It’s a good idea from Rambert’s new leadership team of Helen Shute (chief executive) and Benoit Swan Pouffer (artistic director) to build a triple bill from early works by Wayne McGregor and Hofesh Shechter and a new one from rising star Marion Motin. It gives us a chance to see where two of the most significant choreographers in contemporary dance have come from – and a glimpse of where the future might lead.
The revelation was PreSentient from 2002, sharply innovative at the time it was commissioned as McGregor’s second piece for the company, and strumming with tension and originality even now. What’s striking is the confidence of its approach to Steve Reich’s Triple Quartet (played live), the way the dancers embody and respond to the shifting moods in the music. Performed amid Lucy Carter’s transcendent lighting, which shapes the space with thick geometric lines of light, it’s full of animalistic preenings, juts of the head, flicks of the wrists and long, loping strides.
But there is also a wonderful, sensuous flow of movement through the dancers’ bodies in jumps and arabesques held off balance, the women twisting and turning against their partner’s bodies, carving lines in the air. It’s thrilling, emotional and wonderfully performed by a 12-strong cast.
Motin’s new piece, Rouge, also packs a visual punch. It opens with musician Rubén Martinez lurking on stage, his hat belching smoke, his wailing guitar splitting the silence. Suddenly, seven brightly-clad bodies rise from the fog, then fall bonelessly back to the floor, over and over again. Motin’s background is hip-hop and pop – she danced with Madonna and choreographed for Christine and the Queens and Dua Lipa – and her work is full of energy.
Driven by Micka Luna’s hard-edged score, and framed by lighting by Judith Leray that pins the dancers between neon tubes of light, Rouge gathers ferocious pace as the dancers, usually in unison, drive themselves rhythmically on, looking like the coolest people on the dancefloor with their waggling hips and jutting shoulders. It’s laden with atmosphere and exciting to watch, but low on content. Given that it is – supposedly – a work about what survives of us, the dancers don’t get much chance to express their individuality. Only Daniel Davidson’s androgynous strutting and Miguel Altunaga’s staring power distinguish them from the group.
The night ends with Shechter’s In Your Rooms, the work that catapulted him from cult favourite to worldwide star. It is imbued with existential gloom, questioning even of its own structure – “I can do better than that,” Shechter’s voice announces from the darkness – but it’s also exhilarating. Repetitive movements fill the stage, highlighted by the sudden shifts in Lee Curran’s lighting that work like jump cuts in a movie, spotlighting a group crouched low shuffling forward, or a couple grappling with each other, or a lonely individual reaching for the sky. The musicians play Shechter’s drum-heavy score above their heads.
It’s the first time Rambert’s versatile dancers have attempted Shechter’s choreography, and although they work hard to mimic the dynamics of his style, they don’t quite catch the low growl of movement that seems deceptively loose but in fact is propulsive and powerful. They do, however, pin down the unsettling, fierce emotion of his world, full of unease and chaos, but with an impulse towards survival and love.
• McGregor/ Motin/ Shechter tours until May 2020
