Rambert, Sadler's Wells, London - review

The Rambert spring season this week brings two intriguing creations: Mark Baldwin, with a fine brass band on stage, considering the Dark Arteries of Glamorgan's coal mining past; and Alexander Whitley's Frames studying the transient nature of dance - writ on air, as we know - and exploring movement inspired by and built around metallic structures assembled by his cast. Both pieces challenge ideas about what dance (even in the adventurous surroundings of Rambert's creativity) can express, even suggest.

Baldwin's response to coal mining's ardours and tragedies, its implicit strength of identity - inspired by Mervyn Peake's poem about the Rhondda Valley in south Wales, whence the title - is bold dance, born of the brass band as symbol of a society. Gavin Higgins' strong score is played by the magnificent Tredegar Town Band, who are placed at the back of the stage as reminder of the history of mining communities. The effect is highly emotional in considering shared griefs, the inevitability of tragedy, and is oddly reminiscent of the German expressionistic dance of the 1920s, and of the voice of the then Prince of Wales saying: "Something must be done." There is an allusive design by Michael Howells, with the journey down into the pits a hauntingly evoked.

Whitley's Frames is about what we see, even what we assume, with choreography. A bare stage. Dancers acquiring metal rods which they assemble into structures as adjuncts that shelter, frame, inspire movement. Small bright lamps are added. Choreography blossoms, expands, awakens memories. Whitley has a bold score by Daniel Bjarnason, a fecundity of ideas, the skill to make them theatrical, and he floods the stage with feelings and vivid, stimulating dance. Here is a dance-work of mercurial imagination, of eager bravura in light or dark, and of brightest possibilities.

The evening also exhumes the antique posturings (from 1990) of Lucinda Childs' glum Four Elements. The choreography would fit into Whitley's back pocket. But bravos for the soaring, vivid Dane Hurst.

To May 16, rambert.org.uk

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