Cock a Doodle Doo - Rambert's Rooster

Embedded under the standard YouTube licence

The Alhambra, Bradford, Rambert, 23 Oct 2015

It is often said that dance companies struggle to fill theatres outside London with new or less known works (see Arts Council England’s analysis of its investment in large-scale opera and ballet) but it all depends on the content. Rambert had no difficulty whatsoever in filling The Alhambra last Friday with Mark Baldwin's Dark Arteries, Shobana Jeyasingh’s Terra Incognita and Christopher Bruce's Rooster.

Dark Arteries opened with a brass band on stage. I don't suppose I was the only member of the audience to expect a march or hymn but that is not what we got. The music began softly and built up steadily. Lots of percussion and staccato. Girls in long blue dresses entered followed by the men also in blue. Complex, frenetic movements accompanying Gavin Higgins's score. The bandsmen were not the Rambert's regular musicians but Carlton Main Frickley Colliery Band.  There were three moods in the dancing, Two lively ones at the beginning and end with some intricate duets in the middle. Performed by figures in red the duets were soft and poignant. Only later when I read the commentary on Rambert's website did I realize that Dark Arteries had been inspired by the miners' strike. I remember the strike as though it were yesterday. It is hard to think it occurred over half a lifetime ago.

Earlier in the year I saw Shobana Jeyasingh's  La Bayadère - The Ninth Life at the Linbury.  That work blended contemporary and Indian classical dance to a score by Gabriel Prokoviev.  Terra Incognita was another  collaboration by the same choreographer and composer. It also seemed to include what to my untrained eye were Indian dance movements. But it had quite a different feel to La Bayadère - The Ninth Life and perhaps it was intended as an antithesis.  La Bayadère - The Ninth Life focussed  on the arrival of Indian dancers in Paris and the sensation that they created in Europe which led in time to the Indian themed ballet. The title Terra Incognita (unexplored territory) suggests exploration. Maybe the arrival of Europeans in Asia and the far greater and more disruptive impact that they made on the recipient culture.

Visually the work was dramatic. Both men and women were in kilts - the men in mauve and the women in orangey brown.  In my notebook I wrote "cats' eyes" which I think must relate to a scene change where there were reflections in the backdrop and the reminiscently feline dancing. I also wrote down "Dane Hurst". I can't remember why he impressed me more that day than he usually does but he did. That is not to say that the other dancers were not impressive for they were. Readers can get a flavour of Terra Incognita from this YouTube clip.

The triple bill was called Rooster - the title of the last of the works - and that was the treat of the show. This is a lovely period piece full of nostalgia for people like me (and looking around the theatre the bulk of the audience who grew up in the sixties). I remember those primary coloured shirts and jackets and mini-dresses. The piece starts with Little Red Rooster with the boys moving proudly like, well, the cock of the roost. It then proceeded to Lady Jane and the other Stones classics. I last saw Rooster at The Lowry just over a year ago and loved it then (see Rooster ................ :-) 4 Oct 2014). I think I enjoyed it even more last Friday. The work has been in Rambert's repertoire for over 20 years but it was not created for that company. Bruce choreographed it for the Geneva Grand Theatre Ballet which I mentioned last Sunday (see Geneva Nutcracker 25 Oct 2015).

On the 7 Nov 2015 Hannah Rudd will lead a workshop on Ruby Tuesday which is easily the most lyrical of the dances in the piece. Imagine dancing in that long, red dress! The workshiop takes place on the stage of Sadler's Wells Theatre between 10:00 and 12:00 and is open to intermediate to advanced dancers aged 16 or over. If only I were good enough!  For those who are good enough to take part, here is the link to the booking page. The cost is £15. 

Rooster ................ :-)

I love dance and find something to enjoy in most shows but I have rarely had such a good time as I had at The Lowry last night. Rambert delivered a scintillating programme of work by Mark Baldwin, Richard Alston, Merce Cunningham and Christopher Bruce. Each of those works is a choreographic masterpiece bur the show was called "Rooster" not "Mixed Bill" and it was that classic that I and most of the rest of the crowd had come to see.

I am just over three years younger than Bruce and grew up with the Rolling Stones.  I did not actually buy their records or indeed any pop music because I did not have a record player until my 21st birthday but then I did not need to because their music was everywhere at friends' parties and on the radio particularly programmes broadcast from ships moored in the Thames estuary.

The late 1960s was not a bad time to be young. Conscription had ended in 1963. There was full employment with relatively well paid work for young women. Those of us who were lucky enough to get into one of the handful of universities that existed at that time had full maintenance grants. The oral contraceptive pill had broken the link between intercourse and child birth liberating both sexes. The threat of nuclear annihilation was receding with the first test ban treaties and for a time the cold war seemed to be thawing. There were the first stirrings of movements for racial and gender equality.

There were still menaces, of course: the war in Vietnam, Apartheid, Rhodesia, the brutal crushing of the Prague Spring and Ulster. Life wasn't rosy everyone - not even in suburban Surrey where I grew up or St Andrews where I went to university - especially if you were poor, black or female - but it was a damn sight better than it had been in the forties, fifties and early sixties and the music and the fashions of the day reflected a time of optimism, growing freedom and relative prosperity.

Bruce's Rooster reflected that time uncannily. It is eight movements set to eight Stones' songs:

• Little Red Rooster
• Lady Jane
• Not Fade Away
• As Tears Go By
• Paint it Black
• Ruby Tuesday
• Play with Fire
• Sympathy with the Devil.

Not all those tunes are happy but then we weren't always happy all of the time. That's when we listened to tracks like Ruby Tuesday. Bruce has captured the moods and emotions in each of those songs uncannily with some breathtaking choreography an example of which you can see in this clip.

The piece would have been nothing without Marian Bruce's designs. The dancers' hair, those gorgeous black and red dresses, the boys' jackets and ties - authentic but not in the least dated - clothes especially Ruby's dress that every woman in the audience must have longed to wear. I remembered what we wore to parties during my schooldays at Belsize Park and Richmond or during my students days at Elie or on the North Haugh.

Now, as you can see, I am far too emotional to give this performance any proper critical analysis. If you want to learn more watch Bruce's commentary on the Unmasked page of Rambert's website, read these student notes from an Australian university, read a review or, better still, see the show for yourself as it tours the country. 

Justice requires a few words about the other pieces. The show opened with The Strange Charm of Mother Nature by the company's artistic director Mark Baldwin. For some reason or other I had expected it to be about animals or plants but it is actually about sub-atomic particles and was inspired by a visit to CERN. The music was provided by a live orchestra which reminds us of Rambert's classical roots and the fact that it was our first ballet company (see "Rambert at the Lowry - 9 Oct 2013" 11 Oct 2013). The music was eclectic - Bach, Stravinsky and Cheryl Frances-Head - and the designs by Katie Paterson stunning. Along the backdrop ran a beam of light at different heights and in different colours changing with the costumes of the dancers. A plasma stream perhaps? If so, it was effective.

The other treats of the evening were Richard Alston's Dutiful Ducks to Charles Amirkhanian's poem danced by Adam Blyde and my personal favourite. Merce Cunningham's  Sounddance.  I have to confess to being a Dane Hurst fan ever since I saw him dance Inala to Ladysmith Black Mazambo at the Yorkshire Ballet Summer School Gala at the Wells last year.  He was the first on stage and the last to leave conjuring his colleagues to do magnificent things in between. Don't get me started about Dane Hurst because it would not be fair to the other dancers who were brilliant too.

While watching Rooster a thought occurred to me. Rooster was created in 1991 which was well outside the period but there was at least one rock ballet in the 1960s, namely Peter Darrell's Mods and Rockers  for Western Theatre Ballet. Critics were a bit sniffy - see The Spectator of the 27 Nov 1963 - but crowds loved it and so, I think did the dancers. Western Theatre Ballet is now, of course. Scottish Ballet which is reviving Darrell's Nutcracker. Wouldn't it be lovely to see another Darrell classic again. Sarasota Ballet danced it in 1996 so it must be a lot easier to reconstruct than say Helpmann's Miracle in the Gorbals. So what about it, Mr. Hampson? Please. Pretty please.