As a young man Kim Brandstrup studied film, and more than any other choreographer I can think of he tells stories through images, creating frames in a moving frieze.
His new work, Minotaur, commissioned by Deborah Warner as part of her enterprising new regime at the tiny Ustinov space, has the quality of a dream, each successive scene offering pictures of haunting encounters that feel at once surreal and real.
On Antony McDonald’s strikingly effective set, with a great painted slash of red spilling over its black walls like a wound in the cosmic order, Brandstrup (Danish-born but British-based) looks from a new angle at the story of the tragic half-man, half-beast. In five swift chapters, beginning with Combat, when Theseus kills the Minotaur, and ending with Deus Ex Machina (the titles are beamed on the back wall), he tells the story of Ariadne, half-sister of the monster, who gives Theseus the means of killing him, runs away with her hero, and is then abandoned by him.
Each section has its own movement language, reflected in Eilon Morris’s ever-changing score, which moves from electronica to classical to the sound of Irish dancing. The fight between Theseus (Jonathan Goddard) and the Minotaur (Tommy Franzen) is full of athletic lifts, tumbling rolls; Ariadne (Laurel Dalley Smith) watches from above, framed in darkness, bowed with guilt. Her love for the warrior is shown in constant falls against him, her own body sharp as an arrow, spiralling upwards in a sequence of lifts.
When he leaves her, it’s in a duet of incredible softness, as she repeatedly places her hand gently on his chest in gestures that seem to happen in slow motion. Goddard’s fierce implacability shows in every muscle, his hard resistance contrasted with her fluidity. Her subsequent lament is full of collapse. Dalley Smith (returning from the Martha Graham Dance Company in New York to her hometown of Bath for the performance) has an extraordinary ability to make her body seemingly shrink in pain; you see her sadness as well as feel it.
Release arrives in the form of the astonishing final section, when Franzen appears again, now as the god Dionysus, perched high on the top of the set, and then using his remarkable combination of strength and acrobatic grace (and the climbing holds provided) propels his body across the wall, seeming to float towards her. She responds as if entranced, till they both appear weightless, dissolving into another life.
It is incredibly beautiful and serene, with superb dancing from all concerned. Minotaur is cleverly paired with a stripped-back version of Benjamin Britten’s cantata for mezzo-soprano and orchestra Phaedra, the story of Ariadne’s sister, who marries Theseus, but is consumed by her passion for his son, Hippolytus. Originally composed for Janet Baker, it’s performed here with incredible intensity by Christine Rice, accompanied by Richard Hetherington on the piano.
The clarity of Rice’s singing, and her deep involvement with the story, bring its terrible passions to heart-piercing life. Warner stages the piece (with delicate lighting by Jean Kalman, who also illuminates Minotaur) on a white stage, initially covered with sheets that hide the bodies of both the Minotaur and Hippolytus, a clinical setting for the terrible, transfixing emotion unleashed.
Phaedra and Minotaur are at the Ustinov Studio, Theatre Royal Bath, until 23 August
