Photo: Charlotte MacMillan
dancers:
Silvina Cortés, Olga Cobos and Daniel Proietto
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AfterLight (Part One) was the solo that was presented as part of the In the Spirit of Diaghilev, Sadler’s Wells’ programme last year celebrating the centenary of the influential Ballet Russes and the force behind it all, Sergei Diaghilev.
Choreographer Russell Maliphant has expanded on this gem with a full version now known as AfterLight, inspired by (as the initial solo was) Ballet Russes’s star dancer - hell, a star dancer period - Vaslav Nijinsky.
The inspiration came from photographs of the dancer, which Maliphant had been mesmerised by as a student at the Royal Ballet School, as well as drawings and paintings by Nijinsky himself.
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There is a certain similarity between these two sets of artefacts - both involve the body in very stylised positions. Nijinsky’s torso is twisted and his arms angled in those famous photographs from Le Spectre de la Rose, while his own drawings depict figures with rounded bodies and curving of arms, much like Henry Moore sculptures.
The AfterLight (Part One) sequence, performed again by Daniel Proietto, remains a stunning piece of work. Set to the eerie, claustrophobic piano score Gnossiennes 1-4 by Erik Satie, our Nijinsky twists his body into strange shapes, filled with a sense of yearning and, the best of all, the lighting lends a surreal, dream-like quality to Proietto’s super-fast turns. That said, I couldn’t help but wonder: where are the jumps that Nijinsky is world-renowned for?
Maliphant has insisted that AfterLight is not biographical, but as the spotlight - which at one point resembles prison bars - gets smaller and smaller and eventually engulfs our increasingly manic protagonist, it is hard not to see visions of a Nijinsky plagued by the schizophrenia that was to dictate his later life.
However, the remainder of AfterLight - that is, the original choreography for this production - does not quite match up to the promise of the first solo, it must be said. A series of duets and trios - with Proietto joined by Silvina Cortés and Olga Cobos - some parts hint at famous Nijinsky ballets in their curves and lines, but others felt peculiarly like a contemporary dance lesson in floor work. The brooding animations created by Jan Urbanowski and James Chorley that form the front cloth are not quite sufficient to render them worthwhile. However, Michael Hulls’s superb lighting was resolutely beautiful and adds a layer of tasteful mystery to this production (incidentally, Hulls’s lighting was also a highlight of the otherwise average Eonnagata, another Maliphant project).
While the collaboration between artists in different fields is very much in the spirit of Diaghilev, it lacks that certain quality that made Diaghilev a true maverick: his ability to generate controversy and create talking points. It’s hard to fault the production, but it’s equally hard to enthuse about it (though it must be said that the original solo, with its haunted beauty, remains a great piece of work). Ultimately, most of the time the new sections of AfterLight felt entirely separate from the starting solo in terms of impact as well as the sense of melancholy part one evokes, bringing to mind that old adage: if it ain’ broke, don’t fix it.
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theatre
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DANCE REVIEW:
