distinctive and Inspired by Into the Hairy continues that eccentricity. This male duet is excerpted from a full-length, 50-minute piece made in collaboration with the composer, Koreless. The musical transitions from an opening watery theme to toe-tapping electronica were sufficient to make me want to hear (and see) the whole work. Original cast members, Johnny McMillan and Juan Gil wore eye-catching black costumes (by Maria Grazia Chiuri of Christian Dior) comprising transparent buttock-revealing black tights with a thick, corset-style high waistband. They entered the stage in procession, walking on demi-pointe with imagery that varied from preening models on the catwalk to preening birds in a tidal pond. It was certainly eye-catching!
McMillan did double duty since he had appeared in the opening work, Mats Ek’s Duett Fra en Slags (duet from A Sort of...), partnering Staatsballett Berlin’s Clotilde Tran. This conjured another Sylvie memory since the knee-length mustard skirt worn by Tran was like that worn by Guillem in Ek’s Bye. This duet, however, preceded Bye by some years, having been made in 1997. The work contained snippets of Ek’s zaniness in movement, the use of the proscenium arch (again a similarity with live performances of Bye) and a quirky prop: here the plastic water pistol that Tran used to squirt McMillan at the work’s conclusion.
The finale, also by Ek, brought his wife, Ana Laguna to the stage, performing – as she has done for the past 20 years – with Yvan Auzely in Duett Fra en Kopp Kaffe (duet from A Cup of Coffee). It’s gentle performance art (although 70-year-old Laguna and her slightly younger partner certainly dance) involving a trolley, a coffee set and an elaborate tablecloth. Laguna’s attempt to set the table is thwarted by Auzely (who has crawled onto the stage) by pulling everything to the floor, whereupon, in another laugh-out-loud moment, she poured the coffee into his mouth and stirred it with a spoon!
Brief though it was, this excellent programme enabled a welcome reacquaintance with work from the past (plus a legendary performer) mixed with a fine splash of the here-and-now and an exciting glimpse of an emerging talent. The Dialogues II programme now moves to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris from 24-27 April.
Graham's press trip was funded by Norwegian National Opera and Ballet
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