Ballet British Columbia’s Triple Bill at Sadler’s Wells

Posted: March 12th, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Performance | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Ballet British Columbia’s Triple Bill at Sadler’s Wells

Ballet British Columbia, Triple Bill, Sadler’s Wells, March 6

Ballet British Columbia

Scott Fowler and artists of Ballet British Columbia in Bill (photo: Chris Randle)

The UK tour of Ballet British Columbia that Dance Consortium has organized coincides with a change of government in Canada where the current liberal party under Justin Trudeau has filled up the cultural sector coffers the previous conservative party had spent years diminishing. Thus a medium-sized company from the West coast of Canada has been able to add to the country’s cultural profile in the UK and from the program Ballet BC offered at Sadler’s Wells it looks decidedly healthy. Artistic Director Emily Molnar’s opening choreography for this triple bill, 16+ a room, reminds us of the connection she has had with William Forsythe at Ballett Frankfurt although she has made the work very much in the image of her company. Only two of the current dancers remain from before Molnar became artistic director in 2009, so this is a group she has developed through exposing them to a rich gamut of commissioned works, choreographic methods and styles. It is a finely honed company that puts technical strength at the service of an engaging and generous choreographic language.

From the beginning of 16+ a room (2013) there is a sense of an intellectual approach to the physical language, as if the dancers are working out amongst themselves the problem Molnar has set them. At the same time the problem she has set — what would happen if you put 16 people in a room and started tipping it — creates its own dynamic of sliding, balancing, suspending and tilting that she wraps in a vocabulary of muscular classicism. Jordan Tuinman’s lighting provides a sense of both luminous intensity and architectural shift while Kate Burrows’ costumes give freedom to the contained force and articulate extension of the dancers. The energy that tips the room comes from the declamatory electronic score of Dirk Haubrich, providing a high-voltage current through its three sections to bind together the choreography, visual form and aural environment of 16+ a room into a single organic entity.

From Haubrich to Brahms is more of a musical step than it is to move from the style of Molnar to that of Crystal Pite. Each choreographer acknowledges a debt to Forsythe, and in Solo Echo (2012) Pite interpolates her vocabulary in the calm of Brahms’ chamber music (the Allegro non troppo from his Cello sonata in E minor and the Adagio affetusoso from his Cello sonata in F major). She quotes a poem by Mark Strand, Lines for Winter, in the program note, but Solo Echo is a poem in itself written on the bodies of the seven dancers and suggested in Jay Gower Taylor’s setting of falling snow. Between the exquisite opening solo of Brandon Alley and the ineffable sigh of his slumped body abandoned in the snow at the end is ‘a human journey from adolescence to adulthood’ that breathes with the emotional intricacy of the music. This is pre-Polaris Pite where the hive mentality has not yet coalesced; the sense of community is suggested rather through a constant tide of individual comings and goings, one motion inspiring another, not unlike the way the cello and piano weave their respective melodies yet maintain their respective voices. The unity of this intensely musical work is further enhanced by Pite and Joke Visser’s spare costumes of dark, pinstriped waistcoats and trousers while Tom Visser’s evocative lighting subtly indicates the shifting focus of our attention. If 16+ a room is extrovert and energetic, Solo Echo turns the dancers on themselves in a state of poignant reflection.

After the second intermission, Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar’s Bill (2010), originally created for Batsheva Dance Company with a score by Ori Lichtik, promises to further extend the scope of Ballet BC’s achievement. Unitards concentrate our attention on the structure of the body, its lines, shapes and gestures in four male solos that are respectively sensually outrageous, energetically comic, fluidly articulate, and stoically introspective. But the fifth, female solo begins to de-emphasise the individual to pave the way for the communal — a duality that pervades Israeli choreography. Expanding our focus to take in the entire stage at once, the nature of the visual game is searching the shifting unity of the 18 undulating, gesticulating dancers for subtle changes in rhythm and shape that Omer Sheizaf’s tonal lighting both emulates and encourages. Eyal and Behar extract sufficient differentiation within the group, but after the assertive individuality of the first two works Bill feels in its latter construction disconcertingly insubstantial. It is perhaps a case of the work’s formal integration into the company’s West coast ethos lacking the vital context of its social and cultural origins.

(Ian Abbott was the first to see this program at the Birmingham Hippodrome in 2016)

Sylvie Guillem: 6,000 Miles Away at Sadler’s Wells

Posted: July 4th, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Performance | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Sylvie Guillem: 6,000 Miles Away at Sadler’s Wells

Sylvie Guillem: 6000 Miles Away at Sadler’s Wells, May 21

Sylvie Guillem in Mats Ek's Bye. Photo Lesley Leslie-Spinks

Sylvie Guillem in Mats Ek’s Bye (photo: Lesley Leslie-Spinks)

The evening of dance Sylvie Guillem was putting together in March 2011 might have been called simply ‘Sylvie Guillem and Friends’ if her rehearsals with William Forsythe in London had not coincided with the devastating tsunami that hit Japan. Calling the new program 6000 Miles Away was Guillem’s way of keeping in mind those who were suffering the effects of that environmental disaster (she raised £80,000 for the Red Cross Tsunami appeal at the original 2011 performances at Sadler’s Wells), but the title also neatly ties in with a charity Guillem supports, Sea Shepherd, among whose projects is the protection of whale habitats from the illegal practices of the Japanese whaling fleet. This in turn seems at least 6,000 miles from the playful, ecstatic image of Guillem on the publicity material under the names of three iconic choreographers, Jiří Kylián, William Forsythe and Mats Ek. Welcome to the world of Sylvie Guillem. She serves on the Media and Arts Advisory Board of Sea Shepherd and Sadler’s Wells this time round devoted an evening to fundraise for the charity, presenting a short filmed message from founding skipper Paul Watson, who could have been, yes, 6,000 miles away.

The attraction of the evening is indisputably Guillem herself, but she does not dance in all three works. It seems she commissioned Forsythe and Ek to make works for this program but the duet from Kylián’s 27’52” — in which Guillem does not dance — dates from 2002 and has no direct relation to her. Alistair Spalding’s welcome note in the program simply links the three works by stating that they showcase the work of ‘three creators who have held a special place in Sylvie’s career’ but Sarah Crompton in her article on the making of 6000 Miles Away makes no mention of Kylián at all. This suggests either that plans to commission Kylián to create a work for Guillem came to nothing, or that the duet from 27’52” — danced here by Aurélie Cayla and Lukas Timulak — was an afterthought.

As the curtain rises, Cayla and Timulak are on stage, she in a red top (later removed) and black pants standing in a spotlight and he lying in black pants and stripped to the waist at the edge of the floor. Lit beautifully by Kees Tjebbes, the stage is a clean canvas on which Kylián highlights with quiet precision the beauty of the articulated, semi-naked bodies in movement, something we can expect from him even when he is not at his most inspired. The problem is not with the choreography, nor with the dancing, nor with the score by Dirk Haubrich: the duet just doesn’t fit on the program; without Guillem’s creative involvement, it has an energy and identity at odds with the other two works, and deprives the evening of any unity.

Rearray is a duet of minimal form danced in and out of intermittent lighting conditions (Forsythe’s concept, Rachel Shipp’s realisation) that have an overly dominant role. There are so many blackouts, exits and entrances that the only way we recognize the end is when the dancers don’t come on again. When the lighting gets overly complex, one senses Rearray is a work that uses Guillem to show off Forsythe, but there are other luminous passages when Forsythe is clearly showing off Guillem. Dressed in t-shirt and jeans she performs what appears to be a series of relaxed, impromptu dances but has the ability to create starkly precise and beautiful shapes that seem to imprint themselves in the air. Her partner on this occasion, Massimo Murru, doesn’t have quite the same alchemy, which in a piece where partnering in the old sense is less in demand than an equality of presence keeps the equation one-sided. Forsythe gives him an arresting solo, however, in which his hands appear to be tied behind him, like a puppet unable to escape his own serfdom. David Morrow’s music is not an easy listen, but Forsythe evidently relishes its intricacy and in a lighter moment shares its humour: the fourth section begins as both dancers, facing upstage, simply bend their knees to the rhythm of Morrow’s score, creating a simple, articulated pattern that is both rich and quirky. Forsythe’s mastery of the stage remains undimmed, and it is a real joy to see Guillem responding to his direction even in a work that spends far too much time concealing her.

After the strong taste of Forsythe, Ek’s constant stream of ludic ideas in Bye is as refreshing as a sorbet. Ek, one feels, has put his choreography at the service of the artist, and Guillem returns his devotion in full. Katrin Brännström’s set is like a room with a small door in the back through which we see a black and white projection (thanks to Elias Benxon) of Guillem’s giant, cyclopic eye; the image of her face moves across the doorway/screen to reveal her other eye, then she walks away until she reaches stage size. Returning to peer through the glass, her real hands now appear over the doorframe as extensions of her filmed image. She is pigtailed, dressed in a yellow skirt, a green pullover and bobby socks (costumes by the ever-ingenious Brännström), a long-legged gamine playing games to her heart’s content. Erik Berglund’s lighting picks out both her line and the architectural elements beautifully, and enhances the playful colours of her costume. Ek uses the Arietta movement of Beethoven’s final piano sonata, op 111, shaping the rhythmic content and painting delightfully irreverent images that Guillem plays with her entire body as if on an instrument. Ek seems to derive his vocabulary from an array of sources including classical dance, yoga, everyday gestures and the sculptural forms of Henry Moore. As the sonata becomes more rhythmic and playful, so does Guillem, taking off her cardigan, shoes and socks, improvising as if in her own room like a clown or Raggedy Ann doll with her leg thrown nonchalantly up to her forehead. A man appears at the door looking in and glancing impatiently at his watch. How long will Guillem be? He goes away. She yawns, rolls over, and stands on her head. A virtual labrador comes to the door and sits down patiently, but eventually he, too, moves on. Guillem remains oblivious of time, bouncing to the luscious chords of the sonata with joyful abandon. Ek narrows our focus for a moment to the projected outlines of a bed on which Guillem lies. We concentrate on her hand gestures against the black and her form is like a goddess eating grapes, the pose from the poster. She stands on her head again, watched by a growing number of children at the door but finally puts on her socks and shoes. In the cadenza she dances a little madness before stepping outside and looking back wistfully at the interior world of her colourful imagination that she must regretfully leave to face the black and white reality outside.