| Drama, Depth, Wit, with a Spicy Taster Added In |
National Dance Company Wales |
| National Dance Company Wales , Aberystwyth Arts Centre , March 7, 2013 |
A perennial, added pleasure of a National Dance tour is the opportunity to experience music that would not be heard on a concert platform. Stravinsky wrote “Les Noces” for performance in 1923 by Les Ballets Russes. Its opening section features a soprano voice, then the jagged lines of a mezzo. Other voices join and the score is drawn together by the deepest of basses that can only be Russian with it roots in Orthodox liturgy. In Angelin Preljocaj’s choreography the five pairs of dancers pursue one another, grapple, engage. Five benches are used for occasional rest, and equally as threatening advancing objects. The men wear the white shirts and ties of office work. The women wear beautiful, velvety, Balkan dresses with decorated hems. Ghostly mannequins in bridal wear haunt the action and at the close are draped on the upended benches. “Les Noces” is a physically and emotionally draining piece with an exploding energy. Stravinsky’s “A Soldier’s Tale” toured last year with a company part-drawn from RWCMD. Set and lighting designer Joe Fletcher is also a sometime tutor in Cardiff. He opens “Vertical Descent” with a striking visual tableau. A sole dancer is held immobile in the beams of two lights positioned high, vertically above him. The set reveals opposite a metal stairway, angled at forty-five degrees, down which the remainder of the company descends. The choreography for “Virtual Descent” is by a member of the company, Eleesha Drennan. The programme notes of the work that it “seeks the essence of human power and the bravery of the human body.” In truth, this kind of abstract movement eludes an easy linguistic equivalent in the same way as does as a vast late Rothko. There is an emblematic force to the work, that exudes a powered austerity in which the dancers barely touch one another. This separated-ness gives a simple placing of a palm on the forehead of another all the greater meaning. Eleesha Drennan’s work is performed to newly composed music by Mark Bowden. The twenty-three minute score is characterised by a percussive drive with vibraphone, bells, or their synthesised equivalents. An equal, but more, familiar rhythm also characterises the third work “Dream”. It is that of Ravel for “Bolero.” Artistic director Ann Sholem has selected a clever trio of works in which the span of style and content creates an evening whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts. “Dream” is dance’s contribution to the Cultural Olympics, a pan-British collaboration with Scottish Ballet and English National Ballet. Sport and dance have aspects in common, the dedication, the intensity, the years of preparation, the making of the body for a honed purpose. Christopher Bruce’s choreography for “Dream” takes in rowing, fencing, skating, boxing. Two of the male dancers briskly cross the stage as Olympic walkers. But art and sport are different, and a divergence here is in a sense of mischievous playfulness. It opens with a tug of war in silhouette. The serious sport is enclosed between opening and closing scenes from a celebratory fifties street party. The dancers in period flowery skirts, grey trousers and braces do the egg and spoon race, the sack race and the wheelbarrow race. After the emotional whoomph of the work by Preljocaj and Drennan it makes for a witty and warm, audience-pleasing finale. Aberystwyth is one of National Dance’s westernmost venues, although this year the company is fresh from performing in Tralee and Bray. As customary the company has been far afield, performing to audiences on Asia’s Pacific shore, and points in between. However, the audiences in China, Minsk or Vitebsk have not had the extra on offer on the Wales tour. In “Dance Shorts” Eleanor Leech, Gemma Prangle and Grace Cushion make their entries via the stair gallery and, uniquely, the Arts Centre’s lift. In yellow, pink and orange jumpsuits flecked with black they dance at opposite ends of the foyer area, weave round the pillars, between tables and chairs, and eventually join together as a trio. Under the auspices of TaikaBox, Tanja Raman creates a gymnastic, declarative choreography, which makes something of a spicy hors d’oeuvre to the main event. The National Dance tour continues until 8th May. Dundee is its northernmost point. Venues to come in Wales include Swansea, Mold and Milford. |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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