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Richard Alston
11th February 2020 - 12th February 2020
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This outstanding company happily comes back to Malvern (our twenty second visit no less) and for the very first time we are dancing to Elgar! Martin Lawrance’s A Far Cry is inspired by Elgar’s impassioned masterpiece Introduction and Allegro. With this terrific programme we are celebrating 25 years before we sadly have to close. Alston’s new work Voices and Light Footsteps is set to the glorious Madrigals of Monteverdi and Mazur is to Chopin played live by Jason Ridgway. Red Run returns to Malvern after twenty years and the intricate Isthmus completes the programme.
Don’t miss this Final Edition of Richard Alston Dance Company: next year they’re gone, they really are!
There will be a pre-show talk on Tues 11th Feb at 6.30pm, free to ticket holders. To book tickets please click HERE.
Running time: approx. 2 hours 10 minutes, including two-intervals.
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Event Reviews
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Richard Edmonds
For many years Richard Alston has brought his dancers to Malvern,
but sadly this is his farewell tour, and we shall be seeing this bright, alert company no more.
In a way this leaves contemporary dance touring companies such as Rambert Dance, London Contemporary Dance
and possibly others who do not spring immediately to mind,, in limbo, which may mean contemporary dance is
less popular amongst dance aficionados than it used to be 20 years ago.
Malvern's Forum theatre, with its simple flat dancing surface, has always been
a perfect venue for contemporary dance companies. There is nothing to impede the easy flow of fast movement,
and wing space although limited ( the dancers position themselves amongst lighting equipment), somehow
has always seemed an irrelevance here..
Modern dance is abstract, iit is all about the beauty of pure movement.
Should you find yourself needing a plot or a firm story line
you might look elsewhere to choreographers in the classical mode, such as Peter Wright, or Matthew Bourne,
(currently pulling in the crowds with a tour of The Red Shoes).
And yet, the first dance piece of the evening was coolly beautiful.
Alston called it "Voices and Light Footsteps", but it might just s well have been called "Pavane for the he loss of an Infanta".
The full company gave us an imaginative picture (no sets or helpful costumes, remember) of a Spanish
dance episode at courtly level.
Danced to high fluting voices welcoming in out of darkness, had a lovely seriousness, this was a bewitching dance piece
which might have worked well had it been set against images by Goya.
Alston's "Mazur" set to delicately nostalgic score by Chopin, was danced by two young men in the rough trousers and waistcoats
you might have found in any 19th century European rural settlement, where male affections were an accepted as part of village life.
There was no story line, but the subtle couplings, tender and yet strongly masculine, (allied poignantly to a sense of loss)
made this the best episode of an evening ( a large audience cheered for some time) where unfortunately certain items were set against
. music for a bad headache although danced with predictable gusto.
Somehow this seemed a sad evening, but I wish this superb company all the luck in the world as they move on.
