Dutch National Ballet return to London after an absence of five years and with a company of dancers who are still some of the most interesting on the ballet stage. In two of the four works they perform, however, they are fighting a losing battle with their music. The evening revives the old debate about whether some scores are simply undanceable. When Rudi van Dantzig choreographed Four Last Songs in 1977, the music was not yet a popular classic, but his scenario of four couples haunted by a sinuous Angel of Death still struggles to get a purchase on Strauss's lush Romantic sound. However Van Dantzig stretches his dancers, his choreography runs out breath before it can spiral into the throbbing ecstasy of the music.
If Strauss is too rich, Bach's Cello Suite No 2 appears too rarefied a challenge for Krzysztof Pastor. While his Suite For Two spins a decorative neoclassical frame around the music, Bach remains on a serenely different plane. How different from Hans van Manen's Frank Bridge Variations, where the tense, prowling dancers dramatise the danger and beauty in Britten's score. Little details are mesmerising, like the tenderly sinister gesture with which a man cradles his partner's neck; ensembles are electrifying, like the middle section in which Britten's eerie strings and noirish bass become the ground on which 10 dancers stalk in chilling unison.
How different also from William Forsythe, who rarely exposes himself to musical competition. Thom Willems' jangling score for The Last Detail may sounds like a broken musical box, but into it Forsythe throws all the glittering shards of his choreography to brilliant effect. The dancers move as if liberated.
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