A week of contemplating dance legends began with a bravura gala in celebration of Rudolf Nureyev and ended with an austere meditation on Bach’s Goldberg Variations from the visionary Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. Though the links between them were not much in evidence (the gala went very much for classical showing-off rather than the pioneering curiosity that also shaped Nureyev’s career), the dancer who regarded Bach as sacred would much have admired the seriousness of De Keersmaeker’s response to the composer’s late masterpiece.
The Goldberg Variations is a revelatory piece. De Keersmaeker (in sheer black dress) and the Russian pianist Pavel Kolesnikov (in shorts and white vest) enter in semi-darkness and in silence. The stage, designed by Minna Tikkanen, has a pile of crumpled gold foil on one side, a panel of silver foil on the other, and the piano prominent towards the front. Her lighting shifts beautifully, sometimes casting De Keersmaeker in shadow and sometimes illuminating her.
Over the course of two hours, De Keersmaeker communes with the music, constantly in motion, listening and responding with meditative intensity, making sound visible. In the early sections she quotes from her own work, using the movement ingrained in her body to express her thoughts. Her responses are remarkably varied, from swift skips and jumps to a repeated arm raised in the air as if catching the notes. She lies on the floor and listens; she sits, head bent, toes catching time.
At one moment, with an exhausted sigh, she slides beneath the piano, literally a part of the sound. Later, she turns Bach into disco, gyrating like Travolta; at the close, in sequinned shorts, she seems to let the music course through her body. In one variation the stage goes entirely dark, letting the melancholy fill the air. Throughout, Kolesnikov plays with limpid delicacy and constant awareness of the dancer and the dance.
The primacy of the dancer is much to the fore in Nureyev: Legend and Legacy. Like most galas it’s a mixed bag, but it’s full of fun and bravura dancing, particularly from English National Ballet’s Francesco Gabriele Frola in Flower Festival in Genzano and Natalia Osipova, flashing through a lively version of the Laurencia pas de six. Vadim Muntagirov (in The Sleeping Beauty) and Alina Cojocaru (devasting as the Angel of Death in John Neumeier’s Don Juan) add extra grace and class.
Star ratings (out of five)
The Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 ★★★★
Nureyev: Legend and Legacy ★★★
Nureyev: Legend and Legacy is at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, London WC2, until 12 September and on Marquee TV from 16 September
