Rambert's 2019 Tour

Rambert's 2019 UK tour is its first since Benoit Swan Pouffer assumed the reins as artistic director last December, though this is not his first visit to Norwich. It was he who accompanied Rambert 2 to Norwich Playhouse in January this year as guest director with his own pulsating Grey Matter. This week he returns to oversee his committed and athletic artists fill the stage of the Theatre Royal with movement, strength, shape and form in a programme that features Wayne McGregor's PreSentient, a piece originally commissioned by Rambert back in 2002; Marion Motin's recently premièred Rouge; and Hofesh Shechter's gritty and relevant In Your Rooms, first performed at The Place, in London, in March 2007.
 
It is with a lone dancer that the curtain raises for the start of PreSentient, her presence heightened by the harsh white lighting reflecting off the gauze scrim behind her. As this, too, is raised eleven more dancers are revealed, all in tunics of pale blue, and all forming a geometric line at the back of the stage. As the industrial mechanisations of the opening soundtrack make way for the strings of Steve Reich's Triple Quartet, the twelve become one via complex permutations of twos, threes and fours, each manoeuvre highlighting McGregor's penchant for multi-dimensional and interlocking movement. It becomes an angular and yet simultaneously fluid piece, scintillatingly executed as the physique and perfect control of each dancer is dramatically picked out by the lighting. It is no wonder that McGregor's choreography was heralded as being both trailblazing and innovative when this piece was premièred seventeen years ago.
 
By contrast, Marion Motin's Rouge sees a darkened stage carpeted with a cinereal carpet of churning smoke through which seven diverse characters rise and fall. A lone figure dressed in black plays electric guitar to Micka Luna's live and thunderous soundtrack. This random septet gradually discard their chattels of individuality, conjoining in their need to unite and survive, discovering a common purpose and humanity. They then strive to find the energy in order to recharge and survive the 'red zone' as pulsating neon lights streak across the stage pushing the piece towards a spirited and uplifting conclusion. Motin's reputation may have been built in a world of hip-hop and music video, but there is nothing two dimensional about Rouge. And Luna's bass-heavy music reminds us just how good the Theatre Royal's sound system can be when pushed to its absolute limits.
 
Where Rouge is hard-edged and punchy, Hofesh Shechter's In Your Rooms is provocative, searching and at times slightly alienating. A spoken introduction discusses the relationship between order and chaos whilst twelve dancers strive to simulate and express the bridges between the two. But what at first seems like a choreographed lecture in mathematics quickly evolves into a stark examination of  political control and individual freedom. Shifting motives, lack of control and personal vulnerabilities are exposed as interconnected and inter-related forces – not unlike the pendulumic balance between society's own rules of order and chaos. In Your Rooms is rightly considered a modern masterpiece, not least for the ways in which its gritty physicality and intricate touching manoeuvres fight to co-exist, and this performance leaves a haunting imprint in the psyche that persists long after the show has finished.
 
Rambert's visits to Norwich are always eagerly anticipated, and this programme of three very different yet thematically interconnected pieces, demonstrates Benoit Swan Pouffer's commitment to maintaining the company's proud reputation for taking risks, whilst pushing contemporary dance into an inclusive and challenging direction with his own visionary approach.