Mark Baldwin, artistic director of Rambert Dance, must take responsibility for most of the good times I’ve had recently, midwife to a litter of excellent things born out of curiosity and an unfussed love of culture, particularly music. A true artistic director (cf my complaint last time).
On to the creative table at Rambert HQ this year he has thrown ideas about brass bands, a Picasso painting, something challengingly old-school for the Rambert orchestra to play, a new commissioned score or two, a bold, even foolhardy, decision to declare the Rolling Stones passé and say goodbye to Christopher Bruce’s popular but now irredeemably dated Rooster.
Much intelligent trust lay behind Baldwin’s commissions to Kim Brandstrup and Didy Veldman, unveiled over the past month. To one he offered a master score — Schoenberg’s 1899 Verklärte Nacht — to the other a master painting — Picasso’s 1925 ‘The Three Dancers’. While obviously there’d be homework for the audience, the projects were helpfully linked.
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