Fever
Music
Claudio Monteverdi
Choreography
Richard Alston
Lighting
Charles Balfour
Costumes
Elizabeth Baker
Such Longing
Music
Frédéric Chopin
Choreography
Richard Alston
Lighting
Charles Balfour
Costumes
Peter Todd
Charge
Music
Steve Reich,
Electric Guitar Phase
Choreography
Martin Lawrance
Lighting
Charles Balfour
Costumes
Peter Todd
Gypsy Mixture
Music
Electric Gypsyland CD
Choreography
Richard Alston
Lighting
Charles Balfour
Costumes
Peter Todd
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Richard Alston
Dance Company
Sadler's Wells
23 - 26 February 2005
Celebrating 10 years of the Richard Alston Dance Company, this quadruple bill showcases the diversity of Alston's choreography and offers a polished programme of old and new works. Engrossing though it was, the programme may have been a little too polished however, as on occasion the dancing lacked the gutsiness that one expects and enjoys in much contemporary dance. Whether the responsibility for this restraint lay with the dancers or the choreography it is difficult to disentangle (Yeats once asked 'How can we know the dancer from the dance?'), but it was a shame that displays of something unchecked, instinctual or impassioned so rarely escaped through the formal grace on show.
That said, this restraint doesn't stop the dancing being, at its best, captivating: an elegantly crafted series of swoops and hollows, balances and counterbalances, ensemble work and solos, all strung seamlessly together with a well-educated ear for the phrasing of the music. Alston's movement is happiest in a neo-classical register and the classical training his dancers have received is deeply embedded, so much so that their bodies take a while to feel comfortable in the folksy final piece Gypsy Mixture with its swinging hips and stamping feet.
The dancers are in their element in the opening work Fever which is set to Monteverdi's sublime madrigals. Here, the dancers savour every arched back and oblique line, appearing as orbs of mercurial energy and light against a spartan backdrop. Particularly striking was Ino Riga whose enveloping arms and unfolding legs were like liquid honey, bathed as they were in Charles Balfour's golden lighting. It was an arresting opening, and one in which Alston's beauty of line and fluidity of movement were in artistic synergy with the heights and depths of Monteverdi's Renaissance harmonies.
The richness of Fever dissolved into muted blues and greys for Such Longing, the second work of the night and Alston's newest venture. With a single piano onstage playing etudes and nocturnes by Chopin, Such Longing was a portrait of modern melancholia. Both musically and choreographically, it relied upon a monochromatic palette that changed tonally with each solo or pas de deux. Alston's talent for choreographing dialogues between his dancers was at its most impressive here; the dancers lingered in gentle lifts and soft embraces, led by the trills and chords of Jason Ridgway's playing.
Alston's distinctive neo-classicism works much better in these first two pieces, different though they are from each other in feeling, than in the remainder of the programme. The third work Charge is almost too obviously included in the programme to highlight the dynamism and edgy vigour of the company. Choreographed by senior dancer Martin Lawrance as a commission for The Place Prize last year, it is a taut and textured piece, all sharp jolts and sparky jumps, further electrified by Steve Reich's screeching electric guitar score. The dancing is tight and grounded here - Jonathan Goddard's heavily accented and unpredictable movements are especially volt-like - and the piece builds to an invigorated frenzy without ever quite crackling with the raw release of energy that gives the work its name.
Gypsy Mixtures is a work of foreign tongues and eclectic styles. The gaudy patchwork costumes and makeshift gypsy skirts set the scene for a motley assortment of choreographic influences that suggest a joyful Bohemia, all swinging arms and carefree gesture. The score is similarly peripatetic, with traditional Balkan music being remixed by club DJs from around the globe; barking dogs and accordions are ingeniously underpinned by chugging rhythms and techno bleeps. It takes a while for the dancers to settle into such bouncy and seemingly spontaneous steps, and occasionally it does feel like forced bonhomie, but it is hard not to feel buoyed by the sheer exuberance of the piece. Alston's choreography is also at it most muscular here, and there is some fantastically sweaty and exotic partner work between the seductive Ino Riga and Martin Lawrance. Perhaps the high point of the whole evening, however, was Jonathan Goddard's gutsy solo during the finale of 'Lest Sexy': a wonderfully athletic collection of syncopated swerves and spins performed with the vim and vitality that was absent from the earlier works.
Nina Miall
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