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Dance Review: Rambert 'Rooster'

Lorna Irvine reviews an evening of dance from the acclaimed company.

Subterrain (2013)

Neutrality versus dissonance is the main thrust of Ashley Page's Subterrain, a shadowy society full of creeping dread. Daniel Davidson lurks, ready to pounce. Menage a trois routines are imbued with menace as much as sexuality.

The first half is sensual and acrobatic with slinky animalistic choreography in response to Mark-Anthony Turnage's heightened jazz score, where trumpets sound like warning sirens. The second uses Aphex Twin in softer ambient mode with sinewy balance and poise in group work, but it is no less unsettling or ominous with Peter Mumford's minimal shafts of light beams evoking sci-fi otherness.

Rooster (1991)

This revival of Christopher Bruce's nostalgia piece is a playful crowd pleaser, almost coming on at times like parody. Miguel Altunaga's strutting cocksure posturing is a repeated motif throughout, perfect for Little Red Rooster's macho/camp dichotomy.

Lady Jane is most successful, the genuflections and Regency--era prancing a cheeky nod to the Stones' drug-fuelled psychedelic whimsy. ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ even contains five lords a leapin' and feline ensemble movement. The battle of the sexes is never more apparent in ‘Paint It Black’ though, with a trio of shimmying women unimpressed by the dandy struts.

Frames (2015)

The premiere of Alexander Whitley's Frames is the most exciting piece of the evening. In a space suggestive of an asylum, Dane Hurst is first to emerge with a metal pole, which he twists and weaves around, as Daniel Bjarnason's thunderous electronic soundtrack intensifies. One by one, others emerge.

Like a dystopian GAP advert, the dancers' crisp angular solos, notably Pierre Tappon and Brenda Lee Grech, are at odds with their relaxed preppy apparel. Constructing frames into geometric shapes they wriggle around: there is cooperation and conflict. Daniel Davidson brings an element of street dance, and elsewhere it's clean modernist lines, which burst like a living zoetrope.

www.rambert.org.uk

twitter.com/rambertdance


Tags: dance

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