Emily Suzuki and Isaac Hernandez in William Forsythe’s Blake Works I
(Picture: )The Rite of Spring is a score that often brings out the beast in a dance company. Loads of dancers, lashings of fury, stomping all the way to an agonised human sacrifice. That’s not the choice of veteran Swedish choreographer Mats Ek, whose new version shapes Stravinsky’s clamorous music into a chamber piece about a young woman resisting her culture. It’s thoughtful but underwhelming.
A wedding is prepared. The family, in Marie-Louise Ekman’s pyjama-like costumes with a pearly pink sheen, dance in synch but with no visible affection. Emily Suzuki’s mutinous Daughter races around the stage, hopping from side to side or making for the exit, as if hoping to outrun destiny. No such luck – she’s encased in a sculptural white dress and veil.
