A frantic week for Sadler’s Wells, where the opening of its east London branch coincided with the play-offs for the newly inaugurated Rose Prize taking place at the main Islington theatre. The handsome new space is a welcome creative hub for its neighbourhood and the £40,000 prize is a thrilling boost for the sector. But the dance itself? Strangely underwhelming.
Sadler’s Wells East is sited on the riverside in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, a short retail stroll from Stratford Tube station. The auditorium at the airy building’s core is an adaptable 550-seater space with great sightlines and (for now, at least) the sexy, just-decorated smell of freshly planed timber and industrial adhesives.
Grand openings are not really Sadler’s Wells’ style. Back in 1998, when the 300-year-old Islington theatre unveiled its sixth incarnation, the VIP audience was treated to a no-frills mixed bill of sugar-free contemporary choreography. The same business-as-usual mindset has prevailed for the latest christening. Rather than dazzle with work from one of the theatre’s associate artists (Matthew Bourne, Kate Prince, Akram Khan and Crystal Pite among them), director Alistair Spalding is stressing the venue’s commitment to its local community: a show, certainly, but also a mission statement.
Vicki Igbokwe-Ozoagu’s Our Mighty Groove premiered at the Wells’s tiny Lilian Baylis studio in 2013. Originally made with just five performers, it now has a cast of 19, including a dozen local teenage girls. The first 30 minutes introduced the regulars of a basement nightclub, establishing relationships and rivalries. The 12 amateurs worked hard and the unison routines were snappy but the applause was all for east London hip-hop virtuoso Cache Thake as the club’s rubber-legged doorman.
After a buzzy interval, the packed house filed back in to find the space transformed, seating magicked back to the rear wall to create a huge dance floor dotted with mini-stages. The well-refreshed audience slotted delightedly into the groove, taking their cues from the “caller” and creating their own pop-up club.
Meanwhile, back at Islington HQ, the Rose Prize judges were about to bestow £40k to the best 60-minute dance piece on the planet plus a further £15k on one of three relative newcomers. The seven finalists (four “Roses”, three “Blooms”) had been selected from a pool of 42 by a screening panel who had viewed most of the material on film – possibly more flattering than the wide, unforgiving proscenium stage of the Wells.
To be fair, the judges (musician PJ Harvey, writer Karthika Naïr and Arlene Phillips, chaired by choreographer and academic Christopher Bannerman) could only work with the shortlist they’d been given, but their choices for the two prizes were downright perverse.
The three “Blooms” were Stav Struz Boutrous (Israel); Leïla Ka (France) and Wang Yeu-Kwn (Taiwan). Ka’s quintet was a frock-swapping, precision-drilled hen night exploring female solidarity. Wang’s duet/gallery installation offered slo-mo grapplings using a king-size sheet of paper and a magic marker. Both pieces were mildly beguiling but the trophy went to Stav Struz Boutros for her one-woman take on Georgian folk dance.
Works so diverse in character are almost impossible to grade. As Bannerman said in his speech at Saturday’s award ceremony, “The judges were asked to compare not just an apple and an orange but a star fruit, a mango and a kiwi fruit.” There is a way of overriding these cultural and stylistic differences: simply ask yourself, “Do I want to see this again? Will new qualities emerge if the cast changes? Do I itch to see whatever they make next?” For me, only one of the £40k Rose Prize candidates passed this test.
Portugal’s Marco da Silva Ferreira brought Carcaça, a 10-man clubland ensemble energised by a terrific live drummer, João Pais Filipe, hammering away in the pit. Brazil’s Lia Rodrigues offered Encantado, in which a naked cast of nine sloow-ly unfurled a stage-wide roll of multicoloured bedspreads which they used to create turbans, sarongs and loincloths as they capered rhythmically to the (taped) chant of a Guaraní tribal ritual.
The weakest of the four finalists was Larsen C, by Athens-based Christos Papadopoulos, which consisted of six black-clad dancers on a black stage lit with obvious reluctance by what may have been an old bicycle lamp. The key movement motif was a clever gliding step borrowed from folk dance that made the performers seem to float in the space. A nice effect but not really enough to sustain our interest for 60 soul-sapping minutes. I’ve been reviewing dance for nearly 40 years but I’ve never heard a grown critic boo before (his guest, in some distress, was literally bored to tears).
Kyle Abraham, whose Untitled Love had opened the season, had flown back to London for Saturday’s prizegiving. Fingers were crossed but his fans were quietly confident that this playful, dance-rich, characterful piece would get its reward. The judges thought otherwise, giving the £40k to Papadopoulos’s Larsen C. Do I want to see it again? I didn’t want to sit through it in the first place. Best in the world? I don’t think so. Boo.
sadlerswells.com