The secret of modern dance? Choose well
SCOTTISH Ballet seems determined to continue its contemporary quest to expose its audience to modern dance. Nothing wrong with that. When properly sourced and presented, it can be a wonderful complement to any company’s core classical repertoire.
So in theory, Scottish Ballet artistic director Christopher Hampson’s obvious passion for showcasing young choreographers and rarely performed works is something to be applauded. In practice, however, it is vital that the works chosen are the right ones.
When contemporary dance is good, it is very, very good; but when it is bad, it is truly horrid. It was perhaps a failure to recognise this that almost ruined Scottish Ballet’s Edinburgh Festival offering this year.
An evening begun by French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj’s truly awful MC 14/22 was rescued by Crystal Pite’s magnificent Emergence. But it was, as the Duke of Wellington said of another encounter with a Frenchman, a damned close run thing.
Thankfully, MC 14/22 has disappeared for Scottish Ballet’s autumn season. Strangely enough, Preljocaj has been replaced by another French choreographer. This one, however, is far better known to, and much more in tune with, the company’s audience.
Sophie Laplane has been a dancer with Scottish Ballet since 2004 – although in recent seasons she has been allowed to showcase her burgeoning talent as a choreographer. Following a number of short pieces for the company, Hampson showed he certainly can get it right by commissioning her to create a 30-minute work, her longest piece to date.
Sibilo is a work for eight dancers, four female and four male. It starts in an almost formal atmosphere, the dancers seemingly mechanical, almost robotic.
As the piece develops, the dancers become more free; spontaneous even. All eight are clearly at one and at home with Laplane and her vision; hardly surprising, given they all know her and some have worked with her for years.
Laplane is the first to recognise this. A few days before the world premiere, she told me: ‘I truly feel it’s an advantage knowing the dancers so well. I know how they dance, I know what they can do.’
She certainly does – and she brings it out brilliantly, in an almost bewildering variety of shapes and scenes as the dancers intermingle in solos, duets, fours, eights, you name it. The score, by Glasgow-born DJ and composer Alex Menzies, aka Alex Smoke, covers influences from classical to electronica and dovetails with Laplane’s range of movement.
Emergence again closed the evening, showcasing the work of a female choreographer at the height of her powers. Canadian Crystal Pite’s tour de force study of individual technique allied to corporate choreography involving dozens of dancers was even better in Glasgow than it had been at the Festival. It was a masterstroke by Hampson to secure its European premiere in Edinburgh. It will surely be a modern mainstay of the company for years to come.
Unfortunately, the artistic director could not resist the temptation to start the performance with a short piece by choreographer/ composer Jack Webb.
An inelegant conceit involving a male dancer and two plastic chairs, the aptly named Drawn to Drone was simply not strong enough to be included in such a bill as this. When Hampson gets it right, he gets it right in spades. All he has to do is get it right all the time.
Scottish Ballet; Drawn to Drone/ Sibilo/Emergence; Eden Court, Inverness, tonight and tomorrow; His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, October 14-15.