The Stage

Richard Alston Dance Company

Published Friday 27 March 2009 at 13:25 by Richard Edmonds

Richard Alston has assembled an octet of stunningly fine dancers who move through a trio of carefully-made dances that should delight audiences wherever this current tour sets down for a couple of days.

The austerity is still there, it is Alston’s benchmark, but the vibrancy and sheer technical virtuosity of these young performers certainly restores your faith in modern dance, especially at this top-bracket level.

Movements From Petrushka which opens the evening is a crossover piece based on Stravinsky’s original construction made for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Frankly, it was a total fascination.

Alston sets a single piano centre stage around which the dancers revolve in belted white shirts and black trousers, suggesting the fussy moujiks and mamushkas who throng the St Petersburg Shrovetide Fair in the original ballet.

Pierre Tappon, dipping, speeding up, slowing down to a curled ball, is mesmerising as the character who represents both Petrushka and Nijinsky (who originally danced the role for Diaghilev before collapsing into mental darkness) wrapping up Alston’s piquant concept in some astonishing movement that shows conclusively how abstract dance can penetrate the emotions.

Alston’s Blow Over takes its musical track from Philip Glass’ Songs From Liquid Days. The eight dancers sweep through sets of entrances and exits with terrific aplomb. And they smile at each other and at the audience, an important connective grace dancers frequently forget in my experience.

To go out on Bach is always a fine thing. The Brandenburg is joyful and the company, interchanging glances with each other continually, take it at great speed. Martin Lawrence’s steps are witty and cool as a lime sorbet, finding a sweet logic of their own within Bach’s glorious phrases. But it is Tappon’s vulnerable Petrushka/Nijinsky that remains long in the mind.