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Baryshnikov Productions
Choreographer
Richard Move
Choreographer
Erick Hawkins
Choreographer
Lucinda Childs
Performer
Mikhail
Baryshnikov
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Sadler's
Wells
9
- 13 October 2002 |
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When
White
Oak
dances at Sadler's Wells the
auditorium is full because
of Mikhail Baryshnikov. He
might be fifty-four years
of age, sedately dancing well
within the physical limits
implied by his still beautifully-athletic,
small, light body, which he
moves effortlessly and comfortably
about the stage in undemanding,
understated, careful evolutions;
but he occasionally gives
a glimpse of his old capacity
to electrify with a lightning-swift
and astonishingly precise
gesture – and there is
no question but that here
is a dancer of immense gifts
and poise, a meeting-point
of talent and technique which
has made this diminutive Latvian
a byword in the universe of
dance.
No programme with Baryshnikov
in it can fail to please,
although this one otherwise
makes some effort to do so.
With the exception of one
of the four dances, Early
Floating, which might
be good – I return to
the ambiguity of its quality
shortly – the choreography
was uninspired, and gave little
opportunity to a wonderful
set of dancers, most striking
and admirable among them (apart
from Baryshnikov) the marvellously
watchable Emily Coates, to
show what they can do.
The programme began an ended
with recent pieces by Lucinda
Childs. The first, Largo,
was a short gentle perambulation
for a solo Baryshnikov. Childs
has evolved beyond the boring
geometrical shapes she once
made dancers walk around,
but not by far; she now strings
together a series of minor
cliches, some of them bringing
reminiscences of beauty, but
having the overall effect
of anodyne. Better is her
Chacony
which ended the programme,
with members of the ensemble
(including a very late-arriving
Baryshnikov, pacing himself
thoroughly) at last making
contact with each other and
introducing those richer dimensions
which come when pairs and
more of dancers can interact
to potentiate movement beyond
what isolated pairs of limbs
can do. Again, there was near-beauty
in some of the movement, and
the superb quality of the
dancers glimmered and promised
through the constraints imposed
by the choreography's lack
of ambition.
A piece by Yvonne Rainer called
Trio
A Pressured No 3 came
second in the bill, a dull
and meaningless proof that
dance and music have a necessarily
symbiotic relationship –
for this series of mere movements,
which looked like poorly-designed
exercises for recuperating
patients, were executed in
silence, and suffered the
more for it. A bit of music
appeared at the end, but it
did nothing to make sense
of the pointless gyrations
of the dancers' arms and legs,
nor they of it. There was
a short period of what might
have been meant for comedy,
when a not-dancing Baryshnikov
walks round and round a moving
girl trying to see her face;
the conceit quickly palls,
and went on far too long.
The best piece, and the one
which is perhaps good to boot,
is Erick Hawkins's Early
Floating. It is perhaps
a piece aimed to embody and
exhibit pure movement, movement
entirely for its own sake,
without figuration, narrative,
symbolism or intention beyond
itself. Taken us such, it
can seem to work; and the
sense that this is how it
must be read is aided by the
choice of music, Lucia Dlugoszewski's
Five
Curtains of Timbre,
a classic (or caricature)
of a piece for piano involving
the plucking and banging of
the interior strings to supplement
the playing of its keys. The
detached, in-itself quality
of the music and dance gave
it an ethereal atmosphere,
and left some of the audience
ravished.
AC
Grayling |
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