Marking Time offers a revealing pun in its title, referencing both the delay to the project caused by Covid and the composer’s long-standing commitment to fitting his music to the strict tempi demanded by dance. The evening comprises three pieces, but with a difference: instead of each piece being a prior musical commission for dancing, choreographers were commissioned to select a pre-existing work from Muhly’s back-catalogue that suited their respective styles.
The first section, Slant, by Jules Cunningham was more engaging as concept than in execution. Aimed at being a meditation on disorientation and not fitting in with the world it was less than the sum of its parts, altogether too fragmented and incidental to convince. There were six dancers, ranging from children to adults, a tattered green and orange banner that rose and fell at intervals, a rope to be unravelled and a fluffy red boot that was dragged across the stage. At every point the mostly aspirational gestures began to achieved layered meaning another episode intervened denying coherence and clearly expressed visual meaning. But perhaps that was a reasonable response to the musical sequence, which offered a constant drone of varying tones placed at different levels within curlicues of string invention, that seemed more like occasional notations than a fully worked through composition.
Veins of Water was in a different league of choreography and musical invention. The music is a response to an object in the Peabody Essex Museum, a calendar stick which a ship-wrecked man used to mark time during his isolation. Jagged, searing string strokes represent this phenomenon, while variations in different moods provide a variety of seascapes, set for a trio of women by Maud Le Pladec. The fluid, sinuous moves, both contrasted and mimetic within the group was mesmerising, as alluring as mermaids and Lorelei are intended to be, but also an abstract expression of the sea in all its moods. There was so much compelling detail to observe here, I would have been happy to see an immediate repeat performance. Lighting and costume designs by Eric Soyer and Jeanne Friot greatly enhanced the experience, with a wholly convincing watery palette and outfits in wavy blue sequins that reinforced the chilly charm and frigid enticements of the music and dance.
After the interval, came the longest piece, The Only Tune, originally written for singer and banjo player Sam Amidon, who performed it here, together with the Britten Sinfonia placed on a stage dais. But that plain description tells you little of the boldly confronting setting in which all the players and dancers wear skeleton suits, and Amidon spends much time standing on a chair with a noose around his neck. There is as much acting as dancing here, as befits what is essentially a murder ballad where the devil literally gets to play the main tune. Michael Keegan-Dolan’s choreography avoids a literal narrative intepretation and instead provides a very rich tableau for eight dancers exploring the full depth of the stage around the orchestral installation. Muhly’s opening out and embellishing of the original ballad left us free to enjoy Amidon’s vocal delivery while providing plenty of scope for the instrumental sections of the Britten Sinfonia to demonstrate their own virtuosity.
Composer: Nico Muhly
Britten Sinfonia
Choreographers: Jules Cunningham, Michael Keegan-Dolan, Maud Le Pladec
Until 22 November 2025
1 hr 40 mins, with interval
Photo Credit: Foteini Christofilopoulou