This was my first visit to the new Sadler’s Wells East, a cavernous black box with steeply raked orange seats offering excellent unimpeded views: a highly flexible space with a sharply etched acoustic and sophisticated lighting rig. It was hosting a double-bill provided by the National Dance Company Wales under the title Blue/Glas. The programme spoke of Blue as ‘the colour of open sky, of water, freedom and depths we cannot fathom’, but it was hard to connect those sentiments to the two very different but engaging works, which are better reviewed as different entities.
Theo Clinkard’s Ordinary Courage was first performed back in 2012, inspired by the death of a parent. It is a remarkable work, testament to just how much can happen in fifty minutes when you have six dancers capable of conspicuous solo work, and at the same time remarkable synergy. It is bookended with two minutes of suave, supple synchronicity, unaccompanied at the start then with Bach on the return. This establishes a deep level of solidarity and connection between the performers that is all the more moving when it comes back at the end, closing the circle. In the intervening scenes there is a range of compelling, highly differentiated solos and duets involving most of the dancers, and episodes of writhing connectedness and anguished separation, where the theme of grief comes through strongly. There is also a delicacy of touch and intimacy at times that is truly poetry in motion. While the sound track involves a range of genres the use of Bach and Scarlatti is particularly effective. After hearing Scarlatti’s Sonata in D minor K.141 played so many times as a concert encore it was great to hear its rhythmically insistent dance potential fully unleashed. Overall, there was a fine match of tone, gesture and subject matter that left many startling emotionally resonant physical images in the mind, as the choreographer intended.
Untamed, as you might expect from the title, is a wilder, more unsettled piece that takes time to settle. The dancers begin with stiff jerky movements akin to automata, at times walking like coat-hangers. Then the action speeds up, together with rhythmic heavy breathing, and we reach the main focus of the work, the act of running – whether running towards or away from other people and life. Again, as in the first work, there are solo episodes that punctuate group action of an increasintly frenetic nature. I don’t think I have heard dancers vocalise in this way before, so Seutin deserves credit for harnessing and then unleashing this extra layer of creative and dynamic energy in the dancers. The culmination of the work had an impressive raw kinetic power and left the dancers quite spent at the conclusion. Credit belongs also to the creative team that framed the choreography: composer Randolph Matthews deployed a Welsh pipe-horn with intriguing timbre together with eerie and allusive vocal effects, and the depleted, antiquated running costumes lit by stark stadium-style lighting emphasised the fragility of the performers and the toll that running can take.
There was therefore a great deal to admire in both works and the six dancers deserve full plaudits for their stamina across the diverse demands of the works that must be exhausting to perform, emotionally as much as physically.
Artistic Director: Bakani Pick-Up
Ordinary Courage – Theo Clinkard
Untamed – Alesandra Seutin
1hr 40 mins, with interval
Photo Credit: Jorge Lizalde