Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Windows on the world offered by dance company
RAMBERT dance company’s new live event offers a witty window on the world, combining dance, theatre and film in a funny and quirky 55-minute show.
Rooms is a real-time digital livestream, to use the technical jargon, performed at a particular time for which you buy a ticket – just like going to the theatre except that, this being lockdown, you watch at home on your laptop or TV.
It’s a show created specially for the screen. Norwegian choreographer Jo Stromgren, combining his skills of choreographer, film maker, playwright and director, takes Rambert into innovative new realms. This will remain a permanent feature of future seasons, complementing the company’s live theatre shows.
Rooms describes the 36 scenarios that we glimpse as through a lighted window. Some 17 dancers play 100 different characters who glide seamlessly from one mini play to another, mysteriously, humorously, sometimes just plain weirdly.
The scenes are drawn from all walks of life – a couple are caught in flagrante delicto, Hasidic dancers are tempted by maidens, police raid a man in a shower cap watering his marijuana plants, there’s an incursion of Norwegian black metal fans on a radio interview, and even a nod to the King Kong movie gorilla.
There are changes in musical and dance styles, in tempo and tone from Bach to Glen Miller, and it’s all very odd but always engaging.
Each scenario takes place within a small room, as though we are peering in, one scene morphing into the next through an adjoining door or through the window.
Come the end, the cast are the other side of that window, looking in and watching us the viewers as they process past. Now the characters from the different rooms are jumbled up, gleefully grabbing each other’s props as they adopt new roles, leaving unfinished narratives behind and creating new ones.
Covid may have shut the theatres for a while but it’s good to see such creativity enabling the company to continue performing while bringing us something so immediate and fresh.
All performances of Rooms are taking place at the company’s studios at the Southbank, London. Theatre Royal Bath is one of ten UK partner theatres for Rambert’s 2021 digital dance programme which is also being streamed internationally.
Rooms is being performed again this evening at 8pm, and on Sunday night at 1am.
Book tickets to see the show livestreamed into your home at the Theatre Royal Bath box office on 01225 448844 or online at www. theatreroyal.org.uk.