Dougla
Choreography
Geoffrey
Holder
Return
Choreography
Robert
Garland
South Africa
Suite
Choreography
Arthur
Mitchell
Augustus
Van Heerden
Lavern
Naidu
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Dance Theatre
of Harlem
Sadler's Wells
4 - 9 November 2002
Performances by the Dance Theatre of Harlem have an indelible signature: they are joyous, free-spirited, athletic, instinctively sexy, and beautiful to see. This remains true whether or not the choreography has distinction. Audiences expect a Harlem style, and the dancers respond; they seem to enjoy themselves hugely, and to pour everything into every moment they are on stage.
This reviewer saw the second programme of their week at Sadler's Wells, South African Suite with Caroline Rocher in the lead role, Dougla, and Return. The first was outstanding. The shapes and nuances of the wonderful South African traditions both of spontaneous and organised dance were worked into the narrative of sequences here, themselves the result of an evolution influenced by the Dance Theatre's visits to South Africa after the ending of the apartheid era.
Dougla was less convincing. In it ballet met Broadway musical spectacular, and as this implies it relied too much on a set of magnificent costumes, wearing which constrained the dancers to processions and gestures merely. It was a mere glitter piece, unmemorable as choreography and disappointing as dance.
Return had the audience on its feet at the end, as one expects from the closing number of a brilliant company enjoying itself to the music of James Brown and Aretha Franklin. This time it was "ballet meets disco", and it consisted in a disjointed series of short items each of which set the feet tapping but which together made a mere miscellany, too consciously show-stopping in intent. There was no disguising the virtuosity of the dancers, but neither in this nor in Dougla did the choreography match their huge talents.
AC Grayling
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