It says something of the high regard Highland audiences have for Rambert when nearly 200 members of the audience stay on post-performance to hear artistic director, Mark Baldwin, talk about the show they have just seen.
He offered in insight into the stories behind each of the three ballets: Tomorrow, Transfigured Night and Ghost Dances, which rather like contemporary art, can be interpreted differently by each person viewing it.
The evening began with Tomorrow, which at times was rather bloodthirsty with throats being cut, stabbings and a bludgeoning, but also tricky to view as the stage was split in two, with one group of dancers in each half.
To the left and dressed entirely in black, one group re-enacted Shakespeare’s Macbeth in reverse. To the right, a group of male and female witches dressed in white, danced wildly, with at times, zombie-like movements.
It was easy to be so mesmerised by one group you’d forget to watch the other, making this a ballet you need to see more than once to fully appreciate it.
Transfigured Night was another interesting piece, which told the story of happens when a young woman tells her boyfriend she’s expecting another man’s baby, and offers three different outcomes as a result.
The duets performed by Miguel Altunaga and Simone Damberg Wurtz, and Liam Frances and Hannah Rudd, were superb, while Schoenberg’s threatening dramatic score, Verklarte Nacht, written in 1899, felt as fresh as music accompanying modern-day thriller
Ghost Dances, the most requested piece in Rambert’s Ballet repertoire, was simply breathtaking.
Set in South America and reflecting the horrors of the Pinochet coup in Chile, it feature three scary looking masked dead skeleton-like dancers moving unseen through the living as they re-enacted moments of their own lives.
Each ballet was performed to live music played superbly by the Rambert Ballet Orchestra who tackled everything from Latin America beats and pan pipes to off-the wall, disjointed music which required the use of wine glasses and a saw to create otherworldly sounds.
An evening spent in Rambert’s company always leaves the audience with plenty to talk about – and wanting more, and this was no exception.
Rambert Ballet are at Eden Court on Thursday, February 16.
Contact the box office on 01463 234234.
