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CONTEMPORARY / TANGO FUSION M¡LONGA Edinburgh Festival Theatre, Tue 13 & Wed 14 Jun BALLET / CONTEMPORARY MODERN BALLET GRADUATION PERFORMANCE Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow, Thu 8–Sat 10 Jun
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is no stranger to collaboration. To date, the contemporary choreographer has teamed up with artists as diverse as Akram Khan, the Shaolin Monks, flamenco dancer Maria Pagés and sculptor Antony Gormley.
Much the same could be said of Nélida Rodriguez de Aure, one of the leading lights in Argentine tango, who has performed, taught and choreographed around the world, including stints on Broadway and in Hollywood.
When these two forces came together, however, there was some trepidation.
‘m¡longa was a big challenge for me, and at first I was a bit afraid because Larbi’s work is so different from my style,’ admits Rodriguez. ‘But it was also an exciting project because at the beginning we didn’t know what was going to happen – all we knew was that it would be a fusion of two types of dance.’
When Diana Loosmore talks to students at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland about life in a dance company, she speaks from the heart. Since moving to London from her native Australia in 1996, she has danced with Richard Alston and Siobhan Davies among others, followed by a lengthy spell at Scottish Ballet. Now a lecturer on the Conservatoire’s Modern Ballet programme, run in
conjunction with Scottish Ballet, Loosmore is also charged with choreographing the final year students’ closing piece.
‘The remit for me is bringing out the best in each individual and giving them the chance to do their best in every way,’ says Loosmore. ‘This is them being sent out into the professional world and it’s an opportunity for somebody to see them and offer them a job.’
The resulting piece premiered at Sadler’s Wells in 2013 and is now touring Alongside works by Scottish Ballet’s artistic director Christopher Hampson and
the UK, performed by ten tango dancers, two contemporary dancers and five musicians. ‘Some pieces have contemporary music and dance, some have tango music and dance, some use tango steps to contemporary music and we’ve also added contemporary movement into the tango,’ explains Rodriguez.
‘But when you watch m¡longa, if you pay attention to the dancers’ legs, you find that most of the time you can see tango – even when their arms are in contemporary style, their legs are still doing traditional tango steps.’ (Kelly Apter)
company dancer-turned-choreographer Sophie Laplane, the show will feature two pieces by Loosmore including Shadow Run, which she collaborated closely with students on to explore the vast quantities of information we absorb.
‘I’ve been working with the students on the digital influences in our world,’ explains Loosmore. ‘The idea of having followers and being followed, and how we’re maybe being manipulated by social media, that’s all been an interesting, rich process.’ (Kelly Apter)
ADAPTATION MATTHEW BOURNE’S THE RED SHOES King’s Theatre, Glasgow, Tue 6–Sat 10 Jun. Reviewed at Edinburgh Festival Theatre ●●●●●
It stands to reason that a choreographer would want to make a dance piece about a dance film, but even that fact only scratches the surface of the layers of blurred fictional fiction and fictional reality in this mesmerising new work from Matthew Bourne.
Following the storyline of the 1948 Powell and Pressburger film, dancer Victoria Page becomes the prima ballerina in Boris Lermontov’s company, taking the lead in his adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Red Shoes. But while playing the girl who wanted the shoes that would eventually dance her to death, Page falls for company composer Julian Craster, an affair that threatens her working relationship with Lermontov and forces her to choose between romantic love and love of her art.
Music by Bernard Herrmann scores the piece and it swoons and soars with romance and danger. Lez Brotherston’s stage design kaleidoscopes between auditorium and backstage, real and conjured worlds, and as Page’s mental state spirals out of control, Bourne uses this melting of realities to blinding effect. His dance references tread fine lines too, blending parody,
pastiche and homage. Page’s miserable music hall turn alongside two clowning ancient Egyptian dancers is offset by the expressionist brilliance of Lermontov’s production of The Red Shoes, where angular tangos are backed by cubist houses and men whirl against a projection of the cosmos. Though it feels as if Bourne is referencing a particular style of avant garde dance here, the effects are also beautiful and sincere in their own right. Ashley Shaw is an exquisite Page, graceful, precise, drenching every gesture in emotion, especially in her duets with Dominic North’s Craster. Shooting straight through the glamorous and tragic heart of the post-war dance world, this is vintage Bourne in every sense of the word. (Lucy Ribchester)
1 Jun–31 Aug 2017 THE LIST 103
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