Jo Turbitt reviews an evening that 'got better after the first taste'.
Rambert's recent tour of Dark Arteries presents a trio of pieces, all holding a note of maturity between them. Imagine a wine rack with three bottles of aging deep red wines: all look appealing, yet they are different in their taste notes—and the look of the label doesn't always match expectation.
This is sadly true of the first piece 'Dark Arteries' by the company's artistic director, Mark Baldwin. His work misses the mark on every level: the movement appears under rehearsed, the soundscape overpowered and the design odd and mismatched. Supposedly about miners and mining strikes, an audience member behind me exclaimed, “was it heck!” and I couldn't have put it better. Baldwin's offering to the table on this occasion fails to please its tasters.
The second portion, ‘The Three Dancers’ by Didy Veldman, knocks the first course out the water. Cleverly designed in concept and choreography, Veldman manipulates a gorgeous vocabulary of movement to a sumptuous and cheeky soundtrack with jazzy notes and smooth orchestral tones. Inspired by Picasso and his cubist art works, the choreography tosses between six dancers and does so with effortless and pleasing ease. A delicious piece which highlighted six very strong, physical and fantastic dancers in the company.
The night is rounded off with ‘Transfigured Night’. Often narrative dance feels too inevitable, too predictable, but Kim Brandstrup's choreography gives us a tender and sensual story of love. Bruised, rejected, trusting, defeated, all encompassing and consuming, the intrigue and the disappointment...both Brandstrup's movement and direction of the dancers, especially Simone Damberg Wurtz, resonate with every colour and every side of the complexity of life's deceptively simple emotion.
An evening which got better after the first taste, and made even better by two choreographers who understood and appreciate those they are making work with and for.
Reviewed at the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, 26th November 2015.
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