Dance

Richard Alston Dance Company

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

Mary Brennan

Five Stars

Polish mazurkas, Argentinian tangos, Indian classical dance - far-travelled influences infuse both music and movement in this quadruple bill from choreographer Richard Alston and his ongoing associate, Martin Lawrance. There’s a whammy of rockin’ minimalism from America, too, the thrumming repetitions by eight double basses in composer Julia Wolfe’s Stronghold underpinning Lawrance’s well-pitched contrast between ensemble strength-in-numbers and the self-determining, bravura solos asserting that a group is only as strong as the individuals in it.
Alston’s company has no weak links anywhere, even when - as in An Italian in Madrid - he dances them into unfamiliar territories with his inspired response to keyboard sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti. While pianist Jason Ridgeway deftly unspools Scarlatti’s mercurial rhythms, Alston conjures a luscious, swirling coupling of Kathak motifs with his own contemporary meld of jaunty dash and lissome elegance. The depicted marriage between a Spanish prince and a Portuguese princess assumes a vivid sense of cultures actively engaging when the princess is the exquisite Kathak dancer Vidya Patel, her swift-spinning turns and gestural details of hand and arm, adding fresh accents to courtly dance - and all in sweet accord with the Scarlatti.
If Alston’s Mazur, a duet tellingly nuanced with Chopin’s homesick yearnings by Liam Riddick and Nicholas Bodych, had Polish mettle in its steps then Tangent - given its world premiere in Edinburgh - saw Lawrance celebrating the intimate relationship dialogues implicit in Argentinian tango. Four couples, strikingly costumed by Jeffrey Rogador and tinged by the characteristics of the four seasons in Astor Piazzola’s music - delivered with real zest by Ridgeway’s solo piano playing -  swoon, tease and clash across the whole gamut of passions from first sizzle of attraction to the cut and thrust of limbs that question if it’s only the dance that keeps the partnership together. Forget Strictly - come see these wonderful dancers in exhilarating form.