Dance
NDT2
Festival Theatre, Edinburgh
Mary Brennan
five stars
IT IS THE stuff of dreams: bodies with the quirky angularity of anglepoise lamps and the matching ability to melt their bones from jittery shimmy-shakes into sinuous flexibility. It’s also the stuff of NDT2 (Netherlands Dance Theatre2), and their current clutch of young talents – 18 of them, aged 18 to 23, from all across the globe. Like their NDT2 predecessors, seen here in 2012, they morph with unpretentious ease across a mosaic of choreographic styles. LightfootLeon, Edward Klug, Hans van Manen, Alexander Eckman – the programme is a six-pack of challenging complexities where the shifts in emotional subtext are intrinsic to the character of the steps. Physical prowess, never in short supply on-stage, takes on purpose and meaning because these lithe young bodies sport impressively wise heads.
Three pieces by LightfootLeon segue into an opening section where the to and fro tensions of relationships dance to a variety of different tunes. If Schubert is an elegiac duet of yearnings, Some Other Time – to music by Max Richter – is an echo of paths taken, or not. The sliding flats open portals to encounters, figures flit like shadows: it ends nonetheless in solitariness. In the middle, somewhat sexy and high on humour is Sad Case where sultry Mexican mambo rhythms go to the hips, although those hot come-ons also cool into solo endings. This section alone was a treat, but there was more. Klug’s mutual comfort finds two restless couples experimenting with different partners to driving piano music by Milko Lazar, van Manen’s Solo soared thanks to the witty one-upmanship of three unstinting guys while Eckman’s Cacti continues to be a prickly, provocative tour de force. What a dream ticket – and, like a dream, it’s over.
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