Ballet Rambert
The 3 Dancers
Theatre Royal
Brighton
Ballet Rambert’s current tour has rocked up at the Theatre Royal bringing their series of new accessible interesting and emotionally diverse dance to lovers of modern expressive and creative movement and music.
Patricia Okenwa, a dancer with Rambert since 2004, is creating her first work for the main repertoire of the company. Hydrargyrum ( an ancient name for mercury) opened the night with sharp, tense and vibrant interactions that shivered, melted, pooled and changed into something smoother and softer, a three part piece of meditations on the nature of group, support, rejection, acceptance and fear it challenged as much as it reassured and the spikey opening energy kept the narrative thrust of this piece vibrant through it’s organic changes and steps down of pace and focus. The staging for this, with a huge Mylar mirror reflecting first the theatre back at itself as it turned 360 degrees, changing lighting, reflection and the focus of the piece. The house loved it, my companion Grace, her first time at a Rambert dance was full of thought and entertained.
Another triple scene dance Transfigured Night took us into a romantic, emotional tight piece of lovers acting, changing and reacting to changes in their lives. Surprisingly full of narrative for a Rambert piece this emotionally fraught story of lovers started with a fraught fearful frantic full company dance with the principals dancing out their narratives the middle piece idealised dreaming of acceptance and perfection was simply wonderful and- for me- the highlight of the evening with local dancer Liam Francis gymnastically lithe and bringing an electric energy to the stage, finishing up with the narrative of the real, the compromise, the acceptance of people being not perfect. The dancers, staging and lighting conspired to grip the attention of the audience and silenced us into rapt attention. Two-time Olivier-award winning choreographer Kim Brandstrup deserves commendation for this intense emotionally visceral piece.
The final piece , The 3 dancers with choreography from Didy Veldman after a commission from Rambert to design a piece based around Picasso’s traumatic and enigmatic painting ‘The Three Dancers’ this tense lyrical piece dancing with precision and verve the Rambert team finished off the evening with an engaging and thoughtful piece. Veldman’s trademark depth of character and almost obsessive procession of tiny movements brings the intimacy of this piece directly to the fore. This is all about the personal, the interactions, the tension of the lovers portrayed by Picasso, and also his own relationships with his wife, lovers and dance itself. The monochromatic design focuses the eye. Plunging mirrored shard descend and separate the piece. The lighting follows the action; the lovers entwine and set off the dynamic urgent joining, bonding and reforming of the trio’s. Its fluid dynamics locked step with the clustered, harmonically intense music written by Elena Kats-Chernin to give us a perfect piece of contemporary dance which showed Rambert off and allowed the audience, both dedicated fans and first timers to find emotional traction in the intimacy of this intimate, sensual dance.
Ballet Rambert are the premier contemporary dance company in the UK bringing an electric and engaging series of dance, some specially commissioned to the stage of the theatre Royal. Rambert are accessible and allow people to enjoy dance and all its emotional complexity on their own terms, just offering up talented dancers and musicians, insightful choreographers and designers who do their best to highlight the movement and meaning in the dance.
Rambert are at the Theatre Royal until Saturday 19th, with an extra matinee today (Thu for 1:30pm)
This is an excellent show and one worth catching if you’ve an interest in contemporary dance but Rambert also reward the first timer with their accessible dance and the audience at the Theatre royal left buzzing after this energetic thrilling evening.
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