Dance
Kaleidoscopic
Jan Murray
Frenzy and fragmentation were the key notes of three major dance seasons taking place in London during July. At the Coliseum, Rudolf Nureyev whipped himself mercilessly through a quartet of contrasting (and exhausting) roles with the Dutch National Ballet. At Sadler's Wells, the magical Nikolais Dance Theatre from America splintered bodies, lights and sounds to mesmerising effect. At the Round House, Ballet Rambert packed the murky auditorium for their episodic, impassioned spectacle based on the life and writings of Federico Garcia Lorca. With the addition of the annual Royal Ballet School showcase in Covent Garden, and performances by a handful of fledgling modern groups, something like a complete picture of current dance trends emerged.
Nureyev, of course, has long sought to present himself as the complete dancer, and arranged his programme with the Dutch to that end. The visitors were permitted only a single ballet without his overwhelming presence, Hans van Manen's Adagio Hammerklavier, familiar here from the Royal's production. For the remainder, there was Nureyev taking over Anthony Dowell's part in Four Schumann Pieces, the resulting loss in lyricism not wholly recompensed by the star's forceful dynamics; Nureyev in the brash, show-stopping pas de deux, Le Corsaire, with a trim little partner, Maria Aradi; Nureyev in the title-role of Toer van Schayk's Faun; Nureyev as the alienated guest at a formal party in Rudi van Dantzig's About a Dark House.
These last works were created specially for the Russian, and shrewdly emphasised qualities which have helped him maintain a so far unassailable position at the top. Few would question Mikhail Baryshnikov's superiority as a technician, or, indeed, as an interpreter of certain classics, but the younger man lacks his rival's sensuousness, so evident in Faun, and the driving intensity which makes his paranoia in About a Dark House terrifying. In the former playful tribute to Nijinsky, Nureyev is at his beguiling best — a cleaner in a factory who dallies with two assembly line ladies to the strains of Debussy's Prelude. Whether languorously eating grapes or waggling a rag in place of a tail, this janitor proves irresistible. His sudden 'leap to freedom' at the end leaves the girls resigned but wistful: they have caught a glimpse of an alternative, hedonistic world.
Van Schayk designed the brilliantly apt setting for his own work and was also responsible for the stark, elegant drawing room that encloses van Dantzig's cast. The party in the 'dark house' is a chilling affair, and when Nureyev arrives he is patronised or ignored by the sophisticated guests until he is forced to take refuge in a doorway. The walls and furniture fly up to be replaced by an empty arena, lit by an arc of blue lights. Near-naked figures appear and Nureyev, stripped of his evening clothes, becomes involved in an aggressive pas de deux with a woman, athletic combat with a young man. At the end he is literally roped between his warring fantasies and panic-striken, backs off into oblivion. A brutal if simplistic view of society which, perhaps, offers a glimpse of the demon driving Nureyev through his relentless performing schedule in real life.
Alwin Nikolais holds strong views on society, too, but presents them more obliquely. The final scene in Guignol has dancers interacting with dummies in such a way that it is impossible to distinguish between flesh and plastic. Similarly in Gallery, shooting targets are replaced by human ones in masks, and all are mysteriously destroyed, blasted into ever smaller pieces. It is typical , pany's first London season in seven years
the majority of the works were of recent creation, the movement tends toward the gymnastic and functions on different spatial levels formed by mobile benches or proPs such as a trapeze. Nikolais's scores (for he 15 • the ultimate one-man band, devising choreography, designs, lighting and music) now have vocal sounds added to his usual mixture of percussion and the whole bag of electronic effects. The present company is trim, attractive and speedy, or appears to be on those rare occasions when it is possible to separate performers from their kaleidoscopic environments. The single recurring complaint about this extraordinary style of dance theatre is the bittiness of the structure, a sequential approach which leaves spectators intrigued but unsatisfied. If Nikolais could be persuaded to revive some of his earlier classics, the coherent vision of Trent or Tower, programmes would have a stronger impact. But even with these reservations, it is impossible to underestimate Nikolais's pioneering contributions to the art form and multi-media as a whole. His is a unique and provocative imagination.
Ballet Rambert employed another consummate man of the theatre, Lindsay Kemp, to collaborate with Christopher Bruce in Cruel Garden. Damned by man)? dance critics (although welcomed by Bryan Robertson in these pages) the public has ignored all strictures to pack performances throughout the country. This powerful evocation of Lorca's work has been tightened and focussed during a year of touring, and the result is an increase in popular esteem and artistic stature for one of our finest companies. Although it ends, shatteringly, with the poet's death, the eloquent spirit of the Spaniard would seem to live on in the full-blooded, committed performances of both cast and musicians.
Further afield, the spirit of Peter Quint stalked again in the first choreographed version of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, mounted by Domy Reiter-Soffer for the Irish Ballet's Dublin season. The subject is an ideal vehicle for dance, particularly when backed by John McCabe s eerie score (his Second Symphony plus Variations on the Theme of A madens Hartmann) and set in Patrick Murray's gran country mansion. In the role of the governess, Kathleen Smith makes it clear that the horrors are the product of her OWn suppressed sexuality, embodied by Quint recurring appearances in her bedroom. Reiter-Soffer is a master of the telling ges; ture and expressive movement phrase, all' here has the obsessed women smoothMg their hair frantically, then their own bodies, in a hopeless attempt to quell their desire for Quint. A self-propelled rocking horse has a key role in the action and as the curtain falls, it trundles slowly across the stage, carrying the corpse of young Master Miles' Shadow-Reach adds another potent work to the Irish repertory, justifiably dominated by the Israeli choreographer's creations, and deserving of wider exposure. Students of the Royal Ballet School receive their most daunting exposure when they appear at the Opera House. This year a revival of Kenneth MacMillan's Diversions revealed incisive new talents in the shape of the small but dashing Roland Price and Clare Shepherd Wilson who, in Beriosova's original part, displayed a beauty and assurance which rivalled that of her predecessor, and the best pair of legs to be seen in Covent Garden for many years.
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