Rambert Autumn Tour 2003 - News and Feedback Forum

Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Fri Nov 07, 2003 7:19 am

Rambert Dance Company, Edinburgh Festival Theatre
By MARY BRENNAN for The Herald

By a sweet quirk of fate, Edinburgh has not one but two Kylies on-stage this week. For even as Ms Minogue joins the line-up for tonight's MTV awards in Leith, she'll also be appearing with Rambert at the Festival Theatre – which says something for the tricksiness of video projection but a whole lot more about the singer's status as instantly recognisable pop icon.

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Kritchie · **Posted:** Wed Nov 12, 2003 3:09 am

Congratulations to Ana and Rafael on their nominations in the Critics Circle National Dance Awards. Well deserved recognition for two outstanding performers. (Stuart: apologies for posting this elsewhere by mistake, still getting used to the layout!)

[ 12 November 2003, 07:33 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]

Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Wed Nov 12, 2003 6:33 am

<img src="http://www.nationaldanceawards.co.uk/images/img-dance1.gif" alt="" />
<img src="http://www.nationaldanceawards.co.uk/images/img-dance2.gif" alt="" />

No need for apologies Karen - in fact thanks for posting this information.

Here are the details of the relevant nominations and the link to our topic giving full details of this year's National Dance Awards

Best Choreography (Modern)

Rafael Bonachela, Akram Khan, Fin Walker.

Outstanding Female Artist (Modern)

Ana Lujan Sanchez, Jenny Tattersall, Jasmin Vardimon

[ 12 November 2003, 09:31 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]

Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Thu Nov 13, 2003 9:11 pm

Here are the nomination notes for Rafael and Ana from the National Dance Awards website:

Rafael Bonachela
Rambert Dance Company
Born in Barcelona, Rafael trained at the London Studio Centre and joined Rambert in 1992. His first choreographic work for Rambert was Three Gone, Four Left Standing, premiered in 1992. In 2001 his film, Nowhere Better Than This Place was screened on Channel 4 and in 2002 Rafael choreographed Kylie Minogue's appearance at the Brit Awards, her Favour world tour, the Love At First Sight video and her Christmas tour. In 2003 Rafael choreographed for Rambert 21 , featuring video and sound recordings of Kylie Minogue and was appointed Associate Choreographer of Rambert Dance Company.

Ana Lujan Sanchez
Rambert Dance Company
Born in Valencia, Spain, Ana trained with Mari-Cruz Alcalá at the Ballet Clasico de Valencia and the Rambert School. She danced with Ballet Clasico de Valencia before joining Rambert in April 1996. Ana choreographed What Follows Now for Resolution! 2001 at The Place, and four works for Rambert's Workshop Seasons. She is to be seen in the company's current repertoire including Elsa Canasta (De Frutos), PreSentient (MacGregor) and 21 (Bonachela).

Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Wed Nov 26, 2003 1:09 pm

Press Release

RAMBERT TOURING PLANS:
FEBRUARY – JUNE 2004

WITH LONDON MUSICI

Rambert, Britain’s flagship modern dance company, announces details of its forthcoming spring tour. Works include the WORLD PREMIÈRE of Reflection, a new work by FIN WALKER and the revival premières of Linear Remains by Rambert’s Associate Choreographer RAFAEL BONACHELA, and Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan by Rambert’s Founding Choreographer, SIR FREDERICK ASHTON, as a tribute marking his centenary year. Plans also include a re-interpretation of A Tragedy of Fashion, created by ASHTON in 1926. As no record of the original work exists, choreographer IAN SPINK has been approached to re-interpret the work for our time (tbc). The Company also returns to China, performing at the Tianquiao Theatre, Beijing from 23-25 January, as part of the Think UK promotion.

The tour opens at the Hall for Cornwall, Truro (26-27 February) with the REVIVAL PREMIÈRE of Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan. Choreographed for Rambert in 1976 by Sir Frederick Ashton, this beautiful solo for a female dancer has been revived to mark the centenary year of its creator. The Hall for Cornwall also sees the REVIVAL PREMIÈRE of Linear Remains by Rambert’s Associate Choreographer RAFAEL BONACHELA.

Rambert then visits the Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield (3-6 March) with the WORLD PREMIÈRE of Reflection by FIN WALKER. This is Walker’s first work for Rambert and is a dynamic exploration about change and impermanence. The work is performed to a score created in tandem with the choreography by composer BEN PARK.

Rambert then tours to the Isle of Man, Brighton, Mold, Birmingham and Glasgow, returning to London for its Sadler’s Wells season at the end of May (25-29).

The touring repertoire is completed with Elsa Canasta by JAVIER DE FRUTOS, Visions Fugitives by HANS VAN MANEN, and WAYNE MCGREGOR’s PreSentient.

Rambert’s Sadler’s Wells season (25-29 May) showcases the WORLD PREMIÈRE of A Tragedy of Fashion by IAN SPINK (TBC) and the LONDON PREMIÈRE of Reflection by FIN WALKER. RAFAEL BONACHELA’s Linear Remains and Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan by SIR FREDERICK ASHTON complete the programme.

A wide-ranging programme of educational workshops and pre-show talks accompanies Rambert’s performances across the UK

Cee · **Posted:** Wed Nov 26, 2003 2:52 pm

Rambert at Sadler's Well's: what a great show on Tuesday night. I wasnt really sure about Living Dolls, mainly because I found the music quite hard work and the costumes (well, the head gear, really) just made me laugh. Presentient was engrossing and the Reich music was wonderful. Elsa Canasta was amazing - witty,layered and beautifully designed. It made for a fabulous finale.

Joanne · **Posted:** Thu Nov 27, 2003 3:33 am

Review from The FT>

Quote:

Rambert re-thought, reborn. This is the message of the first season under the direction of Mark Baldwin. No more oppressed peasantry and Poor Whites enjoying a fit of the glums. Instead, dance bright-edged, pushing at the boundaries of academism, hard-driven, exhilarating.

This visit to the Wells brings back Wayne McGregor's PreSentient, movement, jittery, kaleidoscope-fragmented, and danced with electric reponses by a troupe on galvanically brilliant form.

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And from the Telegraph.

Quote:

Rambert Dance Company, Britain's oldest such ensemble, used to define the country's dance scene, hatching idiosyncratic talents, showing what pleasures dance was capable of. Almost 80 years later, the vigour of both ballet and contemporary worlds derives from Rambert, but the mother company itself became drained until it almost died in 1993. Re-popularised by Christopher Bruce, the brand name paid a price in boldness. The danger that Bruce's successor Mark Baldwin faces is that Rambert is seen as safe and second-class.

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And The Times.

Quote:

THIS mixed bill at Sadler’s Wells, Rambert’s first London engagement under artistic director Mark Baldwin, shows the company trying to reposition itself as a front-runner in the race for popular yet artistically challenging contemporary dance.
The programme featured brief curtain-raisers by company member Glenn Wilkinson. The two solos from Six Pack were danced with expansive, even balletic, pliability that set the evening's physical tone.

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And from The Independent.

Quote:

A new work, Elsa Canasta, is one part of a Rambert Dance Company triple bill at Sadler's Wells, under the new artistic director, Mark Baldwin. The programme also includes the London premiere of Living Toys by Karole Armitage, about the meeting of dreams and consciousness, and Wayne McGregor's award-winning PreSentient, a frenzied piece inspired by Steve Reich's Triple Quartet. The music for all three works, lasting almost two hours with an intermission between each dance, is played by Rambert's associate orchestra, London Musici, conducted by Paul Hoskins.

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And The Guardian.

[quote]

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[ 27 November 2003, 04:50 AM: Message edited by: Joanne ]

Cassandra · **Posted:** Thu Nov 27, 2003 10:16 am

A solo with the same title, “Six Pack”, same choreographer, Glenn Wilkinson, same composer/group and different dancer opens the first and second parts of the Rambert Dance Company’s new programme at Sadlers Wells. The first solo is danced by Thomasin Gülgeç in tee shirt and bondage trousers to a score mainly consisting of drumming and the second solo is danced by Conor O’Brien also wearing a tee shirt and bondage trousers, this time dancing to a score of heavy bass effects. Both danced energetically but neither gentleman showed us his six-pack.

Karole Armitage’s new work, “Living Toys”, was rather handicapped by a cacophonous score by Thomas Adès. The dancers wear costumes that give them the appearance of articulated dolls, but although the movement becomes rather stylized in places, these are clearly not cute Coppelia-type toys but rather slightly de-humanized beings touching on differing emotions in a series of ensembles and duos.

Wayne McGregor has chosen a high-powered score by Steve Reich for his ballet “PreSentient”, which he describes in the programme as “relentless”. And relentless is the right adjective for his choreography in this work as the dancers perform with a driven quality and a speed that left me almost breathless. McGregor’s style is always rewarding with its pace and seemingly endless flow of inventive movement, but above all it shows off the dancers to the very best advantage. They all looked fantastic and if it was hard work for them to perform, at least they had the satisfaction of knowing they have seldom looked better.

The final work of the evening was the oddly titled “Elsa Canasta” by Javier De Frutos. The Cole Porter music has in some ways dictated the look of this ballet and we get that ‘30’s cliché of the sweeping stairway down which a be-gowned singer is guaranteed to appear. We start off with two young men enjoying a gay encounter on the lower steps and move on to a group of girls using the stair rail as a barre, in movements that at times recalled Harold Lander’s “Etudes”. Ballet parodies were clearly a fun idea for De Frutos who also gave as a couple of quotations from Balanchine’s “Apollo”. The dancers dance up the stairs, down the stairs and in front of the stairs and some of the girls jump off the stairs to be caught in some truly spectacular lifts adding to the sense of fun and excitement. When a couple turn unpleasant in one duet, their aggression quickly dissolves into comedy so that the mood of pleasure remains constant. Its all very uplifting and more than a little sexy with some of the girls being given the opportunity to get their hands on Paul Liburd’s, er, more interesting bits – who says it’s a hard life being a dancer!

The lady doing the singing was Melanie Marshall and she was simply perfection. A great evening with some great dancing that sent me home on a miserable drizzly night with a smile on my face.

Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Thu Nov 27, 2003 10:52 am

Welcome Cee and many thanks for your thoughts on Rambert in fine form.

I agree with you and Cassandra that the Ades score is hard work, even for someone like me who prefers 20th C music to 19th. I'm sorry to be out of the country for the Sadler's performances as there is always a buzz with pre-performance talks and events for Friends of Rambert organised by the friendly and helpful artistic and admin staff.

But I did see the same programme in the Wycombe Swan and just wish I could have seen it to full advantage on the large Sadler's stage.

[ 27 November 2003, 11:52 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]

Emma Pegler · **Posted:** Sat Nov 29, 2003 6:59 am

Judith Mackrell
Thursday November 27, 2003
The Guardian

<img src="http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/arts/2003/11/27/rambert1.jpg" alt="" />
'Like wired-up jazz babes rushing to score sex or drugs': Elsa Canasta by Javier de Frutos for Rambert

Quote:

Javier de Frutos may have confronted us with some of the most brutal truths that dancing bodies can deliver, but he also has the instincts of a showman. In his latest piece for Rambert he has delivered a hit. Elsa Canasta is a dark, funny, sexy evocation of the world of Cole Porter, set to his ballet score Within the Quota and a medley of his songs.

more...

Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Sun Nov 30, 2003 4:17 am

O brothel where art thou?
By Jann Parry for The Observer

Under Mark Baldwin's direction, Rambert is a company refreshed. Its dancers have regained their individuality in works designed to stretch them and their audiences.

For his first London season, Baldwin put together a mixed bill which displayed just how flexible the dancers can be.

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Celebrity make-up masks the real beauty
By Ellie Carr for Scotland on Sunday

It was the night when Kylie Minogue came to town, twice. While the flesh ’n’ blood star was checking into the capital ahead of the MTV awards, her screen coun ter part was guest-starring with Rambert Dance Company in Rafael Bonachela’s much-feted 21.
This is a musing on celebrity, created by Bonachela after a year as Kylie’s choreographer. Made in collaboration with her creative team, it is split into three seven-minute sections. The middle one features the star moving dreamily on a giant gauze that dominates front-stage, while Lilliputian dancers in tiny bras, briefs and suspenders (both sexes) thrash out Bonachela’s choreography.

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Joanne · **Posted:** Mon Dec 01, 2003 6:37 am

Review from The Sunday Times.

Quote:

The Rambert’s new triple bill goes from the ridiculous to the sublime, says Clifford Bishop

Avant-garde is a military term, so tremble all you painters, choreographers and composers, because one day they’re going to want it back, and who’s going to stop them? You? For once, though, in its long history of optimistic misuse, it really is the perfect phrase to sum up the first big item in Mark Baldwin’s debut London season at Sadler’s Wells as artistic director of Rambert Dance Company. Thomas Adès’s Living Toys, written when the composer was in his early twenties, is a series of musical guerilla raids, sallies by hordes of unexpected instruments and sudden new time schemes that overpower the score for a moment, then disappear without a trace. It’s a difficult, forbidding piece, but when performed with commitment, as it is here by London Musici under Paul Hoskins, it remains convincing.

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Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Tue Dec 02, 2003 1:56 am

Rambert Dance Company, Sadler's Wells, London
How to dream in black and white
By Jenny Gilbert for The Independent on Sunday

It's always hard to pinpoint why the winds of fashion change. Whether a hemline or the zeitgeist, you only notice when things move on. Was it only 1987 when the word ballet conjured such negative images that Rambert dropped it from its name? Now that same company's revamped artistic policy puts it right back in the frame. Regressive? Hardly. This looks gleamingly, thrillingly now.

New chief Mark Baldwin's first London season has a fierce contemporary stamp, yet every element of this programme is grounded in classical form. What's more, it trumpets Rambert's commitment to live music loud and clear. When you can call on a house band of the calibre of the London Musici, you must scrape every penny up to use it.

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Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Tue Dec 02, 2003 2:28 am

Christmas Ideas from Rambert

<img src="http://cnb-host3.clickandbuild.com/cnb/shop/rambert-dance-co?imageID=124&op=imgLib-viewImage" alt="" />

Rambert AD Mark Baldwin moonlighting as a t-shirt model

**Tshirts**
Just in time for Christmas, Rambert Dance Company have a great new range of coloured t-shirts available to buy from our Online Store.

The perfect gift for men and women, t-shirts are also available in lots more colours and styles.

>Click here to see the full range:
http://cnb-host3.clickandbuild.com/cnb/shop/rambert-dance-co?listPos=&op=catalogue-products-null&prodCategoryID=4

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**Other Gift Ideas**
You can also buy books, posters, CDs, videos, education resources and more, great for all Rambert fans and dance enthusiasts.

>Click here to visit the Online Store:
http://cnb-host3.clickandbuild.com/cnb/shop/rambert-dance-co

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Merry Christmas!
From Rambert Dance Company
http://www.rambert.org.uk

[ 02 December 2003, 03:33 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]

Stuart Sweeney · **Posted:** Tue Dec 02, 2003 3:57 am

KYLIE INSPIRES NEW WORK
Sue Caroll looks ahead to a Rambert triple bill in Plymouth with an interview with Mark Baldwin. From The evening Herald, Plymouth:

Rambert Dance Company's new artistic director Mark Baldwin is relishing the challenge of running one of the most popular companies in the world. Mark, a former dancer with Rambert, took over from Christopher Bruce, a choreographer who helped shape their success over many years. He's a tough act to follow and Mark says the secret is trying to ease into the role gradually.

He hasn't tried to stamp too much of his own personality on the work.

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