The Stage

Richard Alston Dance Company: To Dance and Skylark/Movements from Petrushka/Overdrive

Published Thursday 4 March 2010 at 15:30 by Sarah Wilkinson

Choosing such exquisitely joyous music as Bach’s Brandenburg concertos for your new choreography is a little like having a ‘get out of jail free’ card - you know you will never be stuck for long. Martin Lawrence - Richard Alston’s choreographic protege - must have known when creating To Dance and Skylark that even if his choreography dipped in places, the articulated happiness of those extraordinary concertos would carry his audience through and keep their spirits lifted. Perhaps this is what has allowed him to create such a breathtakingly liberated piece.

With obvious influences from Alston, the dancers bound through the air with exhilarating freedom, creating an illusion of vast, limitless space. At moments where you expect them to need the ground to push off from, they seem to find an invisible floor or wall from which to propel themselves, discovering new planes to traverse and filling the stage with an uninhibited joy. Young apprentice Genevieve Watson embodies this feeling with astonishing commitment, filling out every musical moment until it has left her body while expressing a deep appreciation for her chosen vocation.

The other two works that complete the program are less than joyous. Alston’s Movements from Petrushka is a rather confusing foray into the Russian folk tale which seems to end before it has begun, while Overdrive - a complicated study in rhythm - proves to be a little too hypnotic in all its clever repetition. It’s an odd assortment for a triple bill and one that could do with a little rethinking.