Rambert: Transfigured Night, dance review – Inspired triple with terrific technique

Picasso, Schoenberg and the Rolling Stones are the inspirations in this triple bill, titled Love, Art & Rock ’n’ Roll.

The “Love” comes in Kim Brandstrup’s Transfigured Night, the strongest of two new commissions, based on Schoenberg’s richly romantic score and its story of a couple at crisis point. Around the central pair, Miguel Altunaga and Simone Damberg Würtz, Brandstrup makes ingenious use of the company as a dark-clad, looming chorus, becoming the knotty forest the lovers navigate. It’s a beautiful way to add texture.

For the leads, the smaller gestures — yearning fingers of an outstretched hand; shoulders shrinking at a lover’s touch — betray a subtlety of feeling, but that’s not amplified by the performers. This story of heightened emotions is frustratingly underplayed.

For “Art”, see Didy Veldman’s The 3 Dancers. It’s inspired by Picasso’s painting of the same name, but don’t expect vibrant Cubism — Kimie Nakano’s designs are strictly monochrome. Veldman has channelled the artist’s layers and fractures in her choreography, but the visual interest all comes in the first scene, where two trios continually shape-shift while never letting go of each other’s hands. For the finale, the Stones provide the rock ’n’ roll in Rooster, a stylised vision of the wild swinging Sixties that’s fun, if rather tame.

As ever with Rambert, the dancing is terrific — they are some of the best in the country for technique and versatility — but it’s time they injected their performance with some real personality.

Until November 7, Sadler's Wells (0844 413 4200, sadlerswells.com)

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