I wish the world had more dances by Javier de Frutos. His work for theatre can be brutally powerful, but when it comes to making steps, his choreography communicates such clever inventive fun that it can make me laugh out loud.
In The Anatomy of a Passing Cloud, his third work for the Royal New Zealand Ballet, De Frutos composes a love letter to the Pacific region, and especially to its music, with a score that ranges from Maori drums to songs by the Yandall Sisters.
A white circle marks the ceremonial heart of the stage, around which the 12 dancers move in a hedonistic profusion of patterns. A kaleidoscope of trios unfolds to the stretchy, trippy lilt of the Yandalls’ singing; deft, stamping dances shimmer in unison and counterpoint. The vocabulary is balletic, but it comes with a raucous, rhythmic muscle, and its duets often turn into wild, heartstopping games of throw and catch. De Frutos gives his dancers the gift of very grown-up choreography – it’s musically and structurally as tight as a drum. But he also insists that they look like themselves: kids having a good time.
RNZB are an attractive and versatile company, but they’re less well served by the rest of their programme. Neil Ieremia’s Passchendaele is the best, using the maelstrom of sounds in Dwayne Bloomfield’s score to turn the stage into a battlefield of pounding visceral intensity. The other war-themed work, Andrew Simmons’s Dear Horizon, plays disappointingly safe, however, with its pious juxtapositions of embattled men and palely grieving women. Closing the evening on an attempted high is Andonis Foniadakis’s Sélon desire. While there’s real exhilaration in the dancers’ collective slashing velocity, it’s a one-note piece and it lacks deep structure – which, as De Frutos, knows, is key.
- At Linbury Studio, London, until 21 November. Box office: 020-7304 4000.
