The headline news here is Taylor Swift’s star backing dancer getting a major commission for English National Ballet. If it looks nothing like a pop concert, that’s because Kameron N Saunders is a choreographer who has worked with Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet among others. He is also an early career artist, who in his piece Proper Conduct has thrown a huge amount of ideas into a high concept dance that leaves a few question marks.
The first section is breezy ballet, Justin Peck style, saturated colours and sunshine. But don’t get comfortable, because Saunders is about to pull the rug. A sci-fi-voiced narrator tells us of the rot in society and it segues into nude-costumed conjoined dancers, in striking formations and fleshy connections (the dancers are excellent throughout). But then in comes an army of AI robots in Daft Punk-style visors. It’s visually impactful, with genre-fluid movement, but flails a bit in terms of conveying meaning. Is the message to beware of people who tell you how to live as they’ll steal your soul? That big tech promises to solve your problems, but will actually erase your humanity? Not sure. But Saunders’ ambition is admirable, and we will see more from this creative mind.
It is slightly unfair to compare Saunders’ early work with Crystal Pite, the other choreographer in this double bill. Pite is such an established artist, to the point where her level of craft around composition, forging movement and excavating emotion is a given. Body and Soul (Part 1) is the first act of a piece Pite made for Paris Opera Ballet. The text it is built around is still in French (if you know directions and body parts you’ll get the gist), where plain descriptions (“left, right … fight”) take on new meanings with different permutations of dancers, whether groups or duos, the individual v the universal, and the power plays therein.
Always, there is the contrast between concord and discord, order and human messiness; Pite’s bodies move between a hunched, protective stance and long, stretched-out limbs. They make clear shapes with gloopy transitions between them. Pite sculpts bodies en masse, into a rippling wave, for example, then pulls focus on an individual or couple to cut to the heart of the matter. And the dancers of ENB rise to it all.
• At Sadler’s Wells, London, until 28 March.
