★★★★☆
Do we really know what goes on behind the closed doors of our neighbours? The city that the Norwegian choreographer Jo Stroemgren conjures up in his hour-long dance film for Rambert is quite the place. All human life seems to be here. From birth to death, from love to hate, from laughter to tears — and everything in between — Rooms is a colourful tapestry of contemporary urban living.
Rambert’s 17 dancers play — for they are called upon to act more than they are required to dance — 100 characters in 36 scenes that unfold like a panorama as the camera takes you from one room to another. Lovers tussle in one room while in the next a group of Hasidic Jews are dancing, unaware that they are being spied upon by government agents in yet another room.
So many dramas are being enacted: a man contemplates suicide, mysterious monks jump out of a window, police raid the apartment where a man is growing marijuana, a woman mourns a loved one whose ashes are in an urn, another shrinks from the onslaught of domestic violence. Yet Stroemgren is not one to dwell on the serious for long. He has a dry and appealing sense of humour, segueing easily into comedy. Elegiac and funny — he manages them both convincingly.
The cast is multilingual and there are no subtitles for the non-English speech, but it doesn’t matter. We do get English where it does, most especially in a hilarious non-dancing scene with a pretentious academic being interviewed in a podcast studio. The choreography, what there is of it (I would have liked more), is characterful and expressive.
The music is a hotchpotch, from Glenn Miller’s Moonlight Serenade to Purcell and Wagner. Oh, and did I mention that King Kong makes an appearance? In this mad mosaic of big city life it would seem there’s a room for everyone.
Available at rambert.org.uk, 8pm Friday and Saturday
