JENNIE MACFIE reckons Michael Clark’s new piece for Edinburgh was almost perfect …

BORN IN Aberdeen and trained initially in Highland dancing, to which he owes much including the speed and accuracy of his battements, Michael Clark left the Royal Ballet School in 1979 to career spectacularly across the British dance scene with his shock and awe headline-grabbing tactics, including bare bottoms, platform shoes and prosthetic penises. Returning to the Edinburgh International Festival for the first time in 21 years, the original bad boy has – almost – grown up.

Dancer in come, been and gone

The Normal’s ‘Warm Leatherette’ set the scene as the audience settled into their seats before the curtain rose on Swamp, made for Rambert in 1986 and a piece which sets out Clark’s signature vocabulary of movement. Dancers marched on and off stage, leaning back from the hips like runway models from a collection by the work’s costume designers, 80s groundbreakers BodyMap, or posing, still and elegant, in the style of classic era Vogue photoshoots.

Clark’s choreography is still firmly rooted in the discipline and purity of his classical ballet training and, allied with sleek, body-hugging costumes and lack of set, leaves nowhere for the dancers to hide. It was a shame, therefore, that on Saturday night there was much that was tentative, with many a wobble and occasionally a second attempt at an extension, where there should have been smoothness, stillness and strength. Second night nerves, perhaps.

The new work, come, been and gone, which made up the second half of the programme, was almost brilliant. Countless costume changes recalled a fashion show, but the designs by Stevie Stewart (formerly of BodyMap) were with the regrettable exception of a fleshtoned bodysuit studded with hypodermic syringes stuck into boil-like protuberances subservient to the dance.

Shining silver trousers clung to the hips, full length leotards in fleshtones backed with chocolate brown and accessorised with close-fitting caps turned the dancers into sinous animals in striped matelot jackets – very Stevie Stewart, very Vogue. Themes of movement repeated in Bach-like patterns with an enviable severity and austerity which contrasted with the glamrock Iggy Pop/Bowie/Velvet Underground soundtrack.

Oxana Panchenko and Clair Thomas entered on pointe like a pair of perfectly matched thoroughbreds, poised and elegant. Three dancers stood upstage, nude, backs to the audiences, their buttocks swinging from side to side in an organic version of Newton’s Cradle. Clark, as a sportsclothes-wearing Caliban, walked across the stage spouting water.

No wobbles in this – the dancers were so confident that from time to time grins of enjoyment bubbled up and were swiftly suppressed. The lighting, by Charles Atlas, was exemplary.

There is a classic fashion dictum – “before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off”. Or in this case, two. Without the needless distractions of the syringe costume and the early Bowie video projection, come, been and gone would have been as close to perfection as it gets.

© Jennie Macfie, 2009

Links

• Edinburgh International Festival
• Michael Clark Company
• Jennie Macfie