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We have danced to music as long as we have been making music. In some African languages, the same word means both “music” and “dance”, because to have one without the other is simply unthinkable. Music and dance are natural partners. Words and music are a powerful combination, too. But what about words and dance? Some recent productions suggest that dancing to spoken word instead of music can work. But that feels, to me, like a rarity: there is a fine line between dancing a story and merely miming its action. This latter tends to use words as narration and the dancers as props, rather than storytellers.

You don’t need to speak a language to understand dance. For all that many cultures have a highly specific dance language, it arguably doesn’t matter if the dancer is French, Thai or Martian: you will be able to respond to it physically or emotionally, even if you wouldn’t be able to comprehend a word. But the moment that choreographers introduce language, all that changes. Protein Dance‘s recent show, LOL (Lots of Love), which used lonely-hearts ads as the backdrop for its dancers, fell into the trap of dancing the words rather than dancing to the words. Despite a slew of positive reviews, it left me cold: I felt that it lacked heart, despite being all about love and relationships. And much of that was to do with the use of words, which caught good dancers in weird choreographic traps – they were unable to escape the mundanity of the text, the delicacy of the movement subsumed by the saccharine narrative.

It is easy for the choreographer to become tied to the literal meanings of the words, thus losing other emotional resonances. A vocabulary of movement, gesture and response is surely different from a literal vocabulary, so mapping one straightforwardly to the other is likely to be plodding. Dancing to words can stifle creativity, in other words, and it is only in rare cases that it can help movement to blossom. Phoenix Dance‘s piece at Cambridge Arts theatre last year, which used the prologue of Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie as its backing, managed to both depict the story of Laura, Amanda, Jim and Tom and to cut to the emotional heart of the play. The lack of music here gave the piece a dreamlike quality – appropriate for this “memory play” – and was highly effective. The dancers captured the heart of the story without resorting to clumsy mime.

So, it matters what the words are, just as it matters what the music is. Poorly chosen, sentimental or trite text is likely to lead to similar dance. If the words don’t work, the dance is likely to be spoiled.

FELA! is a bouncy, buoyant, corker of production that rather loses its way halfway through. The first half is an utter joy. Bill T Jones’ choreography does not flag for a second, the music is infectiously upbeat, the energy of the performers is relentless. It rattles along, full of exuberant lessons about Afro-beat, Cuban drumming, James Brown and high-life music.

The dancing, and the dancers, are utterly, superlatively, mesmerising. They are also universally stunning. Early on in his engaging narrative, Fela (Sehr Ngaujah) tells the audience that the British stole Nigeria’s oil and diamonds, and what did we leave in return? Gonorrhoea and Jesus. Doesn’t seem like a fair swap. This is indicative of the wit, warmth and brilliance that Ngaujah brings to the stage, making Jim Lewis and Bill T Jones’ words and Jones’ choreography zing and zip.

The whole first half was bursting with joy, life and gyrating buttocks. I don’t suppose that Sadler’s Wells has seen hundreds of people getting in touch with their “clocks” before: thrust your pelvis forward, that’s 12 o’clock. Now stick your bum out, that’s 6. Hips side-to-side hits 3 and 9. Now imagine a semi-naked, sinfully sexy man, glistening with sweat, getting the whole of Sadler’s on its feet, thrusting and foot-tapping as he shouts out numbers. Now imagine trying to follow his instructions while watching far more attractive, scantily-clad and adept dancers do the same moves on stage. In tassled knickers, and not a lot else. It made a refreshing change from pointed shoes and pirouettes.

With such virtuosic dancing and superb choreography, if it ended at the interval I’d say you’d be hard-pressed to have a better time in the theatre this year. However, after a well-directed come-down early in the second half, the show rather lost its way. It’s tricky to bring the mood down without alienating a happy, buzzy audience, but the story demanded it. The first hint of a sombre mood was a refreshing change, and was handled adroitly. However, the odd juxtaposition of joyful dancing and singing of the first half with stark, brutal and uncompromising descriptions of rape and torture in the second became rather baffling, especially when there were still song-and-dance routines mixed in.

A completely weird, massively over-long dream sequence that overestimated the dramatic potential of UV lighting took up much of the second half, followed by a beautiful but jarring operatic song (sung by the brilliant Melanie Marshall). It all sat very oddly with high-life rhythms of the first half and general feel of the rest of the piece. The musicians deserve a review of their own – we got a full blown gig along with the dance and a (mini) play.

It’s nice to see Sadler’s embracing something different, and a superlatively good cast kept the evening afloat as the play floundered. It’s worth seeing for the supremely talented cast and fantastic first half – but if you left at the interval you wouldn’t miss much.

Going to anything at the ROH is a treat – a glittering, sumptuous, over-the-top way to spend an evening.Swan Lake was no exception to the ‘treat’ rule, and when Carlos Acosta is dancing Siegfried and Tamara Rojo is dancing Odette/Odile, you know it’s going to be something extra special. Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov’s production did not disappoint; it was, quite simply, gorgeous.

From set to costume to dance, the whole show was a controlled riot of glowing colour and whirling limbs, swelling music and impossibly impressive dance. If you’ve never done ballet, it looks effortlessly light, and it charms. If you have, you know it’s excruciatingly difficult, effortful and knackering, which makes the delicacy and skill admirable as well as impressive. Acosta can jump higher, and make it look easier, than any male dancer I have ever seen, and made a commanding and aesthetically pleasing prince. Rojo, who is tiny, made a desperate, elegant Odette and a sexy, calculating and cruel Odile, continually under the spell of Gary Avis’s pantomimically malevolent Von Rothbart.

Acosta and Rojo are a lovely pair, seeming to melt into one and another when they share steps, port de bras and lifts. The choreography is stunning mix of explosive passion (the ‘show-off’ moments for Acosta and Rojo!) and extremely tender, gentle movements which speak volumes. The entire company is impressive, and the generous chorography mixes up the ensembles and corps des ballets frequently, allowing most dancers a moment in the spotlight.

Avis’s Von Rothbart is wonderfully evil, dressed in a feathered, ragged cape, moving in a crouch and exploiting his power to hurt. His seemingly never-ending parade of swan-captives are well-danced, and the choreography is intelligent and varied. With waves and waves of white-clad dancers, the swans are hard to get right – it risks cliché and melodrama. Here, however, it is avoided, and we get the poignancy and the oppression without the simpering or too much arm-waving. Petipa and Ivanov have thought carefully about the shapes their dancers make individually and as a group, to great effect.

Tchaikovsky’s famous music was wonderfully conducted by Boris Gruzin, who seemed to be having a great time down in the pit. He coaxed the orchestra of the ROH into paroxysms of joy and despair, and reminded the audience why the tunes have become so well-known: the sweeping melodies and punchy tempo keep musicians, audience and dancers on their toes.

To the percussive clicks of a keyboard and the electronic beeps and chirps that invade our lives, Protein reflects on the nature of human interaction in a digital age. Sounds promising? Title aside, I thought so too. Unfortunately, the piece has delusions of grandeur but misses its mark.

Let’s start with the title: LOL. Where I come from, “lol” means “laugh out loud”, not “lots of love”, and has become a reflexive punctuation mark in casual conversations, rather than a phrase that has a great deal of meaning. The fact that Protein felt the need to spell out that LOL can mean “lots of love”, “lots of luck”, “laughing out loud”, “lack of laughter”, “lack of love”, “lack of luck”, “life on line”, “love on line” and also, apparently, “losers on line” and “log off loser”, in its promotional material suggests the lack of coherent decision-making that characterises the piece. This dabbling the world of online interactions feels rather half-hearted, while trying to appear committed. What could have been an interesting exploration of how we present ourselves online, and how this affects relationships and potential relationships, was instead a rather stilted and over-worked set of vignettes, with very little connecting purpose.

Perhaps this lack of connectedness was intentional – a look at the fragmentary nature of today’s society – or perhaps the piece just lacked a clear idea of where it was going. Either way, it was often unsatisfying to watch, and eked out a slim idea to 70 mins. The piece was “conceived and directed” by Luca Silvestrini and “devised and performed” by the six dancers; I wonder if this lack of a single choreographer has led to a kind of ‘devise by committee’ approach, and that’s why the piece feels so bitty. The dancers themselves, Patsy Browne-Hope, Omar Gordon, Kip Johnson, Sally Marie, Fernanda Prata and Stuart Waters, are lithe and committed, but never seem comfortable with the demanded audience interaction. It was refreshing to see the six dancers (three men, three women) mix up their partnerships to portray same-sex couples as well as heterosexual ones, but this was not enough to redeem a piece that was shallow but aiming to be deep.

The piece was danced to the sounds of Skype, MSN, etc., to words spoken by the dancers, and to pre-recorded and distorted words and phrases (composed by Andy Pink). Much of the language was lifted straight from lonely hearts ads, or was ostensibly email text from one member of a dating website to another. Again, this could have been an interesting idea, especially if the choreography has concentrated on the emotions, the loneliness and the fear of rejection, rather than on the narrative. Sadly, the overly earnest script quickly descended into trite cliché, wallowing in pseudo-philosophical insights and becoming too shallow to be taken as seriously as it took itself. There were some witty moments in the script, which provided the nicest moments of dance, too, but they were too few and too far between.

The dancers seemed bogged down by the earnestness of the piece, and they struggled to dance naturally while reciting their lines. I fail to see the value in having the lines spoken live – a recording would have left the dancers much freer. The piece also fell into the trap of dancing to the words, with one movement for each syllable and almost miming the story, rather than the dance taking on a life of its own. The pervading feeling was a sense that the company just don’t really get the way online communication works; the characters created by the words and dance feel like stereotypes, where ‘real’ people would have been more interesting.

LOL – Lots of Love by Protein played at The Place. For more shows and information see its website here: www.theplace.org.uk

When I interviewed Akram Khan in 2009 (see the ‘Articles’ section, if you’re interested), he told me that he is fascinated by the spiritual, and that his next piece would reflect that interest. Well, ‘Vertical Road’ certainly fulfils its brief, but I’m afraid I didn’t find his interpretation of the subject as fascinating as Khan clearly does. The piece is a series of vignettes, held together by tentative, slow sections, which explore different forms of worship, love and what it might mean to be human. The whole evening was a little too worthy for my taste.

I agree wholeheartedly with my companion (who liked the piece more than I did), that in order to pull off something that invests in such emotionally complex territory the choreographer and dancers must believe in what they’re doing. Where we disagree, however, is whether this was successful in Vertical Road. That Khan believes in what he’s doing, I have no doubt. That the dancers do, too, I am more sceptical about: there were times when it felt like watching a play where the actors are not keen on the script but giving it their all in an attempt to salvage it.
And, to some extent, they did. The dancers were stunning, as Khan’s company usually are. His lines, leaps, drops and spins are spikily graceful and rhythmical menacing by turns, and the dancers come together and flow apart as a skilled unit. The unison moves are affecting and effective, and the piece often feels energetic, witty, exuberant. However, the slow passages were frustratingly self-indulgent. Frankly, they were dull. Short, slower passages make an interesting juxtaposition with the more dynamic moments, but the slow outweighed the fun for me and left me checking my watch.

Although the piece had some arrestingly beautiful moments, the aesthetic pleasure was, for me, somewhat overwhelmed by the feeling that one needed to ‘get it’ and to see the deeper meaning behind the piece. Its lack of momentum prevented me from swallowed up in the movement, and instead left me frustrated.
Nitin Sawhney’s score is often more of a soundscape than a melody, but has enough thumping rhythm to drive the dancers forward in the faster passages. His music perfectly complements the slow moments – I’m just not sure that’s a compliment. All in all, although I cannot fault the dancers, this piece did not speak to me. Perhaps it was too subtle, too spiritual for this sleepy atheist – certainly, I seem to be alone in my ambivalence. It has been positively received elsewhere, so I leave you with more upbeat reviews: The FT here, Guardian here and Telegraph here.

My sound and music

I think kathak has made me more interested in music. As part of the training you have to learn an instrument, and initially I learnt singing. I had one lesson and the teacher said “Sing the note Sa”, so I sang the note Sa, and he said
“Get out, you’ll never be a singer”, which was really quite horrific, especially as a child. So he sent me to the next room and said I’d be better off in tabla class. I really persevered at the percussive side, and now I love anything that’s percussive. In kathak you are both musician and dancer, and that has absolutely affected how I listen to music. Because of the training I had I’m much more interested not just in the melody but also in the craft of the performer, the musician. Are they really accomplished, are they really good at what they do, do they speak through what they do?

A lot of dancers respond very honestly to music, and so when the music’s speaking from the heart, from the musician, somehow the dance connects with it much more easily. I was also into Michael Jackson as a child, his physicality and his musicality, how he physicalises music, that I just find absolutely fantastic. He responds to the music, rather than dancing on the music, and there’s a big difference. That’s something I was very drawn to. So, kathak and Michael Jackson are two influences I had growing up.

In terms of who I’d like to choreograph to, I’d love to collaborate with Salif Keita, a beautiful singer from West Africa. He’s got a song called Folon, and it’s just beautiful. I like Bjork. I also love Massive Attack; I’d love to do stuff with them, especially their early stuff. Nitin Sawnhey and I have made a few collaborations together, and Nitin I love. I love his music because he’s scientific, he’s fascinated by science, but he’s also very spiritual. These two worlds are something I’m fascinated by, the spiritual has the narrative, and the science has the information. The spirituality is more about faith and trust, you don’t need it to be ‘in your face’, you just believe it. And then, in the middle, where you meet, is the human being. And so you make a choice, you either accept both or you choose one direction or the other. For me, Nitin really encompasses both. There’s something extremely spiritual about him as a performer, but he’s also extremely scientific, it’s amazing.

I did a collaboration with Steve Reich, but for me, contemporary music’s hard; I find it hard to listen to, to get into. I look at it more as an experiment, so that’s why I enjoy working with the London Sinfonietta, because for me it’s like a science lab. It’s like being in a laboratory, wearing a white coat, and thinking “Hmm, that’s interesting”, but I’m not emotionally moved. I don’t know why, I just don’t ‘get’ contemporary music; it’s just something not in me. If you put on Flamenco, if you put on Arabic music, or African music, I kind of feel where it’s coming from, the stories it’s speaking, but the disjoint-ness of contemporary music I don’t get. I don’t see the spirituality in contemporary music, I don’t feel it’s made from the heart, I feel it’s made from the brain. It’s intellectual; the brain creates the music rather than the instinct, the heart. There’s no such thing as a piece of music that you couldn’t choreograph or dance to, but there is music that I don’t want to choreograph to. To be entirely honest, when I did the piece with Steve Reich, it was music I couldn’t find a story in, and I was really struggling with that. He created the music specifically for the piece, we collaborated, and it was the first time he created music for the concept of dance. Eventually, my story became about searching for the story. In a way, I psychologically changed the whole thing because I was so frustrated that I couldn’t find a narrative in this music, that in the end I thought, “OK, your story is going to be about searching for the story”, and I never found the story. And so, even if the narrative is that I don’t know how to choreograph to this, then it becomes all about “I don’t know how to choreograph to this”. I always find a story. Because the second I put the music on, I’m responding to it, even it it’s negatively, I’m still responding to it, and that means that a dialogue is taking place. So long as I react to the music, it’s OK. It’s only problematic if I don’t react to it, then I have an issue.

When I’m tired and I need to focus, or when I can’t sleep, I listen to Indian vocal music. It’s so soothing, it creates an atmosphere. I don’t really listen to a lot of Western Classical music, although I like it. I put on stuff like Justin Timberlake, I’m kind of cheesy in that way, I like that stuff. There’s a hint of him being influenced by Michael [Jackson], with the dancing and stuff, it makes you want to groove. I like a lot of hip hop, but I tend to like just one or two songs from each person, a specific melody, or what they’re saying, I like it when it’s about themselves.

Because of my dance, I work with a lot of different cultures, people, dancers and collaborators, and the way to get to know them is to get to know what they eat and get to know the music they listen to. I’ve been listening to a lot of Arabic music recently, because my next piece is inspired by stories from the Arab world, the Muslim world. Before that, I made a piece called Bahok, with the National Ballet of China, so I was listening to a lot of Chinese music. It was kind of Chinese Opera, which was really strange! I like Tan Dun, who did the score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and we’re planning to work together in the future.

I love Japanese music, I’m a big fan of Ryuichi Sakamoto. I’m working with a Japanese Taiko drummer at the moment, and she’s incredible. I want to see her perspective of what I’m doing. Rather than going to a musician and saying, “this is what I’m doing, this is what I want you to do, this is the story, you follow”, I show them what I’m doing and then I ask, “What do you see in it?” So she, coming from a different place, has a different opinion of what I’m doing. You’re always seeing from your own perspective, but what’s interesting is when you transfer that perspective, to try and see from someone else’s.

Henryk Goreck’s Symphony No.3 is just phenomenal. Phenomenal. It starts at the Earth. You can barely hear it, it’s so bass, so low. And it just… transcends. It comes out of the ground and then starts to go to vocals, which is the angels. There’s a journey, a kind of vertical road, (which is the name of the next piece I’m creating), and this journey is very spiritual for me. As an artist, there’s a sense of a journey towards perfection, but of never quite reaching it. The piece repeats itself, but it changes a tiny bit, layer by layer. I love the sense of transition, of mutation, of it evolving. This music really reflects that journey. I feel very attached to it because that’s what happened to me. I trained in Indian Classical dance for many years, and then I went to university and discovered contemporary dance, and my classical got contaminated. Contamination is used as a negative word, but then I realised, no, I’m evolving. Even if people hate it, I’m evolving. That’s why I relate to the music.

This article first appeared in INTO magazine, November 2009.

Ballet Black, Cambridge Arts Theatre, 15th March 2009.

A stunning evening of ballet that mixed contemporary with traditional, this was dance that made me miss dancing, forgetting about the pain and the darning of pointe shoes. The show opened with ‘Hinterland’, choreographed by Liam Scarlett. It was dazzling, exciting, colourful, playful, and made excellent use of the six dancers. As a company, these six seem to be very comfortable together, able to dance was exuberantly and to project their joy of movement to the audience. Scarlett’s dance was bursting with life and fun, and remained witty without becoming trite, vibrant while remaining effortless. The Fosse-like close choric movement was brilliantly done without becoming a pastiche, and the breakout moves back into the whirlwind dance were fantastically effective. Shostakovich’s lively and exhilarating piano music was the perfect accompaniment, without ever distracting from the dance.

The second piece, ‘Pendulum’, was a combative duet, by Martin Lawrance. Every movement had beautiful tension, pride and passion. The accompanying percussive static gradually became faster and louder, and the dancers were equal to it and bigger than it. They fought both each other and the music, occasionally teetering on the edge of violence. The piece was raw and edgy, which a wonderful sense of gathering momentum and the crescendo to the climax did not disappoint.

‘Kinderszenen’ by Antonia Franceschi was my least favourite piece, but I’m finding it difficult to put my finger on exactly why. The steps were accomplished, the dancers poised, polished and athletic, but somehow the disparate elements failed to make a convincing whole. The playfulness of the dance came across well, helped by Allen Shawn’s light-hearted music, but despite some lovely moments, (especially the sudden stillness), it failed to capture me. It grew on me as it went on and each of the separate parts was nice, but there was too much going on onstage, too much fuss. I acknowledge that working with six dancers is tricky, but there was no sense of cohesion in this piece, and the many entrances and exits distracted from the dance. It must be said that even the most graceful dancer cannot make balletic running look less silly than it is.

The final piece, ‘Depouillement’, by Will Tuckett, was a stunning end to the evening. The brilliant, monochromatic ensemble work made excellent use of the whole company. I loved the fluidity and democracy of the dancers, and the pairings, trios, quartets, solos and quintets they mixed and matched within the six of them. Particularly striking were the moments when the three male dancers moved in tight unison, the use of two couples contrasted with a single figure, and the use of wonderful clean lines. Tuckett has made it seem as though Ravel’s music has been written to fit the steps, rather than the other way around. I can think of no higher compliment to pay to a choreographer. A tender and more traditional pas de deux made a nice break in the piece, but the passion and beauty of whole was in the sheer joy emanating from the whole ensemble. I knew the dancers were tired, but wanted them to continue. I was actually breathless at the end, never mind the dancers themselves.

David Plater’s lighting was the perfect accompaniment, enhancing the dancers, especially when they were silhouetted. I don’t normally notice lighting specifically, but this was so clever, so subtle, and so right for the performance, that it deserved a mention. I was less keen on the costumes, which seemed unnecessarily twee given the raw energy and talent of the dance and the dancers, but they were at least designed so that the lines of the bodies were clear. The fact that all six dancers were stunningly beautiful helped, too. Here is a company of hugely talented dancers working with choreographers who will push them and develop the savage beauty of ballet.

This was a strangely plodding performance of five short pieces. With an interval between each, the vignettes were invested with a gravitas they did not necessarily merit. That is not to bash all five with the same pointe shoe, there were some nice moments throughout, but although the dance was skilfully executed and often exciting and engaging to watch, this felt like a performance that had been cobbled together rather than arranged, and was curiously dissatisfying despite the technical excellence of the dancers.

However, the first piece, ‘Blue Roses’, was beautiful, moving, and visually impressive. Danced to the prologue and final scene of Tennessee Williams’ ‘Glass Menagerie’, the piece captured the poignancy of the play, although it teetered on the same precipice of sentimentality that hampers the play. The dancers moved to the word without music, which was surprisingly effective, apart from an odd choreographic tendency to insist on a movement for every syllable. This worked for the jerky style of the physically disabled and painfully shy Laura (Anita Hitchins), but for eloquent Tom (Dane Hurst) and charming Jim (Franklyn Lee), it often felt too busy – the movement distracted and detracted from the words. I am well aware that a dance piece that transcends the music/words could be a good thing, but my literary bias baulks at an over-shadowing of the words. The two dancers playing Amanda were generally superb, and the concept of having two dancers represent the same character  - to emphasise her contradictory nature – was clever and well done. However, as with the whole evening, there were small discrepancies that drew the eye and spoiled the overall effect: the two weren’t quite together some of the time, which suggested being under-rehearsed.

This feeling of being not quite ready to perform was pervasive, and surprising given that all of the pieces had been performed before. The third piece ‘The Moor’s Pavane’, was rather dull and overblown, and did not seem sure of itself, despite being billed as José Limón’s masterwork. The programme notes claimed that the intension wasn’t to retell the story of Othello, but in fact it did just that with some rather feeble mime and a heavily symbolic handkerchief. The choreography was plain and uninspired, and the dancers seemed bored with what they were doing. This was by far the weakest of the five pieces, and could have been improved by a more abstract representation of the Othello story rather than a literal re-telling.

A witty solo, ‘Harmonica Breakdown’, finished the evening, and was a charming send-off. Anita Hutchins is a fine dancer, and had the charisma to carry off Jane Dudley’s simple choreography without looking unskilled. I would suggest that it is verging on pretension to dance a pas de deux with a suitcase, as in ‘cervaNtes’, and although Dane Hurst and Ana Lujan Sanchez danced with aplomb, the nudity was gratuitous and detracted from the delicate relationship the dancers were trying to portray. This was Sanchez’s own choreography, and on the evidence of this performance, perhaps she should stick to dancing.

It was difficult to settle into any kind of rhythm with these performances, as they were abruptly broken up by the breaks, and the different styles did not necessarily do a great company of dancers justice. Limón is over fond of the arabesque en attitude to the point where one wondered whether the dancers physically could straighten their legs, particularly during Dane Hurst’s otherwise hugely impressive solo, ‘Chaconne’.