There is nothing arbitrary about Dance Theatre of Harlem's decision to headline its return to London with a performance of George Balanchine's Four Temperaments. Even though the world wants to celebrate DTH as an iconic black ballet troupe it is actually a vividly mixed-race company that resists being defined by colour. Even though it shows some works with an African American bias, it also wants to be assessed within the ballet mainstream.
The company has in fact been dancing Balanchine since its debut season in 1971; while the cast in Monday's Four Temperaments were technically uneven, they did look at home. The women were the weakest element, lacking the poise and lethally powered feet of true Balanchine-bred ballerinas, but the engagingly idiosyncratic male soloists occupied the piece in confident style. Kevin Thomas was a Melancholic driven to risky extremes, sleek, graceful Eric Underwood a quirkily gallant Phlegmatic.
The company's link with Balanchine and the neoclassic tradition was apparently one of the influences on Dwight Rhoden's rapacious, plotless ballet Twist (1999). The other has to have been Willliam Forsythe, given the jarring force with which Rhoden slams his steps up against each other and the goading intensity with which he turns his twelve dancers into combatants.
Antonio Carlos Scott's harsh, sometimes airless score drives the choreography forward in angry fits and starts and the best passage by far is the final, most fully sustained duet, Warped Rapture. Danced by fierce and spacious Kellye A. Saunders and Donald Williams this fluctuates between aggression and acquiescence with a flow that feels like real people dancing. Too often however Rhoden's choreography is packed with so much strenuous attitude that the dancers look sullen and pressed for time.
A more playful tension between classical and modern is created in Robert Garland's New Bach (2001), whose stately unfolding patterns make reference to the courtly dance origins of Bach's Violin Concerto in A minor. But while its 10 men and women aspire to maintain this decorum, their dancing is regularly punctuated by flurries of disco. These shimmying shoulders and rolls of the pelvis often seem no more than a bubbling up of high spirits. They are like a deviant style statement or decoration, yet Garland's achievement lies in making them look like second nature - to the dancers and to the score. Garland is no Balanchine, but he's learnt the trick of making his dancers appear masters of several dialects.
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