Natalia Osipova & Guests
Festival Theatre (run ended)
Bolshoi-trained and currently a principal at the Royal Ballet in London, Moscow-born Natalia Osipova is one of the stars of the British dance world and brings this triple bill of new works to Edinburgh fresh from its June world premiere at Sadler's Wells theatre. Joining her in the two duets which bookend the programme is former Royal Ballet principal, Sergei Polunin. He had left that company by the time Osipova joined, so this is the first time they have danced together in the UK. Crisp, precise and muscular, the match-up is never less than spectacular.
The works couldn't be more different, however. Arthur Pita-choreographed opener Run Mary Run drops Osipova and Polunin into a narrative piece blending dark 1950s rock'n'roll glamour with B-movie horror stylings, all soundtracked by doom-laden Shangri-Las songs and spooky David Lynch compositions. Both dancers emerge from what look like freshly dug graves, spilling earth everywhere, before embarking on a twisted boy-girl love story that sees Polunin inject himself with heroin before the couple return eventually to the grave. Are they ghosts? Memories? Characters from a song?
The second piece, Qutb by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, is an exercise in contact, strength and balance. Osipova is joined by James O'Hara and regular Cherkaoui collaborator Jason Kittelberger for a work intended to evoke the interconnection of planetary bodies but which also riffs on ideas drawn from Sufism. So mysticism and intense physicality come together as the dancers entwine and unwind slowly on a stage dusted with an ochre powder that gradually covers their arms and legs. In contract, closing piece Silent Echo sees Osipova and Polunin barely touch at all as they glide through Russell Maliphant's stately take on a classical pas de deux. All in all, a beautifully designed programme executed with grace, power and a slickness made even more impressive by its apparent effortlessness.
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