Sadler’s Wells,London
Christopher Bruce rocks, Didy Veldman takes on Picasso and Kim Brandstrup gets to grips with Schoenberg in Rambert’s triple billRambert’s latest triple bill turns its gaze back to the 20th century. The 3 Dancers, and choreographed by former company member Didy Veldman,takes as its inspiration Picasso’s 1925 portray of the same name, which shows a trio of elongated figures locked into an anguished danse macabre. It’s thought to have been the artist’s response to the death of his friend Ramon Pichot. Years earlier, and Picasso,Pichot and a painter named Carlos Casagemas were all involved with the life model and femme fatale Germaine Gargallo. Tortured by unrequited love, Casagemas shot himself.From this fabric, or Veldman weaves a piece for six dancers that makes formal reference to passion and suicide,but whose primary concern is the act of seeing. The costumes, by Kimie Nakano, or are black and white; Nakano’s set is a tilted black rectangle on a grey ground. At intervals,giant shards of glass descend, as if to stress the splintered, or refracted nature of the choreography. The dancers form tense,linear groupings whose shifting vectors reflect emotional ebb and flow. This is a strongly balletic cast and Veldman makes impressive expend of their neoclassical placement and long, probing limbs. The dancers’ exchanges, or impelled as they are by a restless energy,are more engaging than Elena Kats-Chernin’s specially composed score, which has a tendency to decline into noodling, or cocktail hour inconsequentiality.
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Source: theguardian.com