L.A. Dance Project at Sadler’s Wells.
Friday evening, filled with a post-Brexit cocktail of bewilderment, apoplectic rage and fright, I shuffled over to Sadler’s Wells to watch a triple bill by L.A. Dance Project. Necking some pre-show wine, I couldn’t help but imagine a dark future in which Sadler’s Wells is transformed into Little England’s premier morris dancing venue. Because after all, ballet is a bit foreign isn’t it? L.A. Dance Project is certainly a cosmopolitan affair. It’s co-founded by French-born Benjamin Millepied, a former New York City Ballet principal who achieved a certain fame for choreographing the dance sections in Black Swan and marrying leading lady Natalie Portman. After a brief tenure as director of the Paris Opera Ballet, he’s now back in California to concentrate on choreography.
Two pieces by Millepied open and close the evening, both commissioned by venerable Parisian jewellery house Van Cleep & Arpels. The brand has a historic association with dance – back in the sixties, their displays of diamonds, rubies and emeralds inspired Balanchine’s Jewels. (Will bastions of British business commission handkerchief-flapping dance works that celebrate the expulsion of immigrants in our fascistic Faragian future, I wonder?) Unfortunately, there’s something very slight about both Millepied pieces, despite the technical polish of the dancers themselves.
The first, Hearts & Arrows (the title refers to terms jewellers use to describe light going through precious stones), is a work for eight dancers clad in jazz shoes and American Apparel-esque cycling shorts and skirts. It’s set to a Philip Glass string quartet in six movements, tinnily amplified via the Sadler’s sound system, with a blackout between each section, prior to which there’s a sort of climactic moment onstage – one dancer cast out of the group, a confrontation, a collapse to the ground. In between, the dancers go through Millepied’s motions in springy, buoyant balletic style. Their duets (sometimes same-sex) and shifting configurations are all handsome enough, but little is registered emotionally.
The same can be said of On The Other Side, set to a seemingly interminable series of Glass piano pieces. Alessandro Sartori has the dancers dressed in matching tops and bottoms in gaudy tones of blue, green and yellow, reminiscent of the children’s pyjama section in C&A circa 1995. Again the dancers caper around athletically, jogging and leaping across the stage, but it feels slightly laboured and repetitive rather than genuinely joyful.
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Harbor Me is a more compelling piece. To the reverberating twangs of Woojae Park’s enigmatic compositions, three men undulate, coil and ripple around each other with acrobatic ease. One curves his chest over another, who bends backwards in response so they’re geometrically aligned without contact, though they cluster together later, resting cheek upon cheek. It’s an impressive display, with some moments of poignancy.
L.A. Dance Project were performing at Sadler’s Wells. Click here for more information on the company.
