A thrilling, pulsing dance on the wild side
Bausch/Forsythe/ van Manen English National Ballet, Sadler’s Wells
Not seen in the UK since 2008, Pina Bausch’s astonishing Rite
of Spring, a savage interpretation of Stravinsky’s work in which pagan rituals culminate in the death of a sacrificial victim, puts the spotlight on Tamara Rojo’s English National Ballet – a company going from strength to strength.
The piece, first performed in 1975, is well known for the punishing lengths to which it pushes its dancers, asking them to rapidly contort their bodies over and over again. The Paris Opera Ballet is the only company, other than Bausch’s own, to undertake it. So it’s a coup that it has been entrusted to the ENB, making them the first British company to dance it. And dance it they do, in a terrifying expression of raw human emotion, showing the classically trained dancers in a completely different light: uninhibited, wild, inspired.
A soil-covered stage sets the scene for the ensemble who portray the barbaric events with convulsive force, fiercely driven by Stravinsky’s pounding score. They move like automata in rival tribes, conveying the power of men over women and the group over the individual.
Bausch’s obsession with repetition and the pulsating rhythms of the music sear indelible images in our mind. By the end, the group are streaked with sweat and dirt and frantically panting. It’s a cyclonic assault, and tiny Francesca Velicu gives herself entirely as the terrified girl who is chosen and then abandoned to her fate.
For the nine-night run at Sadler’s Wells, ENB also returned to the liberating work of William Forsythe, which was first presented in the UK two years ago. Forsythe’s In the
Middle, Somewhat Elevated was commissioned by Rudolf Nureyev, then the director of Paris Opera Ballet, in 1987, and starred a young Sylvie Guillem. It was conceived as the central act of a larger work called Impressing the Czar and, with its abstract approach and skewed alignment, it was a bold regeneration of the classic dance vocabulary and instantly recognised as a contemporary masterpiece.
It’s a dazzling spectacle, performed with fierce intensity by the company, who don’t always appear at ease but rise to the challenge of the choreography’s severe technical demands and the thrusting electronic score. They articulate each part of the body, somehow rendering geometric lines human. Tiffany Hedman, Cesar Corrales and Precious Adams are the standouts here as they prowl the stage in green lycra, then dart like fireflies, the axes of their bodies bowing with sublime control.
The middle section of the triple bill was given to Dutch veteran Hans van Manen. His Adagio Hammerklavier is a posturing of cool classicism, an elegant study of stark lines, balance and form, to Beethoven’s hushed, slow movement of the piano sonata Opus 106. But while it perhaps serves as a breather, bookended by the other two pieces, there’s not enough emotion or drama to make it memorable.
Against a white cloth rippling in a breeze, three couples (including Rojo) dance a sombre series of encounters that explore the conflicts between men and women. It was the least famous, least thrilling, but perhaps a necessary part of an intelligent programme.