Mark Morris, the most musically communicative and naturally lyrical of choreographers of the past 30 years (and an absentee from London theatres for too long), made L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, a dance masterpiece of a Handel oratorio using John Milton’s words. It was a miracle of pastoral sweetness, in rustic, human, amorous dancing, bodies singing the words and all the orchestral folderols too. It came unhelpfully to mind as I watched Mark Baldwin’s new creation for Rambert to Haydn’s oratorio using Milton’s words, The Creation.
I have a lot of time for Baldwin. Under his leadership for the past 14 years, Britain’s oldest dance company has got rather good at sneaking up behind the more generously funded ships of the ballet line and landing large fish. If you walk through the bombastic South Bank, you can hardly fail to have your breath stopped by the serenely minimal new Rambert HQ, a remarkable architectural beauty made for under £20 million, fundraised by a company on a mingey £2.2
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