The company enters reverentially, carrying armchairs and treading careful paths amid the blooms, then they sit to listen to the oh-so-nostalgic voice of Richard Tauber. Don’t be fooled: this is Bausch territory. Serenity cannot last long. By the end of this show, with much trauma and (organised) mayhem, those carnations have been trampled and mangled (and the stage has to be replanted for each performance).
This was London’s first sight of Nelken, but it’s an oldish work from Bausch’s back catalogue (1982); it came to Edinburgh a decade ago, when I enjoyed most of it more. Without the element of surprise, one can tire of Bausch’s theatrical modes — the surreal and sinister games, the fantasies set up to be ruptured, the monologue-confessionals that can be funny, but, at other times, archly manipulative. Does the glamorous woman who pauses to beam at us — “I just wanted to say how wonderful it is that you’re all here tonight” — mean it? Personally, perhaps yes; character-wise, I think not. When the cast come down into the stalls and choose people to hug, do we glow — or feel irritated? Nonetheless, Bausch does make you feel, by the end of an evening, that you have come to know her performers. It’s a pleasure and comfort to re-meet longtime Bauschians: tall, beaky Lutz Förster, who poignantly interprets the song Some Day He’ll Come Along, the Man I Love in sign language; and Dominique Mercy — my favourite — whose lived-in face looks more careworn at each sighting. Well, he suffers many indignities in Nelken, especially at the hands of the cold authority figure (Andrey Berezin) who interrupts any possibly carefree moment — such as the delightful bunny-hopping among the carnations of men wearing dresses — with the demand to show passports.
Bausch builds up big set-piece scenes from something apparently inconsequential, and this can be clever. In Nelken, she wastes too much time with rushing and shrieking and business with chairs, while mountains of cardboard boxes are erected for stuntmen to jump into from tall towers — tedious. What I always look forward to is a Bausch hallmark, the procession: a slow walk with uniform hand movements and beguiling expressions. Unfortunately, in Nelken, we have to wait far too long before we get it.
Now, the camellias. These came in Northern Ballet Theatre’s La Traviata, premiered at the Grand Theatre, Leeds, and soon to go on tour. This slots into NBT’s expanding repertory of full-evening ballets on familiar stories. But this time, it is not by the company’s director, David Nixon. It is the latest version of a work first created in 1990 in Cape Town by the South African Veronica Paeper. Though little known here, she has produced some big narrative ballets on unusual subjects (such as John the Baptist and Nell Gwynne — though not, of course, in the same piece).
Many choreographers have used the Dumas fils story of The Lady of the Camellias. Ashton, in his superbly condensed Marguerite and Armand, chose Liszt. Paeper went for Verdi’s opera music, in an arrangement of the best-loved tunes by Allan Stephenson. Sometimes you feel, during this ballet’s three acts, that the choreographer had a lot of music to fill. The ensembles are vivacious, but all much the same, and with the succession of pas de deux for the doomed lovers, fluent as they are, a sense of déjà vu creeps in. You could wish for Ashton’s succinctness, but you also spot his clear model in Marguerite’s encounter with Armand’s father — almost gesture for gesture. MacMillan’s Manon and Cranko’s Onegin are not too far away, either. How else could the ballet finish but with Marguerite perishing in Armand’s arms after being seized from her sick bed for a final wrench, wrap and throw duet — an out-and-out tear-jerker if you hadn’t seen so many others of the genre, but the end came as a relief to me.
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The story is told ploddingly, and there is one transition scene that needs tightening up. Desiré Samaai and Jonathan Ollivier (real-life husband and wife) were the first-cast lovers, both dancing well (he is always a strong technician), but Paeper hasn’t given them enough depth as characters. The company looks lively — including Keiko Amemori and Patrick Howell in a Spanish gypsy pas de deux that feels rather incongruous in Madame Flora’s salon — and Peter Cazalet’s designs are plushy and elegant. And, of course, the music is an attraction, even without the singing.
Nearby, at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, the Leeds contemporary dance troupe Phoenix Dance Theatre unveiled the director Darshan Singh Bhuller’s latest touring programme, two new pieces and a significant revival — three contrasted styles with combined audience appeal. Bhuller’s own, Eng-er-land, is a satire on binge culture: discos and drunks, including a couple of pelmet-skirted girls on heels who squat for a pee on the street. It punches along to a sound mix by DJ Max Blessed, and if the choreography feels perfunctory at times, it scores on ingenious visuals.
Didy Veldman’s See Blue Through perplexed me, as I couldn’t discern the relevance to her programme note about an underwater world. And it was white, not blue. But the nervy movement suits the twangles and squeaks of Schnittke’s Sonata for Violin and Chamber Orchestra, and there is some intriguing business involving stretchy costumes.
As the centrepiece, it is lovely to see again a memorable work from the great days of London Contemporary Dance Theatre (long gone, sadly, but Bhuller was one of its stars): Robert Cohan’s Forest, of 1977. Such eloquent choreography, calm in mood, with an air of magic and mystery. Brian Hodgson’s accompaniment of natural sounds — wind, rain, thunder, distant bird, animal, insect noises — and Norberto Chiesa’s dappled costumes locate us in a sheltered world where elegant creatures skip, bound, pause, listen.
In my mind’s eye, I could see LCDT’s original dancers, and the new Phoenix cast are their honourable heirs — Yann Seabra’s haunting, faunlike solo and beautiful duet with Tiia Ourila the compelling heart of the piece. The audience was transfixed from start to finish.