REVIEW: Slylarking in Alston's absence

The culminating presentation by the Dome of its late winter dance season created a glowing and rousing conclusion.

Although RADC followed less than a month after Rambert's Eternal Light tour visit, which moved many of its audience in a way not all will have anticipated, another characteristic selection by Alston meant his endeavours followed Rambert's act with no difficulty.

If anything, the customary up-tempo finish to an Alston evening possibly outstripped his others of recent years.

It was To Dance And Skylark, indeed not by Alston but his rehearsal director Martin Lawrance, who retired as one of his dancers in 2007. Lawrance's choreography is no unopened book to Alston's audiences but this ensemble piece may even have exceeded the Brighton fans' expectations.

This was due not least to a scintillating recording of Bach's second and third Brandenburg Concertos, the pace of which probably meant the dancers broke the RADC's own land speed records.

The equality of the men and women was reflected in their similar blue outfits but the G major Concerto brought a switch to red and mustard to crank up the heat yet further.

To end up lauding the role of music as much as the dance movement is what Alston's work makes us do and Lawrance, remaining in his school, naturally carries this imprint.

So successful is To Dance And Skylark that Alston felt forced to choose for the first time a Lawrance work to end one of his own programmes.

Alston could not fulfil his pre-performance talk appearance but company administrative director Chris May was a convivial and informative substitute.

He revealed the nautical shore-leave origin of the activity to "Skylark". And those inevitable high spirits and carefree adventure were the blood flooding through the choreographic flesh of Lawrance's contribution.

The middle work was Alston's Blow Over, using Philip Glass's unremittingly pulsating Songs From Liquid Days and the song lyrics of Paul Simon (Changing Opinion) and Suzanne Vega (Lightning).

The individual talents of the dancers glint through in ensemble format as well as in solo or duet with, especially eye-catching, the fortysomething, thrice-mother Sonja Peedo, an Australian who simply can't stop dancing (inside information confided by Chris May), and the rightly prominent Hannah Kidd with her floppy, blonde Peter Pan hair.

Alston confessed that serious works do not normally invite themselves to start his programmes but his Movements From Petrushka cracked the mould. It visits the joint angst of the clown puppet Petrushka and his on stage creator, the psychologically troubled Nijinsky.

Alston dreamed up the work for Aldeburgh 1994 and here unpacks it to pay tribute on the 100thanniversary of Les Ballet Russes, of whom Nijinsky was the star choreographic and principal male dancer.

It incorporates a rare Alston feature, not only a backcloth but something in colour '” nothing less than Alexandre Benois' original front-cloth for the Ballet Russes reinterpreted by Liz Reed.

The Shrove Tuesday market place has an exuberant crowd in belted white tunics who are finally halted in their rushing celebrations by being forced finally to heed Petrushka's welling up of mental anguish into explosion.

Pierre Tappon in the title role is deeply unquiet and the staging of Alston's familiar on-stage piano differs from its recent use.

Instead of upstage it is central and the dancers have the chance to encircle Jason Ridgway as he delivers Stravinsky's own piano version of the music. Ridgway's performance is necessarily a tour de force and launches the evening explosively.

Read the report from the pre-performance talk. Click here

Click here to go back to dance.

Click here to go back to classical music news.

Click here to go back to leisure.

Where are you? Add your pin to the Herald's international readers' map by clicking here.

Email the Herald: [email protected]

Want to read this page in French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Urdu or 48 other