Dancers sublime in invigorating ballet ‘Solace’
Solace, Royal New Zealand Ballet, triple bill, St James Theatre, August 1.
Audiences will love this show. It drips with joie de vivre and the expressive power of neo-classical dance. And oh what dancers – sublime connoisseurs of artful gusto!
The Royal New Zealand Ballet presents Solace, a triple bill. It jettisons the well-heeled three-act ballet for short works that focus on movement itself. It is excellent to have Sarah Foster-Sproull and Alice Topp choreographing in a domain that has long been dominated by men. The premier of their dances is cause for celebration.
Common in the works, is the investigation of phrases that warp the pathways of traditional classical steps. Dancers bend, curve, thrust hips, dismantle the straight spine then flick and twist the arms in powerful arcs. In pairs the females’ limbs are used as levers and pulleys. It is if they are being woven around the males’ bodies. Sometimes the angles seem impossible and sometimes they are ungainly and clunky.
Occasionally a trio emerges and the female is flung between two males, legs and arms scissoring and manipulated.
After a time, despite the invention, these choreographic devices become predictable. A flicker of something new emerges when one woman lifts another or provides support for a male.
Infra by acclaimed British choreographer Wayne McGregor begins the evening. It premiered in 2008 on the Royal Ballet. There is a cool pragmatic tone to his superb movement explorations. Dancers as workers, craftspeople, some more attuned to this style than others.
Out of a bed of abstraction the watcher is invited to create stories as relationships between dancers emerge, flourish, then dissolve.