International Festival Dance Highlights

To add a more intellectual element to the Homecoming year debate, the International Festival has suggested the Scottish Enlightenment as a theme.

While works like Diaspora and Optimism have a clear connection to this intellectual ferment, the four dance presentations have less obvious links to our rationalist heritage. Michael Clark, once an enfant terrible, pokes around at the icons of cool; The Royal Ballet of Flanders re-imagines epic poetry as kitsch ballet; Gelabert Azzopardi include Handel in their meditation on time Conquassabit; while the Scottish Ballet’s triple bill features modernist Ashton and contemporary Forsyth

The Gelabert Azzopardi Companyia de Dansa has a double bill: their fiery abstractions are, in many ways, close to the rationalist purity of Enlightenment thought. Using selections from Handel’s Dixit Dominus and three operas, Conquassabit conjures up the acceleration of time, the force that both drives and destroys. By building up the soundtrack through samples from across Handel’s oeuvre, the performance is a fragmented and dynamic consideration of the effect of time passing, as well as a visual tour de force: Conquassabit flickers between sublime beauty and murderous intensity.

The other half of the bill features music from contemporary composer Pascal Comelade, one of Gelabert’s veteran collaborators. While Conquassabit has a clear theme, Sense Fi is even more abstract, taking the idea of uncertainty and destiny as competing elements in human existence. A celebration of dance and its ability to express complex concepts, it is a whirling premiere of joy and hope.

Cesc Gelabert, choreographer and co-founder, has a strong personal vision of dance that combines an enthusiasm for technique and an interest in the qualities of each individual within the company. Coming from a background in architecture, he has a special interest in the form of dance, rarely slipping into simple narratives but using the dancers' bodies to create expressive formations and explore ideas. His co-creator, former dancer and now designer Lydia Azzopardi, brings her sensibility to the costumes for both pieces in the double bill. Both performer and artist in many media, Azzopardi complements Gelabert’s choreography with her own passionate energy.

Although the remit of the EIF might be to provide opportunities for audiences to see a diverse cross-section of companies, The Royal Ballet of Flanders has featured on the EIF programme in 2002 with Jan Fabre’s Swan Lake, and in 2007 with William Forsythe’s Impressing the Czar. Given that companies have to be invited to the International Festival, the Royal Ballet of Flanders must have impressed directors to be invited back for a third time in seven years. This year, the company returns with Christian Spuck’s 2006 The Return of Ulysses.

While we might question the thinking behind these repeated invitations, we should be grateful for Spuck’s choice of subject matter: we don’t see many new narrative ballets which aren’t revisitations of previously-adapted stories. Choreographers often rework Swan Lake or Carmen: it’s a safer bet in terms of artistic viability and audience numbers.

It could have been risky to choreograph a Greek myth rather than yet another Sleeping Beauty, but this is a risk which has already paid off as the production is fast selling out. The Odyssey, which provides the inspiration, is one of the great early texts of western civilisation, a compendium of travelers’ tales and high adventure. Spuck has bravely updated the story, with a Poseidon in flippers and the emphasis on the hero’s long-suffering wife, discovering new themes in this ancient epic. Spuck, resident choreographer with Stuttgart Ballet, uses music by Henry Purcell, played live by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. The Purcell is interspersed with songs from the 40s and 50s, and this blending of classical and popular music mirrors the ballet’s choreographic style.

After an absence last year, the Scottish Ballet performs a triple bill opening with Sir Frederick Ashton’s chic masterpiece Scènes de Ballet. Ashton’s work has a particularly subtle style, with much attention given to the upper body, and purists worry that his work hasn’t been sufficiently protected and nurtured since his death in 1988. Ashley Page’s Scottish Ballet hasn’t yet performed Ashton and it will be interesting to see how the company tackles the work, but they have pulled off Balanchine with aplomb and satisfied the Balanchine Trust.

The Edinburgh Playhouse used to be a cinema, and the sightlines aren’t ideal for dance, but Ashton intended Scènes de Ballet to be equally stunning when seen from any angle, and used geometry to inform his patterning. The second piece is William Forsythe’s Workwithinwork, which promises to provide a complete contrast to Ashton’s delicate elegance. Scotland’s national ballet company look most comfortable when performing edgy contemporary ballet, and have previously performed Forsythe’s highly physical work with great success.

Closing the bill is another Stravinsky piece, a new production of Petrushka made for the company by Ian Spink. Spink is a theatrical director as well as a choreographer and his take on Fokine’s classic Diaghilev-era ballet will provide a dramatic end to the evening as well as a tribute to Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in its centenary year.

Finally - and you'll by now have a clear sense of what a strength and breadth there is to this programme - Michael Clark’s presence at the EIF marks a remarkable comeback from a genuine maverick of British dance. Originally famed for his provocative blend of punk sensibilities and perfect balletic technique, Clark’s choreography has matured – his recent works have explicitly referenced Balanchine – without loosing the rebellious spark of his early pieces. Once again, he returns to his fascination with rock – the poster features insurance salesman Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and David Bowie, and Clark himself comments that rock “has shaped me as an individual as well as an artist.”

It might be a brief programme within the Festival, but the four dance works do present a broad range. Against the many experimental, small scale companies of the Fringe, the EIF makes a convincing claim that even the larger companies are still experimenting and exploring, and that the mainstream contains radical riches.