Richard Alston Dance Company, Mixed Bill, Sadler's Wells

Dance is a serious business for Richard Alston. Free of any narrative pieces and throughout the bill relies neither on emotion nor spectacle. What Alston’s company gives us is the choreographic craft in its pure form, technique, classicism and an essential musicality.

 

It’s not a dry demonstration, however. The programme is spiced with lightness and thoughtfully put together, culminating in the Joplin ragtime jolly of The Devil in the Detail, which is so fresh and clean it sparkles. Danced with the piano onstage, the virtuosity of pianist Jason Ridgeway pings off the movement of the eight strong cast. It completely makes sense to have the movement and music visibly sharing the space; they are equal partners.

 

The same is true for Fingerprint although the composer this time is Bach. If the dreadful waistcoats of the male dancers can be forgiven, this is a work of contrasts with some utterly beautiful moments. Beginning with the grave Capriccio for six dancers and moving on to the joyful Toccata for three, Alston’s choreography seems to embody the music and inscribe itself back into the score. There’s such a classical sensibility abounding here that, at times, it irks that the ensemble are no perfect corps de ballet. However, it’s a pleasure to see a technically strong and beautifully executed contemporary dance vocabulary that isn’t seeking to shock or openly challenge an audience.

 

Opening the programme, Red Run is striking in its bizarre score: a string of songs by Heiner Goebbels for eleven instruments, including Hawai Five-O ‘waka waka’ guitars. That surprise aside, this is difficult to penetrate, feeling academic and inaccessible despite the striking colours and best efforts of the six dancers.

 

Brink, on the other hand, by company member Martin Lawrence is instantly engaging.  Opening on a dim stage with a beautiful leggy tango duet it is sensual and brooding and completely delightful. Here smoulder emotions. Three couples interpret the shimmering Japanese tango score emanating sexuality, vitality and passion. White light transforms the stage into a box of shadow for the second duet, earthily progressing around the shape playing a light and lively game of tango tag followed by the subtly aggressive passion of the third couple inhabiting the dark space enclosed. Lawrence’s work fits perfectly with Alston’s style but exhibits a more human face and has the feel of a work that is in tune with the world now, rather than existing in rarefied artistic space.

 

It’s an interesting and intermittently rewarding evening of high quality dance but this company resists the populist urge to seek to thrill, enthral or amaze. 

‘His work, while essentially abstract, is as smooth as brushed aluminium. Its finely milled components slot together with Vorsprung durch Technik exactitude.’

*** ‘Ultimately this programme shows that Alston can put dances together with a facility almost unrivalled in Britain today, and his dancers perform them wonderfully well. But perhaps it’s now time for him to throw a few surprises their way.’

‘This second section also proved a terrific vehicle for the extravagantly brilliant Jonathan Goddard, the 24-carat stand-out in a very talented, physically alluring troupe.’

‘The dancers in those ballets and indeed all evening, are pretty good too, but what Alston gives them to do leaves something to desire. Why, to this music, does he rely so much on steps that are straight from classical ballet although performed barefoot?’