'Volumina'
Music
Gyorgy Ligeti
Choreography
Richard Alston
Dancers
Jonathan Goddard
Martin Lawrance
Luke Baio
Amie Brown
Francesca
Romo
Anneli Binder
Maria Nikoloulea
'About-Face'
Music
Marin Marais
Choreography
Martin Lawrance
Dancers
Jonathan Goddard
Francesca Romo
Luke Baio
Amie Brown
Maria
Nikoloulea
Sonja Peedo
Silvestre Sanchez Strattner
'The Devil In
The Detail'
Music
Scott Joplin
Pianist
Jason Ridgway
Choreography
Richard Alston
Dancers
Francesca Romo
Luke Baio
Jonathan Goddard
Martin Lawrance
Sonja Peedo
Anneli Binder
Amie Brown
Maria Nikoloulea
Silvestre Sanchez Strattner
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Richard Alston
Dance Company
Sadler's Wells
29 March - 1 April 2006
Given the form of his company over recent years, Richard Alston appears to have attained the position of a man who, knowing what both he and his audience want, is able to meet expectations with ease. Settled in a choreographic groove in which he can take a score and establish a strong visual relationship to its acoustic structures, the result is dependable quality. Whereas this gave previous programmes an air of settling dust, the present programme at Sadler's Wells is varied enough to overcome predictability.
The first peice, Volumina, is the most abstract of the evening's three offerings. Set to a resonantly swelling score by Gyorgy Ligati, the company's dancers appear like a swarm of bees in black and yellow costume, coupling off and re-grouping with a seeming arbitrariness worthy of Merce Cunningham.
There is something resolutely anachronistic about this piece, as if it had been made in the late sixties or early seventies under Cunningham's influence, rather than in present-day London. Unlike Cunningham, however, Alston finds his abstract geometry of angular elbows and sharply bending torsos dictated by the score, which conjures up an atmosphere of an airless vacuum or wind tunnel. It is a difficult image to project on stage but accomplished through design: the lighting, by blocking the floor in a single colour such as yellow or green, creates volume which is then cut through by dancers' black bands of costume. Even more difficult to live up to, however, is the score, and only Francesca Romo invigorated the visualisation of such a big score with any slicing attack on behalf of the dancers.
During much of the fast doublework it looked as though some dancers were still getting to grips with the choreography and marking each other (a result of being pressed for time by their recent tour?).
Martin Lawrance's premiere, About-Face, was much more in the vein of what audiences have come to expect from the company: lush choreography that carries the breath of baroque strings in its phrasing. With an unobtrusive design and harmonious changes of energy, Lawrance's choreography completed the acoustic phrasing in movement that was singularly satisfying to watch. Having dancers of such quality as Romo, Jonathan Goddard and Sonja Peedo added a smooth polish to the effect.
Where Sonja Peedo was a good choice for About-Face, however, her style was too academic and implacable to convey the irreverence and quirks of personality needed for The Devil In The Detail, the third peice on the programme. Set as if in a music hall or bar-room, Jason Ridgway played 'King of Ragtime' Scott Joplin's rags and waltzes on the piano, whilst the dancers took it in turns to show off, strut, or smooch in a world of their own. Francesca Romo brought the same verve to her solo that she displayed in Gypsy Mixtures from last season's repertoire, exhibiting an infectious joy in the dance that made Devil In The Detail impossible to watch without raising a similar spirit. Luke Baio stole the show with top-cat cool in his duet with Jonathan Goddard, and the dancers' every grin, reflected in the audience, was entirely from the heart and enough to win over the most jaded of Richard Alston's critics. Laura Keynes
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