The week in dance: A.I.M By Kyle Abraham: An Untitled Love; Stav Struz Boutrous: Sepia; Northern Ballet: Three Short Ballets – review
A house plant, a rug, a light. A sofa, initially covered in protective plastic. A group of friends whose greetings are warm and graceful and whose gossip covers people at church, what to wear on a night out, and whether it’s worth risking a relationship with a man without a house whose Cadillac is in the repair shop.
These are the domestic ingredients from which American choreographer Kyle Abraham weaves the magical fabric of An Untitled Love, a tribute to the bonds of affection and caring in Black culture. Danced to the soul music of D’Angelo and set by Dan Scully within a frame of changing neon light and rich, saturated colour, it is funny, beautiful and subtly thought-provoking.
Abraham’s deceptively simple choreography, in his unique blend of styles from balletic arabesques to nightclub slink, creates a relaxed mood. It’s full of wonderful moments: four women sit on the sofa, their limbs crossing and uncrossing like a delicate frieze; a woman moves in deliberate slow-mo; Catherine Kirk and Roderick Phifer dance an ambiguous duet of longing at the very front of the stage. The mood is generally buoyant, but there’s fear towards the end when Donovan Reed’s exuberant preening ends with him collapsing on the stage.
Mthuthuzeli November sets his warring tribes spinning and sweeping across the stage with confident clarity
First seen in 2022, this sumptuous piece has arrived in London as part of the inaugural Rose international dance prize, with its partner Bloom prize for less-established choreographers. This biennial choreographic competition set up an international panel to choose 42 dance works from around the world, which were then whittled down to seven. There are four works in the Rose section (with a prize of £40,000) and three in the Bloom category (worth £15,000); all are being shown at Sadler’s Wells and judged by a jury who announce their verdicts on 10 February.
There are finalists from Taiwan, Brazil, France, Portugal and Greece as well as the US. First up in the Bloom category was Sepia by Israel-based Stav Struz Boutrous, who explores her family’s Georgian roots in a solo that subverts male and female expectations of folk dance. Intriguing rather than fully communicative, it sets Boutrous spinning around the floor on her knees like a child, weaving her arms in intricate patterns.
New work is on the menu at Northern Ballet too, most notably Fools by Mthuthuzeli November, a refashioned take on the story of Romeo and Juliet, set in a South African township. He sets his warring tribes spinning and sweeping across the stage with confident clarity, but it’s the duets for his star-crossed lovers that make the piece. Full of stretched shapes and gentle embraces, they are danced with aching hope by a boyish Harris Beattie and a delicate, watchful Sarah Chun. The other new work on the bill was Victory Dance, Kristen McNally’s breezy, charming trio for two standing dancers (Archie Sherman and Yu Wakizuka) and Joseph Powell-Main, who uses a wheelchair, which cleverly contrasts the dancers’ movement as part of its momentum.
The programme opens with Rudi van Dantzig’s Four Last Songs, to a recorded version of Strauss sung by Gundula Janowitz. Its lyrical musings on life, love and death, so popular in the 1970s, look a bit dated now, but it’s an interesting revival, beautifully performed by a group of dancers who have personality as well as skill.
Star ratings (out of five)
A.I.M By Kyle Abraham: An Untitled Love ★★★★
Stav Struz Boutrous: Sepia ★★★
Northern Ballet: Three Short Ballets ★★★★
