Rambert 2

It has been far from a Dry January culture-wise for me here in Norwich. In just the last five days I have seen KlangHaus art-rockers The Neutrinos perform their 20thanniversary celebration at the Arts Centre, been wowed by Icelandic cellist Gyða Valtýsdóttir, and popped my Romeo and Juliet cherry with the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Theatre Royal. And now (on the final night of the month) I am at the Norwich Playhouse eagerly awaiting the first ever Norwich performance from the Rambert 2 dance company. Who said January was a slow month?
 
A newly formed junior company of just 13 dancers picked from 800 applicants, Rambert 2 is currently on its debut tour, performing three contemporary pieces to audiences, as well as visiting schools across the country. It is good to see a significant number of students in tonight's audience, a sold-out first night, and heightening the sense of excitement and anticipation.
 
The performance begins with the newest of the three pieces, Grey Matter, by Rambert's Guest Artistic Director, Benoit Swan Pouffer. Featuring all twelve dancers from the touring troupe, and some wonderfully silky costuming from Cottweiler, Grey Matter is a slick, pulsating work performed to a rhythmic thumping soundtrack from South London artist Gaika Tavares. Exploring themes of memory and movement, Grey Matter is a slick and synchronised performance with alternate sequences of silky smooth movement and neurological popping and contractions to a dubstep beat mimicking the action of neurones and synapses in the brain. The final  sequence with one lone dancer frantically running on the spot as the troupe slo-mo away is breathtaking. I could easily have watched this piece in its entirety for a second and third time, and gone home happy.
 
E2 7SDis a virtuosic duet performed by Conor Kerrigan and Aishwarya Raut, and takes its name from the Hoxton postcode where choreographer Rafael Bonachela originally conceived the piece in 2004. The sound-sculpted mixture of urban noise and snippets of conversation combine with atmospheric lighting whilst two dancers fearlessly engage in a series of muscular tangles. It is a physical and emotional matching of forces that ranges from the serene to the frenzied, yet this meditative duet becomes strangely hypnotic thanks to the physical and emotional exertion of both Kerrigan and Raut. Would I have preferred to see the programme open with this piece? Quite possibly, though the rest of the troupe would then miss out on a much-needed break before performing the concluding dance.
 
And so, after a quick interval, eight dancers (including once again the wondrously staminal Conor Kerrigan) return to perform Sharon Eyal and Gai Behars' Killer Pig, a strangely aggressive piece from 2009 that wavers somewhere between nightclub and catwalk – lots of posturing and physicality, whilst individuals and pairs peel away and engage in a mixture of modern and classical manoeuvres, The flesh coloured costumes, enswirled by the smoke and lights, result in sequences of nude silhouettes framed by spiky limbs and arched backs, with sweat glistening on muscle as the piece reaches its climactic finale. The pulsating beat of the industrial techno score from Ori Lichtik may have been a bit much for the traditionalists, but I loved it, and I obviously was not the only one. At the end of the show many of the audience were on their feet, and the applause was prolonged and well-deserved.
 
Top marks to the Norwich Playhouse for hosting this debut visit from Rambert 2. The scale of the venue, and the fantastic sound, made this a perfect evening with which to end the month. And let us hope that we will be able to put a date in our 2020 diary for the company's return.