In the brochure for the Royal Ballet’s Encounters programme, an evening of four excellently danced contemporary ballets, choreographer Pam Tanowitz spells out what kind of dance she did not want to make: “You know, beautiful, flowing, pushing and pulling.” By chance, those words pretty much describe the work that preceded hers: The Weathering, by fellow American Kyle Abraham, made for the company in 2022. Gauzy tunics are burnished rose and gold, lanterns glow, the orchestra daubs the air with aural brushstrokes, and it takes quite some time before the exquisite dancing begins to yield a sense of inner life. When that does come – companionate duets gusted apart by obliviously passing groups, an introspective closing solo for Joshua Junker that is poised without and troubled within – the intimations of love and loss are worth it; but even here, beauty sometimes dissolves into decorousness.
True to her word, Tanowitz’s new Or Forevermore is neither beautiful nor flowing: it is choppy, bracing in a brainy rather than an emotional or energetic way, and often funny – if you like your humour entirely unsignposted and 100% poker-faced. The kernel of the work is her 2022 Dispatch Duet for dancers Anna Rose O’Sullivan and William Bracewell – who open this piece in velvet embossed with gold, as if cut out from the stage curtains. There’s plenty more costume fun: put masks on one male duo and they’d basically be Spider-Man; gaggles of dancers are dressed bold and bright as a children’s sticker set; solitary figures in tunics gesture and bow like marionette courtiers. The choreography is dissonant and devilishly detailed, yet Tanowitz keeps showing us its blocky, angular elements – hooked limbs, frieze walks, lineups and lean-tos – and so both keeps the show on its own wayward tracks, and us tied to them.
