Rambert: Analogue review

“Who would you like to remember today?” the sparse programme explanation of this work from Rambert asks. “If you could help one person today, who would it be?” From these questions, the Canadian choreographer Jill Johnson has created an affecting 50-minute work, driven by a cumulative repetitive power.

Johnson was a principal dancer with Ballet Frankfurt and a protege of William Forsythe, ballet’s great iconoclast – the pair collaborated for 21 years. And there’s something of the Forsythian “choreographic object” in this piece, presented as an installation. It feels very much like an act of meditation – a moment to reflect on the physical aspect of memory and the bodily ache of loss.

The staging is stark, pared back to just floorspace with seating on all sides and a giant suspended lightbox. As the audience drifts in, the dancers, all in white T-shirts and black trousers, limber up, then start pacing, often in pairs, moving with purpose, pausing, abruptly switching direction, sitting among the audience. Naya Lovell and Aishwarya Raut fall into an opening duet that sets the tone, Raut reaching out as though compelled by the thought of a missing loved one, Lovell slowly dipping and almost placing her cheek on Raut’s outstretched palm, before the pair start mirroring each other’s movements and circling each other with twisted geometries. David Poe’s often eerie alt-folk score sighs and soars like a lament, sometimes embellished by the seated dancers’ rhythmic clapping.

Continues...