David Bintley has been making ballets for decades, which means that we should have the measure of him by now. Yet his latest creation, inspired by Einstein’s Theory of Relativity no less, is a stunning advance on most of what has gone before. Faced with a tremendously invigorating score by Matthew Hindson, and freed from the narrative imperative that so often constrains him, Bintley has mined a fabulous new enthusiasm for the structure and sense of pure dance.
E=mc2 is not an alluring title, but the ballet itself is alive with the inherent physicality of the iconic equation. The first movement, Energy, is as dynamic as anything Bintley has written, engaging the ensemble in a fervour of changing formations that allude to the violent birth of the cosmos. Mass, with its beautiful lighting effects (credit to Peter Mumford) and glowing, strange music, is defined by the slow, hypnotic pull of its choreography, carrying the dancers (sometimes literally) to a soaring, transporting conclusion. The final movement is a blitz of speed (this is the speed of light after all) and vaulting physical ambition. Even in the many tiny steps, it bristles with excitement and a light-hearted unpredictability. The only misjudgment is a jarring third movement, The Manhattan Project. With Samara Downs in white kimono and geisha make-up, and the hideous sound of (presumably) the bomb dropping on Hiroshima, this reference to the destructive side of science is misplaced. Throughout, Bintley couldn’t have asked for better performances from his 29 dancers, while the Royal Ballet Sinfonia, conducted by Paul Murphy, made the most of Hindson’s terrific aural landscape.
Bintley’s ballet was bracketed by the work of two Australians. Stanton Welch’s Powder (1998) makes a surprising return. The music is luscious — Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto — but Kandis Cook’s designs are silly and Welch’s choreography, which has the whiff of the bedroom about it, fails to generate any heat from its romantic trysts and displays of mischief. Garry Stewart’s The Centre and its Opposite is new this year, a BRB commission. It belongs to the William Forsythe school of extreme ballet, and busies the dancers in a swirl of athletic posturing and hyperkinetic virtuosity. It passes by in a blur, while Huey Benjamin’s electronic soundscape reminded me of someone sawing through metal.