Youth appeal
Giannandrea Poesio
As reported in every recent dance-history book, Richard Alston is a key figure within British modern dance as well as one of the fathers of that choreographic genre. Both his past and current contributions to the developments of the British dance scene are studied by a considerable number of Dance GCSE and A-level students, as well as being known and appreciated by many future dance practitioners. And it is to such popularity with the younger generation that one should credit the numerous and overwhelmingly enthusiastic ovations given by a crowd of 'under 25' viewers to the triple bill performed at the Queen Elizabeth Hall by the Richard Alston Dance Company.
There is little doubt that the refined craft of Alston's choreography, together with its structural clarity and its theatrical immediacy, are the winning ingredients of his creations. Alston's use of the music stands out for the calibrated and well-considered way phrases and melodic nuances relate to the dancing, informing it in an effective, though never too literal or predictable fashion. The intriguing diversity of the musical choices for each of the three items on the programme. Shostakovich's mindblowing Quartet No 3 in F major Op 73 for Tremor (2000), Monteverdi's madrigals and sinfonias for Fever (2001) and Reich's counterpoints for the well-known Roughcut (1990), provided a perfect example of Alston's creative approach to the music. In each work, the movement vocabulary develops fluidly with the music, generating a structural and architectural game of choreographic and musical symmetries, punctuated by the constant development and interaction of typical Alstonian features.
Although Roughcut remains a pyrotechnic, eye-catching dance, the work that really stood out in the programme was, in my view, the most recent one, Fever. It is true that to choreograph a modern dance piece to Monteverdi's madrigals has become quite fashionable these days and the number of choreographic creations set to the scores of the great Italian composer is worryingly increasing. Yet Alston manages to dispel any risk of déjà vu by letting the dance flow freely and almost independently from the text of the madrigals. It is, in other words, the richly luscious sensuality of Monteverdi's music, and, as reported in the programme note, the Concerto Italiano's particular execution of the same that informs the dancing and provides it with different layers of meaning. Indeed, one can read here and there a reference to the mood expressed by the singing, but there is never that suffocating interdependence between dance and sung text that characterises the work of other contemporary choreographers.
Still, I do not think that to make Fever follow Tremor, created one year earlier, was a particularly good idea. Despite the different scores and the different choreographic layout, the two works have a little too much in common in terms of use of space, choreographic construction and movement solutions. Inevitably, solutions that have occurred in the first dance carry their conceptual narrative into the second, where they reappear more or less identically. Consequently, the different thematic characterisation of the two works, hinted at by a carefully devised set of programme notes, becomes blurred, particularly when the whole evening is assessed in retrospective. It is a pity, for such lack of distinction impinges on the crescendo of the entire programme, which truly takes off in its final third, namely when the action switches from the fluid and gentle tones of the Monteverdi madrigals to the frenetic pace of Roughcut. The dancing was generally fine, even though I have seen the Richard Alston Dance Company in much better form.
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