Could it be during Workwithinwork, when one after another the dancers shoulder and scoop their way into the flow – and then turn angular and spiky – that is Forsythe’s choreographic reading of Berio’s music? By the time we reach the final work in Scottish Ballet’s new triple bill – the premiere of a radically updated version
of Petrushka by Ian Spink – it’s clear that we’re
watching a company that is dancing into its 40th anniversary season on a high.
Ashton’s Scenes de ballet (1947) is a crisp reminder that Balanchine wasn’t the only choreographer to be inspired by Stravinsky’s music – and there are times, as the corps-de-ballet groupings create a living geometry of upraised arms or Robertson is passed, with airy grace, from one cavalier to another, that the clarity of Ashton’s work rivals anything that Mr B was concocting on the other side of the Atlantic.
Workwithinwork shifts everything up several gears. A darkened stage. The women’s tops in jewel-coloured velvet, the men’s vests glinting with sparkles and movement that revels in steely precision, sudden switches of direction and tempi, mercurial skittishness – William Smith spins into action, though there are no slouches in this piece. As for Petrushka – not so dance-y as the other works, but a darkly vivid slice of 1990s Russian street life, full of character and underpinned by superb playing from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Nicholas Kok.
Supported through the Scottish Government’s Edinburgh Festival Expo Fund.
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