Ghost dances
Rambert’s tribute gives life to the dead
Ghost Dances Rambert, Sadler’s Wells
Ghost Dances is a work that – as much as any artistic creation can – achieves the remarkable and tender-hearted feat of giving a voice to the dead. Made by Christopher Bruce for Rambert in 1981, and not seen here for 14 years, it was inspired by his meeting with dancer Joan Jara, whose teacher husband Victor was one of the 35,000 Chileans murdered by Pinochet after his 1973 coup. The British choreographer wanted it to speak for the bloodily purged of all countries, while also weaving in plenty of specifically Latin American imagery, in particular, the rituals and costumes associated with the Day of the Dead.
The latter manifest themselves here in the creepy body-paint and death’s-head masks of the three lithe figures who open the piece, modelled on the “ghost dancers” from certain rituals, and here stalking about like ghoulish sentinels. Into this sepulchrally lit cave, with an undulating desert stretching out ad infinitum behind it and a bitter, howling wind the only sound, there solemnly proceed eight further dancers – four men, four women – wearing various kinds of regular attire. These are clearly “real” people – or at least, they once were.
As Nicholas Mojsiejenko’s delightful arrangements of South American folk music strike up, the mood lightens a little, and the deceased begin to dance. Sometimes in larger ensembles, sometimes (especially movingly) in couples, they perform patterns of longing, regret, celebration, intimacy, Bruce’s choreography an intricate, expressive and intensely musical blend of no-nonsense folksiness and physically bracing western-contemporary tropes.
But we are never allowed to forget their past, collective fate. Immediately after even the more exuberant exchanges, the dancers often freeze, the music cedes once again to the bitter wind, and those nightmarish guardians swoop in to ferry their suddenly stiffened bodies off to one side.
What are these eight characters doing there? They’re trying, I think, to grasp one last chance to remind us that they are not merely punishingly grim statistics, but individual men and women, fathers and mothers, friends and lovers. Essentially, people just like us, who should still, by rights, be very much alive. As powerful and relevant as it ever was, this by turns exultant and desolate piece – magnificently performed by all 11 dancers – gets its point across with poetry and poignancy to spare.
If Ghost Dances is the focal point of this satisfyingly Latin Americanthemed bill, the novelty is Aletta Collins’s The days run away like wild horses. Launching with a super recreation of Zbigniew Rybczyński’s remarkable little seven-ages-of-man animation from 1981 – the Oscarwinning Tango – this twinkly-eyed, jauntily scored piece features some particularly superb duos (the second section’s perilous, cantilevering lifts handled with astonishing assurance by Adam Park and Hannah Rudd), and is as charming as it is elegantly constructed.
As for Didy Veldman’s 2015 work The 3 Dancers, this opens with a flourish. Vividly echoing the charged Picasso painting that inspired it, the two, separate trios remorceslessly hold hands, with Veldman skilfully folding each threesome in on itself like a human Möbius strip.
Thereafter, returns diminish somewhat, with Veldman’s flesh-andblood cubism no match for the vividness of, say, Matthew Bourne’s comparable, multiple-perspective efforts in Play Without Words, and also hampered by needlessly monochromatic designs: the lurid colours of Picasso’s original are much missed. Still, the six dancers handle themselves beautifully, none more so than Miguel Altunaga – throughout the entire evening, the first among dynamic equals.
Until Sat. Tickets: 020 7863 8000; sadlerswells.com