Review: NEDERLAND DANS THEATER-NDT1: GABRIELA CARRIZO/JIŘÍ KYLIÁN/CRYSTAL PITE AND SIMON MCBURNEY, Sadler's Wells

Nederland Dans Theater makes its first return to Sadler's Wells since 2018 bringing together three very different pieces which go from dream-like horror to the very real and heart-rending.

With each of the physical vignettes lasting at around thirty minutes, there is plenty of room for each to explore their themes. Gabriela Carrizo's La Ruta (2022) could frankly have had another hour and we would still be lapping up this beautifully surreal contribution to the evening's programme. When Carrizo and her Peeping Tom co-director Franck Chartier brought their Triptych to the Barbican, it was a mind-blowing and terrifying sight where the dancers created something that went beyond a Lynchian nightmare. La Ruta continues in much the same vein in showing how the ordinary can become extraordinary and vice versa.

This work has a very brash cinematic vibe in terms of both sound and vision. The title's dual meaning of road or route are explored in explicit fashion with loud car crash noises and police sirens intertwining with snatches of Shostakovich's Symphonies 11 and 14. Centred on a bus shelter on a busy street, sharp shards of explosive action take us from one dark place to another: a woman shockingly screams out "fuck you!" as she is smacks with her handbag the still-revving car that almost ran her down; a hit-and-run victim spasms in agony on the tarmac as a nearby workman casually paints some safety road markings; a manic seagull goes all Hitchcock on a pedestrian before fatally flying into the bus shelter; and, most gruesomely, frustration boils over into outrageous murder as one passerby uses a boulder to loudly break the legs and smash the heads of everyone they meet to the sound of horrifying crunching.

Whether this is more a slice of Grand Guignol theatre than a dance piece is debatable but, either way, Carrizo is once again likely to cause some sleepless nights.

Swinging stylistically the opposite way is the evening's second work, Ji?í Kylián's Gods And Dogs (2008). Its creator was the NDT's artistic director between 1975-1999 and remained its house choreographer until 2008. This, his 100th piece for the company, is described in the programme as "an unfinished work" referring to Kylián's "fascination for the beauty of what is incomplete" (if only I had such pretty words at school whenever I failed to finish my homework).

It won the Dutch Swan Award for Most Impressive Dance Production 2009 and there is plenty to admire here, not least its stated intention. In his introduction, the Czech writes about clothing and how it changes from early childhood to adult life, the impact of cultural and religious influences and how it affects our self-esteem, our personality and the way we present ourselves to the outside world. He also talks about how health and illness (both physical and mental) can define which clothes we wear and comes full circle back back to dancers and how their apparently simple daily clothing can carry great psychological significance.

Gods and Dogs does its best to dig into these concepts in both highly abstract and pointed ways. The dancers appear in small groups or solos forcing us to focus in on their every motion as they lift and shift to the sound of Beethoven's String Quartet Opus 18. Kylián's fluid style makes heavy use of floor work here to define human connection not just to other people but to the ground they dance on. Unlike the preceding La Ruta, there is hadly any theatricality on stage with Joke Visser's minimal and plain costumes drawing our eyes away from the torsos to the limbs.

NDT has based on its reputation on the way it blends classical ballet and modern dance but don't expect to see any jumps or leaps through the air in Gods And Dogs; rather, sit back and drink in the speedy combinations of tango-inflected moves and the innervating synchronicity while, up above, a projection of a dog slowly running towards the audience gives the action below a threatening imperative.

Kylián's work is described in the programme as a "mysterious ballet" and there's no denying that there is little of literal substance to hang onto here. Somewhere between idea and execution, the concept seems to have been largely elevated out of this piece leaving what is overall a visually impressive but philosophically bare piece.

The third and final work Figures In Extinction [1.0] carries with it possibly the greatest expectation being a new piece by the Sadler's Wells Associate Artist Crystal Pite in collaboration with one of the UK's most imaginative companies. Simon McBurney's Complicite has for the last 40 years found new ways to reshape what can be done in a theatre - be it through opera, plays or music - and created site-specific shows in venues as diverse as Trafalgar Square and a disused tube station.

A decade ago, NDT's then-director Anders Hellstrom suggested to Pite and McBurney that they work together and, a decade later, they have birthed a new piece which builds on their recent work: Complicite's latest show Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead adapted Olga Tokarczuk's book about environmental degradation while Pite's Betroffenheit (2016) for NDT was a meditation on the devasting power of grief.

Figures In Extinction [1.0] is itself the first part of a new trilogy which will look at "the fears and hopes of our age and how artists can meaningfully create in the face of mass destruction" (if at least one of the remaining works isn't about AI or Bitcoin, I'll eat your hat). Introduced by a voiceover from McBurney which could serve as a parody of David Attenborough's languid verbal style ("these animals are both mortal...and immortal") and using fragments of Perfume Genius' "Normal Song", Figures examines loss in many natural forms: not just living animals and plants but also glaciers and physical bodies of water.

Its episodic structure runs through a list of the at-risk or functionally extinct using exquisitely measured and punchy movements to bring them to life. Small birds and fishes are expressed through flapping hands, twenty-plus dancers band together to show a glacier melting away and the Asiatic cheetah is portrayed as an impressive skeletal puppet (direction Toby Sedgwick, design and build Jochen Lange) which takes five people to animate its slow, sad walk. The addition of a climate change denier in this panoply of flora, fauna and water is an inspired touch: there is much humour to be had as he decries global warming in the name of God and personal liberty.

This work sets its stall out early and keeps to its mission. There are few surprises but its clever and immersive staging sets the bar high for the remaining two parts of the trilogy.

This NDT1 programme continues at Sadler's Wells until 22 April.

Photo credit: Rahi Rezvani

 

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