LONDON CALLING.

LONDON CALLING

RANDOM DANCE COMPANY AND RANDOM
DANCE/ROYAL BALLET COLLABORATION
LINBURY STUDIO THEATRE, ROYAL OPERA HOUSE
AT COVENT GARDEN
LONDON, ENGLAND
APRIL 19-22, 2001
AND
TERRACE THEATER, KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE
PERFORMING ARTS
WASHINGTON, D.C.
MAY 31-JUNE 2, 2001

Two programs of Wayne McGregor's work--one performed by members of his own Random Dance Company, the other by Random and select members of The Royal Ballet--were featured earlier this year in London and Washington. The Random-only program consisted of the intermission-less piece Aeon. The collaborative Random-Royal program, called "Duo:logue," consisted of three parts--Symbiont(s), the final portion of Aeon, and brainstate. The choreography grew on me, but the dancers were impressive from the start. They had stamina and focus. The eight on Random's roster (not counting McGregor) and about an equal number from The Royal Ballet (sponsored by the Artists' Development Initiative of the Royal Opera House) seemed as if they had trained at the same school. Although only the Royal's women deployed toe shoes, it wasn't just the Royal's men who mastered beats.

If not every Random body was as standard as a ballet company might wish, this was trivial compared to the quality of the dancing. Uniformly, the cast had great flexibility, which was tempered by classical control. The dancers also shared a work ethic in which showing movement, and not showing off technique or self, was primary. Dancers didn't impose mood and meaning, but allowed each to emerge from the steps and other production components.

Aeon is about virtual reality being supplanted by what is actual. Computerized images of architectural interiors, through which the viewer seemed to move, were the only thing visible at first. After a while, human forms (real and projected) populated the space. They did so gradually; for quite some time, despite the presence of people, an eerie, science-fiction atmosphere dominated. Ultimately, though, in what served as a last act in this seventy-minute intermission-less piece, flesh-and-blood dancers performed on a conventional stage. Aurally, too, there is reverse evolution, as a noise score (by zoviet*france) is supplanted by instrumental music by seventeenth-century viola da gamba master Marin Marais.

Some viewers were disappointed that the images that filled the long wait before the dancing didn't have the visual impact of, say, the film 2001 or the wit of Prague's Laterna Magica productions. McGregor and his collaborators prefer understatement. Much of the choreography, too, was restrained. It came in short stretches and was performed by one or a few dancers at a time, until a final ensemble section that resembled a dance class. Movement was used analytically, to probe bodies, to explore options of stretching, folding, and rotating, and to create coordinates in space. In sequences, the interplay between continuity and fragmentation was reminiscent of Merce Cunningham, but milder.

"Duo:logue in Three Parts" was a triple bill in which the first work, Symbiont(s), was twitchy--reminiscent of Twyla Tharp. McGregor, though, was gentler, except for an opening duo. In Washington, this duo was danced by McGregor with the Royal's Deborah Bull, and it made a wild, expressionist statement. The choreographer didn't look or move like any of the other dancers. He was angular and taut, like an Egon Schiele figure, and Bull responded with a show of strength. The rest of the piece featured the Royal contingent. Twitches and shrugs punctuated a teased-apart, rather balletic movement vocabulary that, cumulatively, seemed like Tharp filtered through gauze.

Next came the final portion of Aeon, lifted, in Cunningham Events fashion, from the all-Random program and danced by the regular Random group, minus McGregor. The third and ultimate item, brainstate, used both Royal and Random dancers. It opened with a party scene for the men only. The women, then, were presented in military-like formations. The finale, for both sexes, summarized many of the characteristics of the McGregor style--the smooth integration of ballet steps into movement that distorts the body and skews partnering, in order to extend the dancers' range and develop a coherent movement logic.