Artists who try their hand at choreography generally receive short shrift from the dance world.
The reason is that by the standards of actual choreographers - George Balanchine or Busby Berkeley, say - they struggle to combine steps, let alone create a psycho-dynamic. What they do may be experiments in pace, and it may make for an engaging gig, and grab headlines, but choreography it rarely is.
And that is where we are with Martin Creed, who won the Turner Prize in 2001 for Work No. 227, better known as lights going on and off. Work No. 1020 is 90 minutes of music, song, chat and dance.
Choreographically, it comprises basic patterning and canonic repeats based around ballet's fine positions of the arms and legs. Creed says, disingenuously one suspects, that he doesn't understand why ballet dancers move the way they do, although a Google search would set him right.
The performance features five female dancers who, with the help of a heavily marked-up floor, move in lines, diagonals and chevrons, varying their speed and direction but not mood, which remains deadpan throughout. Creed plays his guitar and sings in Ivor Cutler vein, while his mildly salacious videos are intermittently screened.
Creed either doesn't know or doesn't think it matters that ballet has been eulogised, parodied and deconstructed by everyone from the great Balanchine to Morecambe and Wise, while choreographer Jonathan Burrows long ago created the definitive beguiled-yet-baffled response to ballet. Creed may have art world laurels, but he's a choreographic late-comer.
Martin Creed: Work No. 1020
