Up Close
Artists of Scottish Ballet
Up Close is a reference to the venues for the dates of this half-company's tour of the lower half of Scotland (the other half of the company being currently on tour, with a different programme, in the Highlands). Unlike in a traditional, 1-2,000 seater proscenium arch theatre, where the auditorium is usually a great black hole to the artists on stage, the venues on this tour are much smaller, and the proximity between audience and dancers close enough for them to be far more aware of us than is usual. On top of that, their Glasgow dates are literally on the doorstep, in the auditorium situated underneath (more or less) the company's headquarters and rehearsal space.
They have therefore chosen to present an intimist programme, the first half being a selection of two- and four-dancer contemporary works, all recent creations, and the second half devoted to Kenneth Macmillan's witty and evergreen Elite Syncopations. While the proximity is undeniably appealing, I do wish the company had prepared cast sheets, because I'm not familiar enough with the dancers, and not enough of a physiognomist, to be able to identify them at sight. I therefore do not know exactly who danced what, and apologise for that shortcoming on my part.
Five short numbers, by four choreographers, were presented in the first half, with two quartets framing three duos. James Cousins was the repeat entry. Still It Remains opened the evening, a concentrated ritual for four women, set to an evocative Kronos Quartet interpretation of music by the Iranian exile Rahman Asodallahi. The group falls in and out of unison movement with striking ease, the recurring gestures indicating some kind of undefined, yet definite purpose for them.
It was, however, his other piece, Jealousy, which was the single most striking contribution to this first half. Limited to a patch of stage just a few metres square, bathed in red light, a man and woman entwine endlessly in an extraordinary, hypnotic display of strength, suspension and leverage, a miracle of fluidity during which the woman never actually sets foot to ground. The soundtrack is slight, repetitive, and dominated by the disturbing sound of a hospital patient on a ventilator, where you hear the regular beep of the machine, and the enforced breathing of the patient. I'm not sure I quite got the notion of jealousy, but that the relationship between the couple is not exactly healthy, but compelling, was very clear.
In between Cousins's two pieces were duets by two female choreographers (of which there are still sufficiently few to be worthy of note in and of itself). The first piece was by the American Helen Pickett, who worked extensively alongside William Forsythe, and whose choreography retains firm roots in the traditional. Trace is an almost classical pas de deux, set to one of the loveliest of Rachmaninoff's Preludes, the D major from Op. 23, with the girl wearing pointe shoes, which is fairly rare in contemporary dance. Yet the body language was sufficiently modern that a brief moment of the girl bourrée-ing down the stage for a few seconds almost seemed shocking in contrast.
The second, Broken Ice, was by Hope Muir, who is also the company's Rehearsal Director. It is based on a very short Tennessee Williams play, with its characteristically lost protagonists bound together in an unbreakable chain of hopelessness - in this case, their poverty, the Man's alcoholism and the Woman's depression. Muir had a soundtrack created for her piece inspired by Williams's typically highly detailed didascalia - period music, rainfall, an odd, very irritating, scraping sound - while the music by Max Richter was repetitive piano music extremely reminiscent of Philip Glass. While the choreography itself did not make much of an impression, the sense of a dialogue spoken to an unhearing companion came across clearly.
The last work of this section was far more high-octane than anything seen previously; Martin Lawrance's Dark Full Ride, set to a purely percussive score by Julia Wolfe, for two couples. Much of the first part of this piece has the dancers performing with their backs to the audience. I'm not sure if I was seeing correctly, but they were wearing T-shirts with faces on the back, and the faces looked like those of their counterparts in the other couple, which was an interesting idea. As a whole, it went on a little too long - possibly because I found the percussion soundtrack tedious - but the choreography for the two men in particular was striking.
In complete contrast to the sometimes over-serious first half of the programme, the second was wholly given over to the still fresh and feisty Elite Syncopations. I still remember seeing the original TV broadcast of that delightful piece, Macmillan at his most humorous, with its original cast, perhaps a year after its creation, and then Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet brought it on tour to Glasgow. Almost forty years on, it has lost none of its sass and charm. However, Scottish Ballet is staging it as a touring production, which means no live ragtime band, and in the original, the band is on-stage, in costumes almost as colourful as those of the dancers. Without an actual band present, the whole thing becomes much more artificial; you lose the sensation of looking in on some vaguely louche speakeasy, and the numbers appear rather more self-conscious. Still, the appeal of the work, with its sexy, candy-striped costumes, toe-tapping ragtime music by Scott Joplin and his contemporaries, and Macmillan's perky, droll choreography remains undimmed.
[Next : 25th October]
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