Mark Morris Dance Group
Sadler’s Wells
Michael Clark Company
The Barbican
Sleeping Beauty
Royal Opera House
Last week, the 2009 Dance Umbrella season rolled merrily towards its end with performances by two former ‘bad boys’ of the choreographic world. Luckily, neither event looked anything like those boyband comebacks the music industry thrives on these days. After all, Mark Morris and Michael Clark never cease to amaze and enthral audiences, thus remaining, Peter Pan-like, ‘bad boys’ for much longer than actual boyhood. Interestingly, they both presented recent works that allowed seasoned dancegoers to take the pulse of their current artistic creativity.
Those who love Morris’s tongue-in-cheek reading of illustrious scores might be pleased to know that Empire Garden (2009), Charles Ives’s quotations-packed trio for violin, cello and piano, prompts a kaleidoscope of colourful and quirky ideas that surprise with their humorous inventiveness. Yet humour is not this creation’s main ingredient, as delicately darker tones and whiffs of bittersweet self-reflective nostalgia permeate the action.
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