To open an evening with Merce Cunningham's Pond Way is to set an unfeasibly high standard for any work that follows. This 1998 classic scatters a haze of ambrosial endorphins around the theatre as, accompanied by Brian Eno's gently buzzing soundtrack, its choreography unfolds with an unselfconscious and exquisite complexity. Performed beautifully by Rambert's dancers, the piece is a kaleidoscope of pattern and seemingly accidental detail, as though we were staring at pond life through a giant lens.
Karole Armitage danced with Cunningham's company for four years, but nothing about her new work for Rambert is redolent of the master's style. Gran Partita weaves a fantasy of 18th-century art and dance into its Mozart score. Designer Jean Marc Puissant has set the stage like an outdoor pavilion. While the 11 dancers are dressed in modern leotards, their language is rich in period mannerisms, evoking a fete or carnival. Certain phrases have a jerkiness suggestive of mechanical dolls, while others veer between aristocratic courtliness and a boisterous folksiness. It is an intriguing mix of styles, yet Armitage does not build up a structure to support it, and too much of her choreography ends up blurring into the lushness of the music.
There is nothing blurry about André Gingras's Anatomica #3, which takes a satirical, sometimes bruising, look at the role of the body in modern celebrity culture. All possibilities of physical exhibitionism are on display - from the brittle bonhomie of minor royals (18 dancers waving and skipping in cartoon unison) to body-building, gymnastics and popular dance. Joseph Hyde's percussive score drives the action to a fine heady pitch, especially when the dancers race up a vertiginous ramp, and compete for the most heartstopping ways in which to hurl themselves into space. The cast are clearly having a brilliant time as they fly, leap and rebound off a pile of gym mats; what's so clever about Gingras's piece is that for all its wry commentary about our obsessive culture of display, it fully acknowledges the fun and the exhilaration of showing off. The endorphins generated here are as sweaty, pumped up and infectious as those from Pond Way are sweetly beguiling.
· Until Saturday. Box office: 0844 412 4300.
.jpg?w=600)
