DANCE

Richard Alston Dance Company

Theatre Royal, Glasgow

Mary Brennan

****

IF music be the food of love - of mischief, of national identity (and the sense of self that can attend that) - then this mixed bill of choreographies by Richard Alston and his associate, Martin Lawrance, gave us a feast for the ears. The eyes, too, of course. But what catches at the sensibilities of an audience, and draws them into the moment of the dance, is how these works inhabit the very being of each vastly different composition.

With Stronghold, the Lawrance piece that opened the programme, the minimalist music for eight double basses by Julia Wolfe growls and pounds as if the ground under the dancers’ speeding feet is delivering energy from the underworld. When bodies are in ensemble synchronicity, that ten-fold re-iteration of the same movement is like a visual amplification of group strength, unstinting in its unity. Yet, in the second section, it’s the individual - and especially Ihsaan de Banya - who emerges, offering up blistering prowess in the service of the group.

Alston’s Mazur is camaraderie on a more intimate - and yet epic, patriotic - scale. As Chopin’s mazurkas swirl out from the expressive fingertips of pianist Faith Leadbetter, so two lads - Liam Riddick and Nicholas Bodych - embody the exiled composer’s yearning for his Polish homeland. This duet between friends is an affecting mosaic of deep emotions that Alston is never tempted to make strident. The affectionate swagger of a remembered folk dance, the wistful melancholy of a poetic soul distanced from his roots - these elements are in the steps but these two dancers burnish them with feeling finesse.

Two more Alston works - the sparky Isthmus Remix to spiky syncopations by Jo Kondo and Brisk Singing to music by Rameau - affirm the outstanding quality of his current company. The sheer joie-de-vivre the dancers bring to the Rameau, where dalliance shifts from jaunty caprice to tender, compliant serenity, sends us out, aglow, into the November chill.