Avowedly, Artistic Director, Alistair Spalding, was inspired by Sergei Diaghilev’s celebrated clarion call to Jean Cocteau - “Surprise me” – when fomenting his commemoration of Ballets Russes’ inception at Sadler’s Wells. This challenge supplies the mission statement - credo even - of a broad church of talents. Like Diaghilev’s assembly of acolytes, Spalding’s associate choreographers, Wayne McGregor, Russell Maliphant, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Javier de Frutos, (plus cherry-picked contemporaries) set the bar for modern dance and an extraordinarily fertile spirit of collaboration, linking the intervening century. However, as cited primary source, it is at once subtle and promiscuous, mutable yet unfocussed. The result - like the curate’s egg - is good in parts.
      McGregor’s ‘Dyad 1909’ is dedicated to the memory of Merce Cunningham and features some truly exquisite movement and interaction. After the bizarre turn of a ‘yeti-man’, an ensemble of elegant, faintly Aryan athletes, wear glittering, post-modern masks and early twentieth century ‘Olympian’ costumes. Shackleton and Antarctic exploration are referenced, underpinned by Jane and Louise Wilson’s powerful videos – apparently machines, frozen wastes and sea creatures - suspended and mirror-offset. Such sub-texts are part distracting, part extraneous - enabled by a generous, but amorphic, house remit.
      On paper, Maliphant’s vehicle for Daniel Proietto, ‘Afterlight’ holds more promise. Imagination quickened by Vladislav Nijinsky’s original artwork - abstract curves, arcs and circles – he perceives human form almost as calligraphy. A resonance with the martial steps of Capoeira and athletic sculpture consolidate this. To my delight, pianist, Dustin Gledhill, plays Erik Satie with poignant poise. Isolated, a dervish, dopey Proietto, spins webs of shallow gesture. Darkling, Michael Hulls’ ‘illumination’ (in spite of precedent) manifested chiaroscuro that alienated subject and audience. Bodymap wunderkind, Stevie Stewart is responsible for Proietto’s incongruous ‘costume’. In hoodie mode, too bulky, it disguised form and function in a display of anti-dance.
      In the third exposition, the genius of Cherkaoui’s visionary ‘Faun’ is embodied in James O’Hara. A mesmeric, limber, tow-headed Australian, he tumbles, rolls and somersaults in blissful rhythm to the tune of Debussy. In a fluid, anthropomorphic master-class, his supernova performance confounds. Accomplished partner, Daisy Phillips is over-shadowed – aesthetically, her comparatively sturdy body, ill-served by a lover’s apparent perfection. The time-honoured score is tinkered over by Nitin Sawhney; fashion designer Hussein Chalayan shows distressed sylvan drapings – both pass muster.
      Finally, an orgiastic, murderous, ballet-free zone of prelates, Muses, one ancient pope and the guest appearance of the Whore of Babylon, gallivant to the strains of an ‘infernal waltz’ in the tradition of Edward Lear. Transgressive performance/art can poleaxe and enchant in equal measure, piercing the sensory envelope. This last tableau achieved neither.

Caroline Kellett Fraysse