Rambert Dance Company have a reputation for staging exciting, innovative work and last night's performance was no exception. Launching the programme was the arresting requiem, Eternal Light, composed by Howard Goodall and involving the dancers working with a choir, soloists and the London Musici chamber orchestra. A collaborative venture, which Goodall calls a Requiem for the Living, Eternal Light brings together Mark Stephenson the artistic director of London Musici, choreographer Mark Baldwin, the dancers in the company and Michael Howells, associate designer.
Eternal Light has ten movements, all poems that offer a "sense of solace (and comfort) for the grieving" and a recognition "that the departed do live on in the minds, hearts and memories of others." The poems, set to Goodall's passionate music, were beautifully interpreted and choreographed by Baldwin and enhanced by the, at times, exquisitely ethereal costumes. An extraordinary event, Eternal Light saturated the senses with the choir, music and dancers and flowed like the undulations of a heartbeat.
The next piece on the programme was completely different, Siobhan Davies' reworking of her humorous 1982 choreographed interpretation of Saint-Saens' composition - which he wrote over a weekend - Carnival of the Animals. Staged with a large backdrop of a jungle painting by 19th century artist Rousseau, the music is divided into 14 sections, each interpreting an animal. Particularly amusing were the scenes with the two dancers portraying shy tortoises, discreetly hiding behind a huge feather and the lovelorn cuckoo who plaintively beats his heart in time to the musical cuckoo call.
Anatomica#3 completed the programme. Composed by Joseph Hyde, it featured 3 huge drum sets incorporating scrap percussion instruments and sampled music. Choreographed by Canadian Andre Gingras, this high-octane piece revolves around objectification of the body and the banality associated with Andy Warhol's world. With complex rhythms the piece begins with female dancers coming on stage dressed identically like mannequins. Faceless figures, they are physically manipulated and then end up in a frenetic game where they hurl their bodies from a height onto piles of mattresses, again and again. A risky business for dancers, but the adventurous members of the Rambert Dance Company seemingly take it all in their stride. All in all, it was a marvelous, diverse programme.
Tour dates:
Edinburgh Festival Theatre, 29 - 31 October
Theatre Royal Bath, 6 - 8 November
Sadler's Wells, London, 11 - 15 November
Malvern Theatres, Malvern, 19 - 22 November
Theatre Royal, Plymouth, 26 - 29 November