This is Rambert’s review – Kneeling for 100 years is a big leap | Dancing

Britain’s oldest dance company is celebrating 100 years since it was founded, but the celebratory tour did not feature any physical activity. As a title, This is Rambertit makes clear, with mission statement, manifesto, and everything for this time.

So don’t look back to where the company started at the beginning of British ballet, or to the deliberate revolution of modern dance in the 1960s. The Rambert brand has gone through a chameleonic transformation over the years, settling for a while into a well-known, reliable, and versatile look. The talented director here Benoit Swan Pouffer wants to shake things up, proving that there is nothing about a 100-year-old man.

Everything is still moving, and there is constant movement in the latest three productions. The best piece is Hop(e) storm (The) Horde. One of the tricks of the French group is to take dances from social and digital life and recreate them on stage; recognizable blocks have been transformed into something new and exciting, like someone making a YouTube video where they edit a few episodes and put a new song on top. In this case the dance is 1930s lindy hop, broken down and put through a rave filter, joined by a hard beat. The results are fun and insightful, as well as energizing and feeding your dopamine. It’s very clever.

Above all, Bobbi Jane Smith and Or Schraiber‘s In Crimson shows off how good these dancers are, like Dipesh Verma, who has an extra notch of amplitude to his moves, and especially Naya Lovell, flying into the arms of the mercurial Sungmin Kim (later the multi-talented Lovell perches on the piano and sings, with Yonatan Daskal playing live). The movement alternates between the movement of the rubber body and the wide swing of the extended, unsteady voice in a relaxed melody. They dance in front of a red velvet cloth, the size of the stage is greatly reduced to give the feeling of a room. They are always sweet, beautiful to look at, even when they are faced with obesity.

Dutch choreographer Emma Evelein‘s Gallery of Consequence is set in an airport, an empty space where anything can happen. We are torn between couples’ arguments, dangerous chaos, gossiping flight attendants and more, long-haul travelers always running somewhere out of sight and the stiff movements of people in the waiting area but ready to run at any time. The problem with disappearing photos (of people you don’t get a chance to know) is that they come out quickly without touching, but otherwise they are not boring.

What does all this say about Rambert’s work, then? Moving fast, but not breaking anything. Continuing to commission new choreography and keep amazing dancers moving forward. It’s all very good, and everything tonight is good, even if some of it is fun – that’s a necessary risk in a new job. Let’s imagine they would still be dancing in another 100 years.