Celebrating the New

LONDON: Sadler’s Wells started their Composer Series in 2011: programmes built around the works of one designated composer. The latest is an evening devoted to Thomas Adès, the young English composer who is carving an international name for himself.

Choreography by established names Crystal Pite, Wayne McGregor and Karole Armitage was complemented by an impressive work from newcomer Alexander Whitley.

Whitley has danced with, among others, Rambert and McGregor’s Random Dance and has recently formed his own company. His new work, The Grit in The Oyster, was notable for its lyrical duets contrasted with edgy trios. The musicians playing Adès Piano Quintet shared the stage in a happy complement of the two arts.

Adès was again on stage this time joined by soprano, Claire Booth, for Armitage’s equivocal duet, Life Story. From the United States, Emily Wagner and Ruka Hatua-Saar ran the gamut of post-coital emotions but with a good dose of humour ina work that raises a plethora of issues around liberated adults and one night stands.

Wayne McGregor’s Outlier originally written for New York City Ballet in 2010 was reconstructed on his own Random Dance where it did not sit as comfortably on the different bodies. However the music, Concentric Paths could not have had a finer interpreter than virtuoso violinist, Thomas Gould.

It was left to Pite to bring to life the title of the evening, See the Music, Hear the Dance. She chose the epic Polaris and went for broke with a cast of 66: six of her own company and students from London Contemporary Dance School and Central School of Ballet.

The stage, imaginatively lit by Tom Visser, was a seething mass of dancers that rhythmically rose and fell. Pite has a rare talent in shaping movement, her instincts are seldom misplaced, and in this work she is as one with the flow of the music making it visual in a stunning climax to the evening.

New Works at the Royal Ballet
Meanwhile in Covent Garden, the Royal Ballet premiered new works from Kim Brandstrup and Liam Scarlett. The programme was completed with a welcome return of Christopher Wheeldon, Aeternum, which deservedly won the Critics’ Circle National Dance Award for best classical choreography in 2013.

Wheeldon matches the drama in Benjamin Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem; a taut opening movement is followed by the allegretto mood of the second in which James Hay excelled with his quicksilver technique. The cathartic final movement, a long duet from Marianela Nuñez and Federico Bonelli, was again, spellbinding in its beauty.

Brandstrup, too, chose music by Britten, this time his complex Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge. The work, tinged with nostalgia, is used to good effect in Ceremony of Innocence, a ballet which deals gently and unsentimentally with the bright promise of youth viewed with the knowledge, and attendant regrets, that come with maturity.

The setting is simple; offering suggestions of seaside promenades with Jordan Tuiman’s evocative lighting design cleverly providing the watery element.

Brandstrup explores the theme through a series of encounters as Bennet Gartside and Deirdre Chapman, playing the mature couple, interact with the youth, Marcelino Sambé. Gartside is a dance actor who has proved his worth in innumerable roles and it was good to see Chapman supporting him in a role that she invested with both compassion and intelligence.

Sambé, the rapidly rising star from Brazil, is a dancer of compelling presence. He moves with extraordinary feline grace enhanced with a fine technique and in Ceremony, Brandstrup gave him a role to match his talents.

The Age of Anxiety explores the artists’ response to war. W. H. Auden in poetry, Leonard Bernstein in music and Scarlett in dance. Auden’s words, shrewd, perceptive and often despairing are interpreted in music that captures the location, a bar in New York and the period, the Second World War, with intuitive precision as jazz interludes punctuate the restless and troubled score.

Scarlett, a man undaunted by complex subject matter, tackles the theme succeeding well in defining the individual four characters though I felt the essence of this monumental theme evaded him.

The bar room scenes were deftly handled by an exceptional cast: Steven Mc Rae seemed to enjoy exposing his tap dance roots in the jazzy sections and Sarah Lamb, defined neatly in dance the brittle sophistication of Rosetta. Gartside again excelled, providing ballast as Quant, the solid businessman.

Tristan Dyer as Emble, the young naval recruit, brings to his character the beauty of youth and some fine dancing. He brings an element of ambiguity to the work in the somewhat iconic: leaving Rosetta’s apartment as John MacFarlane’s designs open out to reveal dawn over the Manhattan skyline. The picture is exhilarating but seemed to offer the wrong message. However it is an intriguing work that offers challenging roles for the dancers.

Maggie Foyer
22 nov 2014