Dance Reflections Week 1 Review

Week 1 of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels brought a range of postmodern dance to London

London is hosting its second Dance Reflections festival, sponsored by the French Maison of Jewellery Van Cleef & Arpels, which has a long-standing relationship with dance – one of its signature lines depicts gem encrusted ballerinas.

Ballerina Clip 1943 and Spanish Dancer 1941 © Van Cleef & Arpels SA

The first London Dance Reflections, billed as “a celebration of choreography”, took place in 2022 in three venues – Sadler’s Wells, Royal Opera House and Tate Modern; the festival has also travelled to Hong Kong, Japan and the USA.

The current Dance Reflections adds the Southbank to the venues hosting its 15 works, mostly contemporary, but including three giants of 20th century choreography. One such is the American Trisha Brown (d. 2017), whose 1985 Working Title featured in Week 1 at Sadler’s Wells, paired with French choreographer Noé Soulier’s 2023 In The Fall.

Trisha Brown/Noé Soulier – 4*

Dance Reflections, Trisha Brown Dance Co., In the Fall by Noé Soulier, Image: Joyce Baranova

Noé Soulier’s 2023 In the Fall could easily fool you (I admit it fooled me) into thinking it was by Brown herself.

Pastiche or homage (does it matter?), In the Fall was created for the ten dancers of Trisha Brown Dance Company. Set to a score of concrete music by Florian Hecker, it explored many of Brown’s ideas, in particular her play with gravity.

The elongated arabesques creating a flat line with the torso, testing balance and stability, were much in evidence in the first section, before the dancers showed more freedom to move individually or in a variety of groupings, hopping, tilting and lunging, and always resisting gravity.

Trisha Brown originated many of those ideas, but in her Working Title, set to music by Pete Zumo, which deconstructs the traditional notion of song, there was greater fluidity of movement. More playful here than in Soulier’s piece, Brown’s brightly costumed dancers flowed across the stage, their simple movements belying the piece’s rigorous structure.

The week continued at Sadler’s Wells East, where Ballet National de Marseilles (CCN) led by the avant-garde collective (LA) HORDE presented Age of Content.

(LA) HORDE Ballet National de Marseilles – 4*

Dance Reflections, Ballet National de Marseille – (LA) HORDE, Age of Content, Image: Fabian Hammerl

Billed as an exploration of the increasingly blurred boundaries between real-life and virtual bodies, it started with a sequence inspired by Grand Theft Auto, where 16 dancers/virtual bodies, kitted out in uniform grey hoodies, fought quite ferociously over a moving car frame.

It ended with a riotous explosion of uncompromising youthful joie de vivre, tightly choreographed to music by Philip Glass, which, if a little overlong, was nevertheless glorious to watch.

In between there were sections based on robotics, and a lengthy, humorous simulation of sex with much hip thrusting, the initial all grey of set and costumes gradually acquiring vivid colour under Eric Wurtz’s ever brighter lighting.

I freely admit I didn’t often have much of a clue what was going on; but it’s also true that I was absorbed throughout and have been thinking about it a lot since. And CCN’s energetic and defiant dancers are stupendous.

The week ended with an oddity, pleasant enough but an oddity nonetheless: François Gremaud’s take on Giselle, performed in the ROH Linbury Theatre.

François Gremaud, Giselle – 3*

Lausanne-based Gremaud is an actor and theatre director and his Giselle, the second in a trilogy on great female figures that also includes Phaedra and Carmen, can only be described as an illustrated lecture.

Speaking in French (with surtitles), the totally beguiling Dutch dancer Samantha van Wissen, backed by an excellent quartet of musicians, guided us through the context and plot of the Romantic ballet, very occasionally adding movement and mime.

Vivacious and highly entertaining, van Wissen is a wonderful performer, as indeed are her young musicians, but I struggled to see how this show suited Dance Reflections audiences who are, surely, familiar with Giselle; so, although entertained for some its almost two hours’ length, I did sometimes wonder, “why are you telling me all this?”

(Banner image credit: Trisha Brown Dance Co., Working Title, Image: Joyce Baranova)

Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels is at Sadler’s Wells, Royal Ballet and Opera, Tate Modern and Southbank Centre 12 March – 8 April 2025. Full info here