A major hats off to New Movement Collective for pulling this off. Sixty dancers, musicians and singers, four new music and dance works and a stunning setting, formerly part of the Royal Arsenal, with a catwalk-like stage bisecting the room. It’s loaded with ambition and class, not just the ingredients but the way the whole evening is designed.
We start with two musical works: the hushed echoes of Andrea Balency-Béarn’s Appels, then baritone Ross Ramgobin singing Yshani Perinpanayagam’s setting of John Cage’s love letters to Merce Cunningham. “My dearest Merce, I’m writing a new piece ... and the only one I can imagine listening to it is you.” The dancers are woven into the music before setting out on their own adventure, each piece follows the next without pause (or applause) building an absorbing atmosphere absolutely fitting the mood of the central feature, Les Noces.
The original Les Noces – music by Stravinsky, dance by Bronislava Nijinska – premiered a century ago, the story of a Russian peasant wedding, it’s a chilling picture of a forced marriage and a powerful piece of protofeminism. This new work, choreographed collectively by the performers, leans on ideas of community and its dutiful or surprising bonds, the dancers entangled or drawn together in unison, picking out rhythms from the musical layers, while individuals briefly break free from the group.
The dancers of New Movement Collective are mostly veterans of Rambert, with decades of embodied knowledge between them and their movement carries weight and purpose and nothing superfluous, unfussy lines like the well-ironed seams of their nicely tailored costumes. In fleeting imagery, their bolero jackets become props, tied into a rope or a bride’s veil and train. But against the power of the original Les Noces, the strength of the theme and innovation of the language feels a little pale.
Stravinsky’s score, played in the original arrangement for four pianos and percussion, with the chorus of Opera Holland Park, is adrenalised and ominous. Excellent soprano soloist April Koyejo-Audiger gets it: the urgency, her ringing notes that impel you, “Listen!” There’s a lot to love in this richly interesting evening.
