SWEET CHARITY at the Donmar - The Thin and Thick Of It...

They say you should never judge a book by it's cover - but sometimes it saves an awful lot of time.  My issues with Josie Rourke's production of SWEET CHARITY began right at the top of the show and fluctuated throughout the evening.  I suppose any show is open to be re-imagined but when the production constantly gets in the way of the material then you know the director probably has no understanding of the original's worth.

Musicals don't have a continuous life for over 50 years because of the concepts visited on it, and while I am sure SWEET CHARITY will survive Rourke's attempts to make it 'relevant', she might walk with a limp for a while.

As I said the sinking feeling started before a note was sung.  For some reason Rourke and designer Robert Jones have decided that the defining stage image for their SWEET CHARITY is the silver and metallic world of Andy Warhol's Factory.  Showing crashing obviousness they must have surmised that as SWEET CHARITY premiered in 1966 they should look for images of New York in the mid-1960s and the first thing they found was The Factory.

The production starts with the cast all in black on black outfits, sitting around in icy hauteur while a film of the Empire State Building is projected on the back wall and The Velvet Underground's whacked-out VENUS IN FURS blares out.  I would dearly love to know what this has to do with SWEET CHARITY and it's sleazy world of neon-lit dance halls, blaring car horns along 42nd Street, and shadowy men smelling of cheap after-shave?  This world is wonderfully conjured up in Cy Coleman's exciting Overture - which, of course, Rourke dropped.

As I said any production where the Concept takes precedence over the material's internal logic is bound to fail - with Rourke it reaches the height of stupidity when Helene and Nicky, Charity's fellow-dancehall hostesses, sing BABY DREAM YOUR DREAM after Charity quits the business to seek happiness with boyfriend Oscar.  They sing cynically about Charity's future, but ultimately it dawns on them that her hopes will probably never happen to them and the song ends on a sad, wistful note.  So what does Rourke have them doing while they sing it?  Walk on with large Brillo boxes - a la Warhol - and unpack smaller Brillo boxes from inside, Russian doll style... which end up all over the stage... and which are swept away in the scene change.  So a nothing idea meaning nothing which results in... nothing.

The always wobbly end to the show again plays right into Rourke's cack-handed Concept. The original production has Charity alone again, her happy dreams collapsed, but she admits that at least he didn't steal her purse like the guy before did so picks herself up and heads off as titles appear saying "And she lived - hopefully - ever after".  Bob Fosse shot two endings to the film version - one truthful, one happy - but went with the truthful version.  But Rourke isn't dealing with characters, she is dealing in Concepts and worse, an Agenda.  So she ends with Charity and the Fandango Dance-Hall girls lined up reprising THERE'S GOTTA BE SOMETHING BETTER THAN THIS like so many Times Square Miserables.  Needless to say, Rourke's attempt to claim Charity for the #MeToo movement just comes across as crashingly Obvious.  Hamlet famously says "The play's the thing.." but sadly thanks to the oppressive Director Theatre climate of today, the Agenda's the thing.. no matter whether it serves the material.

One of the disappointments of the show was Wayne McGregor's choreography.  In a show so famous for it's dance numbers - especially Fosse's moves - McGregor's choreography is either remarkably basic or remarkably absurd: HEY BIG SPENDER is choreographed with about six step-ladders for the Dance-Hall divas to clamber up or lounge on then descend to move somewhere else on a revolve.  Because they are not busy enough singing one of the show's great standards.  The RICH MAN'S FRUG number was more successful with a stage full of quaking Andy Warhols look-a-likes.

So where do we find the positives?  Anne-Marie Duff can certainly act the role - and her honeyed rasp of a voice did finally grow on me - but something seemed off about the performance, as if she didn't really commit to the wide-eyed optimism of Charity.  Whether the fact that she is the oldest actress to play Charity in London or New York has anything to do with that is open to conjecture.  She is always likeable however.

It's an odd CHARITY where the most memorable performance is from the actor playing Oscar but Arthur Darvill was excellent in the role.  He gave us a totally believable character who was ready to commit to Charity but ultimately unable to leave her past behind.  The Donmar has hit on the odd idea of having a regular guest performer play Daddy Brubeck for short periods - we got Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, fresh from his Olivier Award-winning Ike Turner in TINA.  His sparkly silver shirt made the biggest impression sadly.

Lizzy Connolly and Debbie Kurup were ok as Nickie and Helene but - along with Martin Marquez as Italian matinee idol Vittorio Vidal and Stephen Kennedy as Herman the grouchy manager of the Fandango club - everyone seemed to be acting on a fairly low-light.  It's almost like they are all using 40w bulbs instead of iridescent neon.

SWEET CHARITY currently sits on my list of favourite musicals and there was still enjoyment to be had thanks to the combined excellence of Cy Coleman's music, Neil Simon's book and Dorothy Fields' lyrics but they had to fight hard to get through the vacuous trappings of Josie Rourke's Concept.  Oh I didn't mention the lifesize plastic-ball pit that doubles as Central Park lake...

Never mind Charity, you will survive till the next time we meet...

TRIO CONCERTDANCE at the Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House - music and movement

It took 22 days into the new year but I finally went to the theatre.  I am amazed I knew how to sit in the seat properly.  It was a first visit to the newly-designed Linbury Theatre which sits in the basement of the Covent Garden Opera House as it's studio space.  We had been a few years ago to see The Unthanks - when they were called the unwieldy Rachel Unthank and The Winterset - but it was a rather cold auditorium which has now been transformed into a shining wooden nest of a space which rather oddly has it's upper circle level on the ground floor, the oval staircase proving to be a bit slow-moving both going in and coming out.

Our visit was to see the wonderful Alessandra Ferri in a programme that she devised with American Ballet Theater principal Herman Cornejo and concert pianist Bruce Levingston.  Four pas de deux and a solo each were interspersed with piano pieces by Satie, Chopin, Glass and Bach among others.  The six dances all have different choreographers and amongst them were Russell Maliphant, Wayne McGregor and Cornejo himself.

The real thrill was being only five rows from the stage so it was very easy to be overtaken by the limpid mood of the music and the dance, it was great to be so close too to see the total immersion in the music and movement by Cornejo and especially the magnificent Alessandra; she was hypnotic enough on the Covent Garden main stage in McGregor's WOOLF WORKS but here she was extraordinary.

Cornejo was an excellent partner for her, as they seemingly mirrored each other throughout the pieces - one moment him supporting her then she supporting him.  They were partnered by the excellent playing of Levinstone, his piano's notes floating across the open stage for them to simply hang upon and be spun around by them.

They were joined in the final number by the strings of the Halcyon Quartet and the added volume helped make this a remarkable finale, with Mozart's music brought to life by French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj; especially the breathtaking moment of Ferri's armed locked around Cornejo's neck as he spun around as they kissed.  A special mention too to the nuanced, subtle lighting of Clifton Taylor.

A lovely night of gentle surprises and revelations...

Theatre of War: WAR HORSE at the Lyttelton Theatre; THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER Mixed Programme at Covent Garden

As was expected, the theatre also marked the Centenary of the end of Word War I in November and I saw two of the productions that marked the event.

First off was the more obvious one, the National Theatre's game-changing production of WAR HORSE which had been on manoeuvres around the country before reaching the Lyttelton Theatre stable for an extended stay until the start of January.

As Mr and Mrs World know by now, WAR HORSE is based on the novel by Michael Morpurgo about Albert Narracott who, although under-age, joins up to find his beloved horse Joey who has been sold to the army and is somewhere on the Western Front; while there boy and horse both experience the carnage of war at first hand.  I was lucky to see both the original 2007 production and the 2008 revival, both at the Olivier Theatre and both were very moving, involving productions - just ask Stephen Sondheim who was a blubbing wreck in 2007 on the night we went!

It then moved to the New London Theatre where it had an amazing run from 2009 to 2016.  Joey has since become a mainstay of many Remembrance celebrations, a genuine iconic presence.  I had such vivid memories of the show that it was a surprise that it was nearly ten years since I had seen it last so another visit was definitely on the cards.

The good news is that Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris' production - here re-directed by Katie Henry - still delivers the emotional crescendo which had the Lyttelton audience sobbing and sniffing and there are certain images that are indelible once you have seen them, however...  it is a given that no one really goes to see WAR HORSE for the cast's performances - Nick Dear's adaptation is more weighted towards Joey, his equine rival Topthorn and the Narracott's family goose - but even by these standards the anonymity of the performances was quite astonishing.

Thomas Dennis as Albert hardly registered and, as his irascible father Ted, Gwilym Lloyd huffed and puffed to very little effect.  There is also a very odd performance from Ben Ingles as the supposedly-sympathetic officer Lt. Nicholls who promises to care for Joey - it was nothing I could really pinpoint but I wouldn't trust him with a My Little Pony toy, let alone our plucky Joey.  Even the usual laugh-generator role of the f-ing Sgt Thunder went for nothing in Jason Furnival's hands.

However I would like to praise Peter Becker as the caring German officer Friedrich Muller who helps Joey and Topthorn when they are captured on the wrong side of No Man's Land, he at least convinced that Muller was a three-dimensional character.  Jo Castelton as Rose Narracott also found some depth as Albert's careworn but worried mother and the John Tams' songs were well sung by Bob Fox.

The best performances were unsurprisingly by the Handspring life-size puppets of Joey, both foal and horse, Topthorn and - yes - the goose.  The puppeteers invested them all with character and emotions which made it very easy to forget the actors and concentrate on them.  In particular, the scenes where  Joey and Topthorn were commandeered by the German army as pack-horses were full of unspoken pathos, none more so than Joey's gentle nuzzling of Topthorn as he dies, exhausted and broken.  The excellent touch of Topthorn's demise being made real by having his puppeteers slowly emerge from the puppet and slowly walking offstage is incredibly effective.

I did feel something was lost in the transfer to the proscenium stage but Rae Smith's spare design, Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler's remarkable puppet design and Paule Constable's lighting still delivered, as did Adrian Sutton's score.  I am glad I experienced WAR HORSE again, but just wish that most of the human cast had invested their roles with the passion that the puppeteers did.

A few days later we saw a more intriguing response to the Centenary, the Royal Ballet's premiere of THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER, which was part of a mixed programme with Wayne McGregor's INFRA and the late George Balanchine's SYMPHONY IN C.

The ballet took as it's inspiration the recorded memories of WWI veteran Wally Patch and a contemporary of his, Florence Billington, who in voice-over remember the quiet and lonely devastation they felt at the deaths of friends and a boyfriend respectively.  These spoken memories are interwoven with the lush, sombre score by film composer Dario Marianelli to create an absorbing soundscape to Alastair Marriott's choreography which illustrates the story of Florence and her beau Ted Feltham; from their meeting at a social dance before the war to his enlisting and subsequent death on the battlefield, cradled by Patch as he dies, to Florence receiving the news by telegram to Ted viewing it all from another place.

The ballet was visually stunning with a fractured, broken video playing on the scrim of contemporary footage of the call to arms in 1914 to the solemn procession of the coffin of the Unknown Soldier in 1920, which eventually raised to reveal Es Devlin's minimalist design of rotating flat panels which were played upon by Bruno Poet's stark lighting to create sweeping changes of tone across the stage while the reminiscences of Patch and Billington were heard.

There were good performances from William Bracewell as Ted and Anna Rose O'Sullivan as Florence but in the cold light of day the ballet failed to move; Marriott's choreography was nice to watch but detracted from the pathos of the spoken testimony of individual loss.  There was no profundity in the thoughts behind the movements but more importantly the very real disconnect between the spoken remembrances of the Western Front's living Hell and the precision and athleticism of the male dancers was too strong to ignore.  The piece ultimately felt like there was no real artistic need for being there, it was a commission to fill a brief in the programming.  I also read somewhere the jibe that he can't be THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER if we know his name was Ted Feltham!

The three ballets in the mixed programme seemed to have been selected to counter-point each other, there was no linear connection between them other than to show off the versatility of the Royal ballet company.  McGregor's INFRA from 2008 had twelve dancers hyper-extending in solos and groups to McGregor's signature taxing choreography while above them Julien Opie's illuminated silhouettes walked in solipsistic silence left and right.  It's an obvious leap to get what McGregor is illustrating - the tortured souls underneath those anonymous walkers - but after a while you long for a resolution.  But always good to hear Max Richter's music...

But then the mood was turned on it's head again with George Balanchine's glorious SYMPHONY IN C, danced to the music of Georges Bizet.  Premiered in 1947 in Paris but extensively re-thought for New York City Ballet the following year, Balanchine drew on his extensive knowledge of the Russian classical tradition from his teenage years with the Imperial Ballet and from his years with the Ballet Russes in the 1920s.

Broken down into four movements with new performers for each, SYMPHONY IN C is a whirlwind extravaganza of pure classical technique: it's like every classical ballet finale with the narrative and named characters removed so you can just concentrate on solos, pas de deux and ensemble routines.  With over 50 dancers onstage as it reaches it's conclusion, it felt so impossibly sumptuous and showy that I almost expected a camera crane to swoop in and a director to yell "cut", such is it's feel of a Hollywood musical idea of a big ballet number.

The four couples were excellently danced by Natalia Osipova, Sarah Lamb, Reece Clarke, Marcelino Sambé, William Bracewell, Anna Rose O'Sullivan, Yuhue Choe and Luca Acri.  It was by far the most memorable piece of the evening and rather put the others in their place.

I would definitely see SYMPHONY IN C again, I am happy to have seen THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER and INFRA but think I would pass on seeing them again.  However as I said earlier, the mixed programme was a wonderful showcase for the talents of the whole Royal Ballet company.

Bernstein Triple Bill: YUGEN, THE AGE OF ANXIETY, CORYBANTIC GAMES at Covent Garden

Sometimes the Royal Ballet triple-bills can be a curate's egg but, every so often, all the pieces fall together and, while the individual one-acts dazzle, together they form a cohesive whole.  The Royal Ballet's recent celebration of Leonard Bernstein's centenary did just that.

Bernstein was such a giant of American music that it has taken three RB-favourite choreographers to stage this tribute: in tandem with Liam Scarlett's existing THE AGE OF ANXIETY, Wayne McGregor devised YUGEN and Christopher Wheeldon was given the final ballet CORYBANTIC GAMES.  All in their own way were exciting and Bernstein's soaring music sounded wonderful thanks to the Royal Opera House Orchestra.

Moving effortlessly between the classical and Broadway stages, Leonard Bernstein never forgot either as essential outlets for his creativity - indeed when a musical adaptation of THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH was abandoned because of creative differences, Bernstein reworked parts of the score to become a 1965 symphonic work which had been requested by the Dean of Chichester Cathedral two years earlier, waste not want not...  THE CHICHESTER PSALMS have been used by McGregor for his ballet YUGEN.

Utilizing his signature moves, McGregor had his dancers moving with vigour and astonishing physicality but also complementing the singing of the psalms in Hebrew.  The stark but intriguing design by Edmund De Waal of tall moving white light-boxes concentrated you on the remarkable dancers, as fluid as the red and purple costumes they wore.

I am sure it was just because it is the Bernstein score I know the most but I occasionally picked up the odd phrase that sounded straight out of WEST SIDE STORY in all three pieces.  I also saw a possible Matthew Bourne moment when a dancer did very noticeable swan-like swooping movements over three other crouching dancers.  McGregor can sometimes be all cerebral movement and little emotional involvement but here the lush musicality of Bernstein brought out the best in him, very much like Max Richter's music for WOOLF WORKS.

The second was a revival of Liam Scarlett's 2014 ballet THE AGE OF ANXIETY, written by Bernstein in 1949 and based on WH Auden's epic poem.  Bernstein's symphony throbs with the post-war feeling in New York of possible new beginnings under an air of lonely city living, Scarlett vividly moves his four lonely drinkers from a corner bar - an excellent design by John MacFarlane - to an apartment where they continue their drinking in the hope of making a connection.

They pal around, they flirt, they come together then break up leaving one of them, Malin, staring at the New York skyline at sunrise, eventually rushing towards it, ready to take up the challenge of another day, another possibility...  Sadly injury meant the wonderful Steven McRae had to pull out of the production and was replaced by fellow Aussie Alexander Campbell, but the lead quartet of Campbell, Sarah Lamb, Edward Gartside and Tristan Dyer were excellent, and Kevin Emerton was equally fine as the bartender.

After that blast of narrative, it was back to abstract for the last piece which was choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon.  He has set his ballet to Bernstein's Serenade after Plato's 'Symposium' - excuse me people - and the theme was carried through in Erdem Moralioglu's Hellenic-style costumes.  Through the five movements the constant theme seemed to be harking back to athletic running and leaping movement. 

I would love to see this again; Wheeldon's choreography was wonderfully alive, especially the 4th movement where a man and a woman, two men and two women danced variations to the same movements, perfectly embodying Bernstein's flowing music, before the whole ensemble at the end came together in kinetic, perfect fluidity.

As I said, the Royal Ballet triple bills may sometimes be unbalanced but in their tribute to Bernstein they triumphed.

TREE OF CODES at Sadler's Wells Theatre: beyond words so let's dance...

Take one cutting-edge choreographer, one unclassable book, one current musician and one modern artist... now stir it up and stand back and marvel; I give you the truly astonishing TREE OF CODES.

As you are aware Constant Reader, it was through Wayne McGregor's hypnotic WOOLF WORKS at Covent Garden that I finally found an appreciation for dance in all it's forms.  Although McGregor has been the resident choreographer at Covent Garden for the past eleven years he still works with his own independent company which he uses for more avant garde projects.  For TREE OF CODES his troupe has teamed up with the Paris Opera Ballet to form a company of 15 dancers who are simply unstoppable!

McGregor was a fan of Jonathan Safran Foer's artifact TREE OF CODES and seeking to work on a project with the installation artist Olafur Eliasson he was thrilled to discover that Eliasson and Foer were friends.  TREE OF CODES was Foer's 'remix' of the Bruno Schultz novel STREET OF CROCODILES which consisted of Foer cutting away words to make his own book out of the existing text.

However McGregor's extraordinary body-bending (and mind-bending) choreography is actually only a part of a glorious whole which shows him to be a true collaborator.  The propulsive electro score came from the composer Jamie xx which was an excellent aural backdrop to McGregor's seemingly limitless choreography.

For me the key element to the show's success was the astonishing visual design of Olafur Eliasson.  Creating WOW moments is what Eliasson does - I discovered him, as a great many others did, in 2003 when he created The Weather Project for Tate Modern's Turbine Hall a.k.a. The Big Sun - one of the truly most awesome creations I have ever seen!

Since then I have marvelled at his work with light and water as well as his simple-but-profound Ice Watch in Paris 2015, for which he transplanted 12 large blocks of ice, weighing in total 80 tonnes, to form a clock-like circle with which the public could interact, only for it to slowly melt to nothingness in only 9 days.

Here in essence using only lights, mirrors and screens he created a total immersive stage environment which time-and-again found me wanting to get up there to stop the show and shout out loud "but how do you do THAT??"  Of course I would never actually want to know that - it's so rare that nowadays you see a genuine scenic wonder on stage that I wanted it to never end.  Two screens descended at one point: a couple were between the audience and the first screen with a second couple between the first and second screens then beyond that was a large semi-circular mirror - the first couple however were only reflected once while the second seemed to be reflected ad infinitum... like, how??  It was like watching a 70s Top Of The Pops camera effect live!

Oh and the reflections moved too! One moment they were at stage level then they hovered above the dancers as the orange neon strip-lights hanging above the dancers also multiplied behind them.  Each 'scene' saw a new vision unfolding but always with a breathtaking simplicity that made you wonder why no one had ever done that before.

The last scene was again a feast for the eyes - and ears - with the whole company onstage but seen through a large screen which had two large circles in the middle which slowly opened and rotated at different speeds filling the whole stage and auditorium with shafts of solid coloured light, all quite stunning.

TREE OF CODES was a totally unexpected wonder but only played a week at Sadler's Wells - hopefully it will appear again soon.  I recommend it highly

WOOLF WORKS Works On Stage, Screen And CD... Living the past again

Nearly two years ago, we took the plunge - in the year of trying new things artistically - and went to Covent Garden to see WOOLF WORKS, a new Royal Ballet production choreographed by Wayne McGregor.  I remember feeling some trepidation... Virginia Woolf is one of my favourite authors for whom language is the key so how can you silence that but still make it relevant?  Two words... Wayne McGregor.

As you can see from my blog it had a profound effect on us both and it did indeed start a continuing exploration of ballet which has been very rewarding.  But how would the first revival of WOOLF WORKS compare - and would it have the same impact?

I am happy to be able to say that it led to a deeper, richer understanding of the work but also there was the added bonus this year of seeing it on the big screen at the Curzon Mayfair and also being able to appreciate the depth of Max Richter's music with it's release on cd.

Onstage we were blessed with practically the same cast as in 2015, the only major replacement being Calvin Richardson and his breathtaking pirouettes dancing the role of 'Evans' for the unwell Tristan Dyer in the MRS. DALLOWAY-inspired 'I Now, I Then'.  The impact of seeing the company onstage was made even more exciting by seeing the same dancers a few days later on the live cinema screening, giving an opportunity to experience their talent closer than possible at the Opera House although there was some loss too, in particular the glorious digital stage image of the garden of Clarissa's imagined youth flooding the set.

McGregor has choreographed three ballets in distinct styles: 'I Now, I Then' is the most narrative; based on MRS DALLOWAY - and introduced with the only known recording of Virginia Woolf musing on the difficulty of using old English words in new ways - we see Clarissa Dalloway (sublime Alessandra Ferri) meeting old flame Peter Walsh (Gary Aves) and relives the glorious summer she spent as a teenager with Peter and her best friend, the free spirited Sally Seton, and how life seemed full of possibility and choice.  The younger selves were danced wonderfully by Francesca Hayward, Federico Bonelli and Beatriz Stix-Brunell.

As Clarissa is lost in memories of what could have been we also see Septimus Smith (the astonishing Edward Watson) who is tortured with the lasting trauma of shell-shock from his experience in the WWI trenches.  His wife Rezia (Akana Takada) tries to keep him engaged in life but he is lost in memories of his friend Evans (Richardson) who was killed before him.  It is a perfect fusion of performance, choreography, design by Cigué, lighting by Lucy Carter - the moment the stage was suffused with glowing red when Septimus danced with Evans was glorious - and, almost a character of it's own, Max Richter's heartbreaking, longing music.

The second act 'Becomings' takes ORLANDO as it's inspiration and is the most abstract of the pieces although during one of the intervals for the screened event Wayne McGregor was interviewed by hosts Darcey Bussell and Clemency Burton-Hill and said he believed that no dance can be truly abstract as the human element will always lend a dance a narrative sense.  Again Lucy Carter's lighting is thrilling: an overhead beam roams the dark stage picking out 12 dancers in varying degrees of glittering gold Elizabethan costumes before a cold laser beam illuminates two of them and we launch into McGregor's take on Woolf's exploration of gender fluidity.

As Richter's music roams from bone-crunching electro beats to minimal keyboard runs so McGregor's choreography changes from solos to duets to triple routines for his remarkable dancers - pushing their limbs into even more challenging shapes and attitudes; the exhilaration is in seeing male and female dancers fusing into just pure dance.  With each segment, they slowly lose their Elizabethan costumes until they are in shades of grey, all dancing in and out of four overhead spotlights, all individual but all unified, until the lights cut out and the auditorium is criss-crossed with shafts of laserlight.  Again the live screening was wonderful to showcase in detail the astonishing work of, among others, Sarah Lamb, Natalia Osipova, Steven McRae and Watson.

The final act is TUESDAY and takes it inspiration from THE WAVES but also references Woolf's suicide note written on Tuesday 25th March 1941, three days before she actually drowned in the River Ouse.  McGregor has the inspired choice of Gillian Anderson reading the wrenching suicide note while a slow-motion film of crashing waves shows on a stage-wide screen all but dwarfing the stationary figure of Ferri beneath.  Anderson's measured, hypnotic delivery leads you in to McGregor's slow meditation on love and loss, beautifully danced by Ferri and Federico Bonelli who are later joined by Sarah Lamb and an ensemble which also includes young students from the Royal Ballet School.

Ferri is astonishing in her poetry and control as she becomes the embodiment of Richter's dreamlike, ethereal music, solitary notes slowly coming together with Anush Hovhannisyan's soprano to wash over you with waves of strings and brass.  There was one moment that haunts me: Alessandra Ferri starts a solo movement against the ensemble's choreography who slowly, three or four at a time, echo her until they are all bending and stretching as one, it's breathtakingly beautiful.  Slowly the ensemble ebb away into the darkness at the back of the stage, as Bonelli lowers a prone Ferri onto the stage as the music slowly vanishes note by note...

As I have said, the live screening was a wonderful opportunity to see the dancers closer than possible in the theatre and there were the added extras of interviews with Wayne McGregor and Max Richter as well as Maggie Smith reading passages from THE WAVES as well as Virginia's memoir MOMENTS OF BEING.

As I have written this I have been able to relive the experience by playing the cd THREE WORLDS of Richter's score; I wondered if it would work separately from the experience of seeing it with the dancers but it works beautifully.  It has been great to be able to explore this work in depth for the past two weeks - I would love the opportunity to see it again.

CHROMA / MULTIVERSE / CARBON LIFE at Covent Garden - Wayne's World

A week or so ago we returned to the Opera House Covent Garden, which is fast becoming a second home!  This time it was to see a triple-bill celebrating resident choreographer Wayne McGregor's 10th anniversary with the company; it centred on a premiere work MULTIVERSE and this was bracketed by two previously seen works CHROMA and CARBON LIFE.

McGregor's choreography is not always easy and he evidently wants to push the boundaries of the music that can be utilized for the Royal Ballet but his WOOLF WORKS was our entry point to the Royal Ballet so he will always be interesting to us.

CHROMA premiered in 2006 and in this revival McGregor has invited dancers from the Alvin Ailey company to join his Royal Ballet troop to bring their particular brand of dynamism; indeed the first two dancers seen are the hypnotic partnership of the delightfully-named Jeroboem Bozeman and Jacqueline Green who were quite amazing.  The company also included such stalwarts as Sarah Lamb, Federico Bonelli and Lauren Cuthbertson - the recent birth of a child might be good news for Steven McRae but sadly it robbed us of a chance to see his excellent dancing!  John Pawson's cool and formal set design and McGregor's intricate yet flailing choreography was danced to tracks by Joby Talbot and Jack White of The White Stripes, however they all sounded vaguely like attempts at writing James Bond car chase themes.  It was however a fantastic piece of dance theatre.

The premiere work MULTIVERSE sat in the middle of the evening and has not received the warmest reception.  It is an incredibly hard piece to like; admire possibly, but very hard to like.  It is set to two looped verbal works by the minimalist composer Steve Reich which were taken from a speech by an American black preacher in 1965 and called "It's Gonna Rain".  This phrase repeats and repeats, words are dropped, the phrase is multi-tracked starting at different moments to create a dense soundscape that batters against your ears.

Sadly - after a day of being on the phone listening to complaints from annoyed people - the preacher's multi-tacked rant left me ice cold and if I am honest, McGregor's choreography displayed all the characteristics of "modern dance" or to quote the legend that is Nicola Blackman, "six dancers running around trying to find the toilet with the light out".  Danced on a raked triangular stage, one could admire the commitment of the dancers who included Marianela Nunez, Eric Underwood and Edward Watson and towards the end, during the second Reich composition "Runner" from last year, there was finally some orchestral input and some interesting visual imagery, but by then I had disengaged from it.

It was with a suspicious heart that I took my seat for the last piece CARBON LIFE but here we were back to the McGregor we know: provocative, exciting and with a fluid sexuality.  CARBON LIFE premiered in 2012 and is danced to a score of Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt songs.  The music is played by an onstage band and a roster of singers - sadly absent was Boy George who had appeared in the premiere run four years ago but among the onstage singers was fellow-gayer Sam Sparrow.

Over nine songs the 18 dancers perform duets and small ensemble pieces, all with the signature McGregor moves of stretching, spinning, counterpoint movement and strong lines, but also clothed in the minimalist, futuristic costume designs of Gareth Pugh and lit by Lucy Carter's lighting design.  By the time of the last song "Somebody To Love Me" I was totally won over by McGregor's fusion of dance, pop music and fashion.  Ronson's songs sounded fantastic bouncing around the auditorium and all concerned are missing a trick not having the music recorded and available to buy.

I guess two out of three ain't bad - I would really like to see CHROMA and CARBON LIFE again.  Make it happen Covent Garden!