This latest pair of Royal Opera House commissions comes with a big budget, enabling each work to be framed by glossy designs and a new score, played live at every performance. Within the world of independent dance such luxuries are rare; such a pity, then, that so much of the choreography in this double bill makes the money look so badly spent.
Particularly disappointing is Liz Lea's Eros-Eris, a danced argument between the universal principles of Love and Strife. Composer John Metcalf responds to this concept with gusto, his score alternating between lulling interludes and jagged tempests of percussive sound. The design team, too, create a resonant cosmic battleground, alternately lit with luminous ripples and violent shards of electric blue. Yet, with all this going for her, the best Lea can do is vacillate between moony t'ai chi poses and half-hearted combative duets. It is not only cosmology by numbers, but bad dance.
Cathy Marston's Echo and Narcissus is imagined at a much higher level. Set to a score by Stuart MacRae and a libretto by Edward Kemp, the piece is designed to occupy a space between dance and opera. With the two roles taken simultaneously by dancers and singers, Marston does achieve moments of unusual dramatic intensity. After Echo has been cruelly stripped of her voice, dancer Jenny Tattersall hangs mournfully over the mouth of her singing alter ego, as if trying to suck back the words Echo has lost. When she gives chase to Narcissus, she is made to duck and dive around the latter's singing double - her physical frustration a poignant measure of her emotional distress. Yet, as beautifully staged and performed as this experiment is, Marston's choreographic invention is still unable to sustain the longer stretches of MacRae's music. There is a powerful argument here for funding more creative time in the studio, and spending less on expensive props.
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