Sylvie Guillem – Life in Progress

Festival Theatre

Mary Brennan

FIVE STARS

Perhaps we would better understand Guillem’s decision to retire if, on-stage, there were signs that her years – she is now 50 – were about to trip her up in mid-extension. But no: that exquisite Guillem meld of sharp precision and pliant grace seems undiminished while her intensity of presence is, if anything, increased. Her singular focus, even in the most playful moments of Mats Eks’ Bye, simply pulls you into the movement, channeling artistry and experience into every step.

Her valedictory programme is a subtly un-histrionic assortment by four of her favourite contemporary choreographers. Time passing, memories, future resolve thread through her choices. Despite her signifiant association with William Forsythe his DUO2015 is performed by men, Brigel Gjoka and Riley Watts, who nail the minutiae of the gestural dialogue – sometimes synchronous, sometimes at humorous odds – with a keen sense of time being of the essence. Guillem herself opens the programme with a new solo, Akram Khan’s techné, that sends her, a silvery-clad sprite, spidering round a shimmering metallic tree whose airy mesh branches curve heavenwards, like her own limbs. If there’s a hint of her revisiting her own emblematic past, that feeling continues in Here and After, Russell Maliphant’s commissioned duet that sets Guillem in tandem with Emanuela Montinari. Twin selves, superbly, sinously matched, they gradually separate across time and space, before the final jive-y frolic delivers a flourish of united purpose: onwards! Which leaves Bye, the Mats Ek solo that celebrates Guillem’s chameleon physicality and expressiveness. Gawky and coltish in yellow skirt, green cardie, shoes and socks, a middle-years woman kicks over the traces and releases a gloriously larky child before the upstage portal claims her back to a vanishing realm. Like a comet across our skies, we won’t see her brilliance again. We will remember it, and marvel.

Sponsored by Baillie Gifford