REVIEW: Dancing from here to there

From Here To There
Royal New Zealand Ballet
Aotea Centre, The Edge Auckland
March 17 – 20,

Then St James Theatre Wellington
March 24 – 27.

Next week Auckland audiences get to see the Royal New Zealand Ballet’s new triple bill of “From Here to There” which premiered in Dunedin last month. The three works combine light and fluffy with dramatic and analytical.

The three works all have an intimate connection with the musical scores of Bach, Poulenc and Glass.

The first work on the programme “Silhouette” by Christopher Hampson is danced to Concert Champetre by Francis Poulenc, which refers to the eighteenth century painting by Watteau with its frivolous view of French courtly society. It provides a bright easy combination of medieval, country dance, Spanish dance classical poses along with gymnastic routines.

The opening sequences had a contemporary feel as sliding curtains that act as filmic wipes, allow dancers to move from one space and time frame to another, with the audience acting as voyeurs.

This idea of dancers being observed is reinforced in a couple of sequences where the group of dancers line up on the stage, their backs to the audience. It is as though we are at the rear of the stage looking at the dancers who are looking at the audience.

The dance is classical in style but seemed designed for its fashion-shoot potential with the dancers moving in unexpected and eccentric ways. Clytie Campbell who opens the piece moves across the stage in a stilted fashion while Qi Huan performed a series of taut angular jumps in a similar style.

This was a dance of contrasts and controlled chaos with the dancers seeming to morph from classical mode into contemporary, courtly or gypsy as the music took up another theme.

The contrasts were also apparent in the costume with alternating black and white livery as well as the stark lighting.

“A Song in the Dark” by former RNZB dancer Andrew Simmons was the standout work of the evening. It continued the filmic notion of “Silhouette” by having the dancers silhouettes projected on to to a large screen angled across one side of the stage. This meant there was always a set of parallel figure whose gestures and forms were slightly elongated and surreal in contrast to the dancers themselves.

The work was pared down to the essentials of the drama of dance; dramatic physicality, a focus on shape and movement as well as energetic lifts and holds,

There was a palpable tension between the dancers which emphasised the contrasting strengths and fragilities of the male and female dancers.

Throughout the work there was an emphasis on the sensuous physicality of the bodies as arms legs and torsos flexed against the dramatic down and side lights.

The minimalist music of Philip Glass required the dancers to move in repetitive patterns which slowly evolved and diverged so that one became conscious of the structure of the dance. The dancers were impelled by the music as it evolved from the quiet and meditative through to the increasingly dramatic.

The setting and staging of the final work “A Million Kisses to my Skin” was elegant and refined. Six purple panels surrounded three sides of the stage heightening the colours of the filmy red and purple dresses of the female dances and the yellow trousers of the men.

The dancers responded to the rigorous patterns of the Bach Piano Concerto forming tight structures and carefully delineated lines.

These carefully configured sequences were then interspersed with virtuosic dancing to the more expressive cadenzas of the music.

Like the music itself the dancers continually invent new variations creating new dynamic incident but always with a sense of order and control.

At times it seemed that the dancers were spending more time in the air than on the stage with free floating moves, high stepping leaps and dramatic high kicks.

All this airy, diaphanous dancing along with the serene abstract music of Bach provided an ethereal spiritual experience. This was cerebral dancing of the highest quality in which classical form and contemporary ambiance merged.