come, been and gone, MacRobert, Stirling

Dance critic

Friday 25 May 2012

"I sing with impertinence, shading impermanent chords, with my words -" And oh by jingo how Bowie's words resonate when – as is not always the case – Michael Clark dances the Intermission solo in the final section of come, been, gone.

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mary brennan

For sure, Clark jolted the ballet world with his impertinence; seemed, at a low point in the late 1980s, in danger of shading into impermanence. But all that has come and gone as, looking buff and in control, Clark carves into the empty space with slow, gracefully extending limbs.

And in those moments, audiences are gifted a glimpse of the creative source and the drive for exact body-line that informs his choreography and clearly inspires his dancers.And what dancers he has nowadays. A lean, mean rigorously focused team who thrill the eye with posses of meticulously synchronised arabesques, then counterpoint that precise serenity with outbursts of fractured footwork where steps get skittish even as the upper torso is arcing into echoes of classic ballet vocabulary.The sense of mischief is still there – the jiggling trio of bare bums is, like the occasional irreverent back projections, a nod in the direction of Clark's penchant for disrupting conventions. But as the music of Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Bowie floods out at volume, the true essence of his subversive talent emerges in the new purity he has sculpted from his iconoclastic past, his background in ballet and his rapport with the rock heroes of his youth."Live till your rebirth and do what you will -" Oh by jingo, as Clark nears 50, he's evidently in his prime. HHHHH

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come, been and gone, MacRobert, Stirling

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