Despite our respect for experiment in art, there is huge resistance to it in choreography.
Anything other than the Holy Trinity of harmonious music, easy-on-the-eye décor and linear narrative, or at least a choreographic narrative with an orderly crescendo, struggles to find an audience.
Dancemakers can tinker with the music, décor or moves but tinker too much and audiences walk out and there’s ostentatious yawning from those who remain.
And so it was last night at the UK premiere of The Song by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. The respected Belgian dancemaker is best known for making music the centre of her work, especially scores by Steve Reich, but in The Song she abandons it, using instead a Foley Artist to recreate the sort of sounds dancers make when they move.
De Keersmaeker also strips the stage to its bare bricks, and puts her dancers in jeans and T-shirts. Dance-wise, there are long stretches when they simply stand still, look around, and sit down, and many in the audience seemed unhappy at this disregard for familiar theatrical norms.
There was visible relief when she deployed more conventional means, such as the dancers running in playful games of chase, or the possibility of a normal closing crescendo.
Huffing and puffing resumed when this proved a false stop, with the dancers performing more standing still.
De Keersmaeker is clearly pulling our leg, although you wish she’d pull it a bit quicker because at nearly two hours, you get the gag long before The Song is over.
The title hints at the swooping patterns of birds in flight, and there are choreographic references to these when her 10 dancers run in loops and ellipses, tagging each other in something approaching a flock. The nine men and lone female are all able, although I should declare a weakness for the rag-taggity male types De Keersmaeker uses in her choreography.
Until tomorrow, 0844 412 4300, www.sadlerswells.com
Rosas: The Song
Sadler's Wells
Rosebery Avenue, EC1R 4TN
