DANCE REVIEW: Rambert Dance - The Lowry Theatre, Salford.

An evening at Salford's Lowry Theatre saw three very different but all as equally challenging [both for the dancers themselves and the audience] as each other. Comedy was mixed with the macabre, sandwiched between body image issues and the sheer joy of existing. 

Rambert Dance Company are no strangers to putting themselves at the forefront of cutting-edge contemporary dance and pushing those boundaries ever further with each piece they create. Innovation is their middle name. And here, these three pieces showcased the style and ethos of the company with precision and elan. 

In the first piece, a high and foreboding black-grey wall had been placed in a semi-circle at the rear of the stage. Although it was never referenced or used, it was always lit with subtle steels creating the impression of something dank and cold. This was further enhanced when the dancers themselves were cleverly lit with straw lamps, giving their already grotesquely over-exaggerated body shapes an almost otherwordly preternatural appearance. 

The piece was called 'Eye Candy' and was choreographed by Imre Van Opstal and Marne Van Opstal with original music by Amos Ben-Tal. The piece was created to explore both the pains and pleasures of our own bodies, and how (or maybe even why) we have ideals about body image and "the perfect body". For this reason the dancers were not naked - although in all honesty it would have worked much better had they have been - but instead wore sillicon 'nude suits'. The wearing of these had two immediate effects; first, they highlighted areas of the body which many people would say are the more important elements of physical prowess (a triangular six-pack on the men) and sexual beauty (large breasts on the female); but in so highlighting these areas, made them grotesque and ridiculous. Whilst second, it was more than obvious that the dancers were wearing costumes, as so, the idea of 'nudity' or asking the audience to suspend their disbelief and to 'imagine' them nude, was also ridiculous. 

The second piece, 'Cerberus', was hardly a dance at all. In fact, what was presented was part dance, part music, and part theatre play. In a very theatrical and comedic reinterpretation of the 12th Labour of Hercules. The whole piece starts with a voice-over. She is the dancer, the one who will travel from stage right - her moment of being born; to exit stage left - the moment of her death. This we know before the curtain opens; which, when it does, we see she has a rope around her waist and it trails off into the wings as she slowly walks across the stage. We expect her to stop and show us a dance or two about her life, but instead she keeps going and the rope falls loose as she exits. What happens next is both darkly humorous, and quite unexpected. However, half-way through this piece, the mood changed quickly and dramatically from black humour to tragedy and pathos. For me the transition was both too stark and overmuch. Choreographed by Ben Duke, and assisted by Pippa Duke and Winifred Burnet-Smith, this macabre piece of drama had onstage live percussion by Romana Campbell, a classically trained soprano singing an Italian Canzone, Rebecca Leggett, and she was accompanied on the Spanish Classical guitar by George Robinson. 

In the third and final piece of this balletic triptych, 'Following The Subtle Current Upstream', we were all needing to reassert ourselves in the present, the living, and the joyful; and we needed a piece which would do just that for us. In Alonzo King's choroegraphy he states that the human condition is such that we try to avoid pain and suffering, in our omnipresent search for happiness and joy. Joy is always the goal. However, after watching this piece, it seemed that both King and his dancers were still searching for their goal(s). A series of unconnected dance vignettes without thread or relationship; some more interesting than others, but ultimately, one was left wondering more about the 'why' in this piece rather than enjoying a celebration of the joy of dance and life. Those ideas never seemed to take shape at all. 

One thing is for certain, whether one enjoyed the choreography or not, is that all those dancers / performers on stage this evening were superb. Their bodies at the peak of fitness and agility; their techniques undeniably superb, and their commitment to the pieces and the demands the pieces gave them, simply awe-inspiring.

Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 25.5.22