RUSSELL MALIPHANT COMPANY (UK)

WHAT: ONE PART II /
TWO TIMES THREE / NEW WORK
(WORLD PREMIERE)
WHEN: SAT 25 OCT
WHERE: QUEEN ELIZABETH HALL
TICKETS: 020 7960 4242

‘Maliphant is supremely
present in everything he does,
able to draw on resources of
movement others can only
dream about.’ The Observer

click here for details

<small>[ 18 September 2003, 06:17 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

No Swan Lake
Russell Maliphant couldn’t connect with the language of classical dance — so he created his own. The results speak for themselves

more...

Russell Maliphant
By Luke Jennings for The Guardian

There is something of the warrior-sage about Russell Maliphant. His solo work One Part II, with which his Dance Umbrella programme opens, incorporates elements of capoeira and t'ai chi into the seamless choreographic flow, and the whole gives the impression of having been extracted from the rituals of some arcane martial art.

As Maliphant crouches and whirls, appropriating space as if in a state of lunar gravity, he is alternately washed in falls of soft white light and blanketed in near-darkness.

click for more

*******************************

Russell Maliphant
By Debra Craine for The Times


WHEN Russell Maliphant left Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet in 1988, yet another classical dancer fed up with ballet’s conservatism, no one could have imagined that 15 years later he would be one of our finest choreographers.

It’s been a long, slow climb for the 41-year-old Maliphant. For years he paid his dues on the fringe, absorbing a wide range of influences, from contact improvisation to yoga and t’ai chi. But now he’s courting the mainstream — his new ballet for Sylvie Guillem is unveiled at Covent Garden in December — just as his own style is coalescing into something truly remarkable.

click for more

<small>[ 27 October 2003, 03:32 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

Russell Maliphant Company
Queen Elizabeth Hall
25 October 2003

Russell Maliphant understands that creating a performance means much more than raising the curtain and letting your dancers do their thing. He chooses to explore the breadth of possibilities in bringing movement to the stage. He’s not flashy with costumes (they’re casual) or sets (he doesn’t have any) but working with long term lighting collaborator Michael Hulls, Maliphant is able to make a drama out of the slightest movement.

The opening of tonight’s programme is a perfect example. The solo ‘One Part II’, danced by the choreographer himself, grows from the chiming notes of a Bach piano piece. For a few bars the lights glow on Maliphant’s prowling figure at the back of the stage before dimming to black. Another breath of light illuminates the dancer, another blackout. It’s an incredibly simple device, tempting us with gasps of movement, but it’s incredibly effective in focussing our attention and creating a cinematic suspension of reality. All by just switching a light on and off. Easy really.

This kind of simplicity serves Maliphant well – taking a single idea and exploring it. In his hands, dancing doesn’t always mean gallivanting about the stage. Maliphant is more likely to leave his dancers rooted to the spot, endlessly mining the possibilities of one square foot. They stretch straight up and crumble to their knees, exploring the vertical, clutching at corners, corkscrewing round a point and throwing out every possible angle.

Tonight’s ten-minute reworking of ‘Two’, for three dancers (titled ‘Two Times Three’) is a concise case in point. Three dancers are trapped in boxes of light, they begin slowly, limbs blooming like plants reaching towards the sun until the radar blip of the soundtrack gathers momentum and crescendos to a pounding pulse, and the dancers’ bodies follow suit. It’s neat, innovative and visually arresting.

But better than these individual sketches are Maliphant’s duets, which are on show in a new work ‘Choice’. First, the male-female couples. It’s part contact improvisation, part clever acrobatics, with some good looking lines and so many possibilities. Watching these couples is very much like eavesdropping on a conversation, its protagonists alternately nonchalant, annoyed, tetchy, bantering and always engaging.

Even stronger are the sections for two male dancers, tonight Miquel de Jong and Michael Pomero. Maliphant’s work with Ballet Boyz William Trevitt and Michael Nunn has paid off. He shares the same balletic background as Trevitt and Nunn and it’s obviously a very natural style for him. ‘Choice’ uses the same combination of strength and stealth, being powerful yet tender (every bit the new man). Maliphant uses breakdance-style balances, unexpected leaps and catches, and turns bodies from statues to springboards, managing to exploit the dancers’ athletic abilities without just opening up a box of tricks.

There’s a lovely effect later in the piece when one dancer takes a solo in spotlight and the other copies his movements just out of the light, as if dancing his shadow. It’s not the kind of thing that makes you burst out of your seat with excitement – despite all the tossing of bodies in the air Maliphant’s work is always gentle and polite – but nevertheless it is another great moment from a choreographer proving himself a serious force in British dance.

Thanks a lot Lyndsey - another show I should have gone to!! Maliphant is going from strength to strength at present. You mention his work with the George Piper Dances and of course he has a work coming up for the Ballet Boyz and Sylvie Guilleme att the ROH.

On the recent GPD programme at Sadler's, I was not alone in thinking "Critical Mass" the highlight of an evening which included Forsythe and Wheeldon. Thus it is not hard to claim that worldwide Maliphant is one of the most successful choreographers currently working.

Review from The Independent.

MORE

Review from The Telegraph.

MORE

Russell Maliphant
By Jann Parry for The Observer

His two duets for Michael Nunn and William Trevitt have become signature works for their company, George Piper Dances. His next piece for them includes Sylvie Guillem in a Royal Ballet programme in December.

click for more