In 1967, when Robert Cohan was invited to London to direct the new Contemporary Dance Trust, modern dance was barely a blip on the British cultural scene. Forty years on, as he celebrates his 80th birthday, most of the profession owe their careers to the fact that he said: "I'm from Brooklyn so I know you don't get this kind of offer two times in your life."
As head of the London School of Contemporary Dance, Cohan went on to nurture a generation of performers, while as director of London Contemporary Dance Theatre he turned modern dance into the fastest growing art form in the country.
But if Cohan's legacy as educator and inspirer is evident all over the country, his own choreography is rarely seen, and it was a treat for everyone that his birthday event brought three of his works back to the stage.
The earliest, Eclipse, was made in 1959 when Cohan was still dancing with Martha Graham, and in its attempts to channel hot emotion through cool, geometric form it feels very 50s, very experimental. As the two dancers prowl around each other, their rhythmic spatters of dance and bold gestures flare with danger. The emotion is coiled tight in the movement, waiting to spring - a trademark of Cohan's work.
In Forest (1977) it lends a peculiarly feral power to the glancing lights and intensities of the movement. In Stabat Mater (1975), it carries Cohan to a passionately visceral response to Vivaldi's score. While the structure of this piece is all clear, vaulting lines, its nine women dancers move with a circling tenderness that feels very private and feminine.
The dancers from Ballet Theatre Munich look very good in it, and their obvious pleasure in the material is as great a tribute to Cohan as the standing ovation he received at the end of the show.
