Scottish Ballet is heading States-side, taking the double bill they premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival to California and Minnesota.
Last week, part of that bill, Jorma Elo’s specially commissioned Kings 2 Ends, paired up with Ashley Page’s Pennies From Heaven, delivering a programme that highlighted how technically adept and artistically sussed these dancers are, and how fresh, distinctive and sparky the repertoire has become.
Now that the company has Elo’s choreography, set to music by Reich and Mozart, under its belt, the dancers can afford to enjoy the subversive quirks that he seeds into the demands of his classically attuned vocabulary. As with Page’s wittily nuanced response to the 1930s popular songs in Pennies from Heaven, there’s an element in Kings 2 Ends that needs a shrug of humour, a little shimmy of giggly naughtiness, a sudden sizzle of seeming abandon to counterpoint the serious purity of line and style elsewhere.
It’s not an easy option for dancers: carefree elan, or nippy turns of dazzling speed, are anchored in precision. But when, as in both works, dancers make the comedy look like second nature, or the soaring flights into a partner’s arms seem spontaneous ... well, you can feel the audience’s pleasure and satisfaction long before the final applause breaks into cheers. Both works, however, have profoundly thoughtful depths to them. Pennies in particular, with its costuming, cinematic back-projections and Page’s flair for sympathic period detail taking us all beyond pastiche nostalgia on a sincerely observed note of resilient optimism. America gets Kenneth MacMillan’s wonderful Song of the Earth with the Elo – I suspect it could do with the joie-de-vivre of Page’s Pennies.
HHHHH
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article