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A full house, boundless enthusiasm for the young dancers of Nederlands Dans Theater's junior company - and dire reviews in the Nationals. The world of modern dance is thin ice for a music reviewer to venture upon. We came to appreciate and enjoy it via Jirí Kylián, and mainly through videos & DVDs of his creations. We had a good evening and enjoyed greatly three of the four items in NDT2's programme. A word about the music. The first half of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps was entrusted to 6 dancers for Johan Inger’s Dream Play. An unidentified recording sounded good on the Sadler's Wells equipment, if a little 'sanitised' - not much 'top' or bite; whose recording, we were not told? I found it absorbing and satisfying and was impressed that every movement and gesture related precisely to ideas in the music.
That music (again, whose recording?) was grossly over-amplified; what a pity NDT2 could not have afforded a real string quartet, as did Henri Oguike at Laban for Shostakovich No 9; discreet enhancement (not full amplification) might have been desirable at Sadler's Wells for young audiences, who expect music to be always loud, but what we heard was a travesty of Schubert and of Mahler. Subject to Change was danced to great effect upon a red carpet which was manipulated and moved around by four men whilst two women dance upon it - and don't fall off. The choreography was engrossing and a moving counterpoint to the sombre theme. It was preceded by Shutters Shut, a brilliant four-minute
caprice (also by Lightfoot and León) to a recitation by Gertrude
Stein of one of her nonsense poems If I told him: a complete
portrait of Picasso; a very musical danced commentary to a text
recitation, the poet's repetitive patter matched by dancers' gestures
varied with dizzying speed and precision. Four delicious minutes
from Iranian Parvaneh Scharfali and Spaniard The rub was Kylián's own 27'52" (2002). On this occasion he had left us behind and we found his new work for NDT2 as tedious as did the critics, and anti-climactic to end the evening. Nearly half an hour was devoted to Kylián's way with moveable floor covering, to an electronic score which purported to be derived from "themes by Gustav Mahler" (which themes?). Lightfoot and León's Subject to Change (March 2003) came a year after; seeing them in reverse order spared us from feeling straightaway that an obsession with manipulating floor covering seemed to have become an NDT2 cliché. The statistics illustration reproduced here backfired; everyone seems to have concluded that all that time spent on preparation, over forty thousand hours, had been ill spent. But to end on a positive note, we enjoyed greatly the dancing in three of the four items, which is a fair ratio for a good evening. And we owe to the genius of Jiri Kylián ("Kylián's Black & White was the single release which persuaded us that purchasing a DVD machine really was worth-while") our enjoyment of the whole genre of modern dance and ballet, and especially the work of Mats Ek, Matthew Bourne, Maurice Bejart and Maguy Marin - see Dance on DVD. Peter Grahame Woolf |
Nederlands
Dans Theater 2 
One
of the dance experts, on the contrary, thought that Lightfoot and
León's Subject to Change, set to the second
movement of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden quartet
in Mahler's arrangement for string orchestra was 'the only time
in the evening when you sensed choreography that actually heard
its chosen music'. 
Fernando
Hernando Magadán; in its economical totality, the best thing
in the evening, all agree.