With forelock-tugging celebrations of a choreographer who died 25 years ago and a summer visit by the Mariinsky the highest-profile events in the calendar, 2017 may not be remembered as a vintage year for British dance.
There is a South American theme to Rambert’s latest triple bill, two new commissions made to chime with an oldie but goldie, the rhythms of Latin social dances linking all three.
Gavin Higgins: Dark Arteries and other works Tredegar Town Band/Ian Porthouse (Tredegar Town Band)
A good triple bill should have something for everyone, so Rambert have all bases covered with their latest: rare must be the person who likes neither love, nor art, nor rock 'n' roll. In fact, it's a safe bet that most people like all of them, and so last night's programme at Sadler's Wells was something of a crowd-pleaser – no mean feat for an evening with two new works, created for this season and here receiving their London première.
After the disappointment of Wayne McGregor’s latest piece for the Royal Ballet, which opened on Monday, I thought last night’s trip to Sadler’s Wells for a new Rambert programme might cheer me up about the state of contemporary dance and composition. Two new pieces were on offer, by rising choreographer Alexander Whitley and Rambert director Mark Baldwin with original scores by Icelander Daniel Bjarnason and Brit Gavin Higgins respectively, alongside a revival of Lucinda Childs’s Four Elements, and there was no sign of the fawning hype that preceded the McGregor opening.
Composer Gavin Higgins and choreographer Mark Baldwin’s Dark Arteries is billed by Rambert as “the world’s first brass band dance work” and has its premiere this week at Sadler’s Wells. Higgins was born into a family of brass players in the Forest of Dean, later studying at Chetham’s School and the Royal Northern College. He spoke to theartsdesk in between rehearsals last week.
GRAHAM RICKSON: How important was music-making when you were growing up?
How long should a dance programme be? Opera and theatre habitués can be surprised by outings to contemporary dance, where the pieces might be shorter than the intervals, and a 7:30 start could see you comfortably on the 9:15 train home. But the early train is in no danger from Rambert’s new programme, their annual showcase of contemporary creations at Sadler’s Wells, which features one world première, one London première, and one revival from this time last year, and last night came in at a handsome two and a half hours.
Sure as carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect, the 2010s are following a standard 20-year nostalgia cycle by embracing the 1990s as their "retro twin" decade. The quiet rumblings of the last few years – student Nineties parties and the reappearance of the crop top – have this year flowered into a full-on revival that has hairdressers fingering their razors (remember the Rachel cut?), thirty-somethings wearing double denim again, and Rambert coming to Sadler’s Wells with revivals from 1990-1 alongside a Merce Cunningham classic from the Nineties’ own retro twin decade, the 1970s.
After a busy year, moving their headquarters from Chiswick to new premises on the South Bank, Rambert dance company have managed to keep momentum working with stalwarts such as Ashley Page and Mark Baldwin as well as branching out with exciting new choreography by Barak Marshall.
Victims driven to death by the mob, women and men violently rutting in animal costumes, a black comedy about a snatched baby, a naked man dancing alone in his own fantasy - many and varied are the images in the nearly 200 danceworks created to the notorious Rite of Spring since its premiere exactly a century ago.