Dance
Richard Alston Dance Company
Festival Theatre, Edinburgh
Mary Brennan
five stars
The lads on-stage have a confident swagger in their step, the young ladies they partner are haughty princesses - until, in the swish of a skirt, the inner minx decides to flirt: this ongoing joie-de-vivre merrily underpins Brahms Hungarian, newly choreographed by Richard Alston and premiered in Edinburgh last week. Even the hints of wistful reverie or fleeting disappointment - caught, in both the choreography, and in pianist Jason Ridgeway’s nimbly-nuanced (live) playing - soon pass at the irresistible allure of the music. The dance is cunningly Hungarian in body lines and movement, with dashes of czardas or glimmers of folk dance - and it’s very Alston in its musicality and unjaded delight in how bodies respond to the rhythms we hear.
Brahms Hungarian kicks up its adorable heels a month or so before Alston’s 70th birthday, adding a distinctly youthful twinkle to a choreographic career that now spans fifty years. Mid Century Modern, which opened this mixed bill, is like a mosaic where seven vignettes - ranging from Nowhere Slowly (1970) to Bach Dances (2018) - coalesce into the time capsule that holds Alston’s passion for clean sweeps of movement that nonetheless harbour intricacies in steps, structure, phrasing and emotional subtexts alike. It’s ‘memory lane’ without sighing nostalgia - and what a pleasure to see the final musing-mystical solo from Shimmer (2004) now being given such pliant expression by Carmine De Amicis. This was originally danced with elegiac grace by the company’s Associate Choreographer, Martin Lawrance whose latest piece, Detour, also premiered in Edinburgh. The soundscape increasingly beats and clamours at our ear drums, the seven dancers engage in full-on energy exchanges - all contact hints at an electrical charge - while the lighting design fragments the floor under their feet. Wow! No matter what the mood of a piece, or the demands of the dance, the entire company is unfazed, and high-flying with future-forward élan.
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