Where do dance steps come from? What do they mean? And what makes them gel as choreography? Dancers William Trevitt and Michael Nunn have been raising these questions in their sparky, if undemanding, television programme The Rough Guide to Choreography, and in the process have been finding out whether the art is something anyone can learn to do.
The series has been leading up to the screening of Trevitt's debut work, Follow. On Saturday he tested it out in front of a live audience, sandwiching it, bravely, between two of the finest works in the repertory of George Piper Dances, the company to which he and Nunn belong.
Also in the performance was video footage of Trevitt's creative agonies in the studio. However, while these gave comic insight into the challenge he had set himself, they didn't instil confidence in the finished product. Rule number one for choreographers is to avoid revealing that you've no idea what your work is about. Dance audiences are used to doing without stories or messages, but we do like to assume there's a point of view our own interpretations can bump up against. And rule number two is to work with a convincing score; using the computerised beats Nunn had thrown together for a rehearsal tape didn't do much for the choreography's authority.
Other rules, though, Trevitt did obey - such as using top dancers and making them look good. Follow is made up of two linked duets, during the first of which Hubert Essakow and Oxana Panchenko move in charged proximity, never touching. Both dancers scent out the foxy potential of the angles through which Trevitt folds their bodies, and the space between them sparks with danger. The duet of Monica Zamora and Nunn is even better: an intimate encounter that the dancers endow with a drugged sensuality, shot through with startling shivers of alertness.
Follow is certainly evidence that Trevitt can put steps together and meld different influences into a convincing style. But it is also a sign that he should not yet change careers. Trevitt and Nunn have, after all, made their mark already - as fine performers and fine commissioners of other people's work.
