Leap into the future
DANCE
ALSTON AT HOME
The Place, WC1
THE Richard Alston Dance Company continues its 20th anniversary season with a show at its home theatre, the Place, and a programme that gives a taste of the company’s past, present, and possible future.
It’s a mixed bill of tasty nibbles and treats. There are old pieces — an extract from 1997’s Brisk Singing, danced to Rameau; and 2006’s Overdrive, set to the Sixties minimalism of Terry Riley, where the dancers skim across the rhythms of the music like smooth stones glancing on water.
And there’s a new one, Mazur, which turns out to be classic Alston with its fleet leaps, lilting phrases and tight corkscrewing turns. Pianist Jason Ridgway plays Chopin mazurkas, accompanying two of Alston’s muses: the brilliantly precise Liam Riddick, a current star of the company, and Jonathan Goddard, who danced for Alston from 2002-2008. Goddard’s maturity shines through. Completely engaged in the moment, he’s a performer not only having a conversation with the music, but with the choreography itself.
From what was originally a company dedicated to Alston’s work alone, Alston is increasingly commissioning other choreographers. Ex-dancer Martin Lawrance provides the breathless Opening Gambit; current company member Ihsaan de Banya’s Rasengan contrasts glitchy pulsing electronics with the rich intensity of a trio of bodies swelling and morphing as one; and Joseph Toonga, a young east Londoner whose work fuses hip hop and contemporary dance, gives us fluid lines interrupted by the glottal stops familiar from popping. In Unease… de Banya brings a real muscularity to Toonga’s movement.
Alston’s interest in hip hop sees the dancers expanding their language in dramatic opposition to the elegant lightness of his own signature style. The choreographer might be in his sixties, but not content with remaking the past, he’s pushing his company into the next phase.