Showing @ Festival Theatre, Edinburgh until Sat 29 Nov @ 19:30 (and on tour)
From powerful evocations of storm-tossed seas via a polyglot netherworld to cocksure machismo on the dancefloor, these three diverse pieces from Rambert not only show off the company’s versatility, but also the capacity of dance to communicate sometimes complex ideas through the physical.
Choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh’s Terra Incognito has enough psycho-sexual drama to keep a Freudian happy for a month, taking the idea of exploration as a continuation of the hunter gene in man and pitting masculine energy against the female power of storm, sea and virgin land. The dance is turbulent and powerful, sometimes to the point of violence, and the electricity of the performers is matched by the urgent rhythmic score from composer Gabriel Prokofiev.
Following the first interval the company return with Barak Marshall’s Castaways where a group of disparate people – including a jilted bride, a beggar, a soldier and a bickering couple are all lumped together in a subterranean limbo with a Weimar cabaret vibe. Set up as a series of vignettes they break out into brilliant routines performed to a bizarre mixture of tunes from Balkan and Yiddish song to jazz standards. After the intensity of the first piece this is a chance for the company to let their hair down, but the energy and inventiveness is no less on display.
Rooster fills the stage with arrogant, preening machismo to a mix tape of Rolling Stones hits. From Little Red Rooster to Paint It Black to Sympathy For The Devil, the boys strut their stuff, often to the bemusement of the dancehall girls. Choreographer Christopher Bruce’s piece reminds you of how important the dancehalls were to young courtship in the sixties, as well as just how much hasn’t changed when it comes to trying to impress the opposite sex, and he clearly had fun coming up with routines that took him back to his own young days on London Town.
Rooster is both a brilliant showcase for Rambert’s talents as well as proving that there a few boundaries in what dance can tackle. These three pieces plus the others in the tour show that voiceless it might be, but dance is never inarticulate.