The Lowry, 22 September 2010
Awakenings. Credit: Anthony Crickmay
Rambert’s troupe graced the stage, serving up an exhilarating evening of dance.
The first outing of three was the most colourful, the dancing being eclectic and full of humour, the costumes (some of them anyway) recalling clowns’ garb. It was called Hush this one, an ironical title for it created a bit of a commotion, and the choreography was by the redoubtable Christopher Bruce.
Next then to RainForest and the dancers, clad in those near-nude suits – costumes that simulated nudity – assumed the sentience of those fair creatures that W.H. Hudson especially loved. David Tudor’s music incorporated bird song and other animal melody; it was all very beautiful. The set presented an intriguing spectacle: some stars were in the sky, others had fallen.
Now to the main outing of the evening: the world premiere of Awakenings, a work inspired by Oliver Sacks’ eponymous book. If you want to get a sense of how inventive, affecting and thought-provoking modern dance can be, go along and see this micro-universe of motion. Each dancer played their part but the intricate patterning between the dancers was of crucial import, courtesy of Aletta Collins’ choreography. And Tobias Picker’s music was punctuation, rhetoric, lyric – all of the above, plus one.
Awakenings is touring throughout the UK until early December 2010. Full details are here.
