Eden Court Theatre, Friday 28 May 2004

THEENSEMBLEGROUP had the misfortune to play Inverness’s Eden Court Theatre only one week in advance of an unprecedented visit by NDT2, one of the world’s best contemporary dance companies.  Without such fearsome competition in the offing, the audience might have been larger and the sense of occasion greater.

theensemblegroup dancers

The company’s name (and its irritating typography) is rather misleading, as this is not a permanent group of dancers honed by the experience of working closely together over months and years, but a scratch company brought together for this tour by Edinburgh-based director Norman Douglas.  Not that you would have thought so, from the extraordinary precision, confidence and sense of implicit trust displayed by this crack bunch of dancers.

Norman Douglas clearly does not believe in mollycoddling his audiences, and the first half of a generous programme was almost wholly dark and intense.  Christopher Hampson’s Strict/Free (one of three premieres in the programme for this tour) found an uncannily exact choreographic counterpoint for the fractured, neurotic post-modern music of Alfred Schnittke.  Just as Schnittke subjects the forms and melodies of 18th century music to a process of expressionist deconstruction, so a somewhat fraught classical ballerina is tormented and overwhelmed by four other dancers in jeans and t-shirts.  The underlying sense of threatening drama was lightened by moments of wry wit and breath-stopping agility, as when one dancer plays a lightning game of hopscotch over the recumbent bodies of her colleagues.

Douglas’s own duet Cries and Whispers, previously seen in the 2003 Edinburgh Fringe, took us even deeper into the abyss, as you might expect from its Bergmanesque title. Dancers and audience alike were subjected to an unremitting barrage of electronic noise which was ultimately self-defeating in that it both distracted and detracted from the very powerful and skilled dancing.  The edgy, shifting relationships of the first piece here became focused down to just one couple caught in a love/hate trap leading inevitably to a graphic and fatal act of violence. We were ready for the interval.

After the break the mood shifted from bleak tragedy to a more gentle melancholy, in Cathy Marston’s Dichterliebe. Reminiscent of Mark Morris’s work, this set the choreographer a triple challenge: to respond not only to the shape and mood of Schumann’s music, but also to the meaning of Heine’s poetry, and even to the particular inflections of tenor Ian Bostridge’s plangent yet minutely detailed interpretation (on disc, of course).  Eight dancers dressed in washed out pastel colours, under lighting that often avoided any real shadows, created an affecting sense of a distant, dream-like world.  Formal dance patterns were disrupted by the poet’s futile efforts to draw himself into the group,  or to forge a lasting bond.  The requirement to ‘set’ the whole of the song cycle meant that, like the opening piece, this work was rather overextended, but it contained many moments of delicate beauty.

By now a growing sense of admiration was tinged with the temptation to cry ‘Lighten up a bit!’, and so it was a relief when Toni Mira’s Blau i Negre burst on to the stage in an explosion of colourful costumes and exuberant Latin rhythms. Nonetheless it was not long before rain stopped play, and when the dancing began again after the (auditory) shower, it had become darker and more tense, as if the storm clouds had not yet lifted.  In an extraordinary sequence, the only lighting came from powerful torches wielded by the dancers themselves, taking it in turn to pick out one of their number who, caught in the crossbeams, would execute a frenetic solo. But, fortunately, cheerfulness began to break in, and after a gentle and literally touching sequence in which the dancers formed living friezes across the stage, the work, and the evening, ended in a chorus line of eccentric, and muted, joy. An impressive finale to a gripping, if demanding, programme.

On this showing, theensemblegroup have a lot to offer—stunningly good, and highly individual, dancing; inventive choreography, and, throughout, highly effective and assured lighting design.  But Director Norman Douglas perhaps needs to cut his audience a little slack, and present a programme which is not quite so unrelievedly serious.   NDT2 they may not be yet, but they’re certainly good enough to stand up to the comparison.

One last note: when presenting new work, it’s a kindness to indicate to the audience how long each work is going to be.  There’s a huge difference between pacing yourself for a short sharp shock as against a long and intense drama.  Mind you, as the whole programme over-ran its stated time by half an hour, perhaps such advance notice wouldn’t have helped!

© Robert Livingston, 2004