Ballet National de Marseilles x LA(HORDE), Roommates Review

It was as if the powers that be at Ballet National de Marseille, that’s to say the collective LA(HORDE) which runs the company, had decided to subject us to a stringent test: if you can endure a first half of pointless provocations and extended self-indulgence, not to mention men with flat feet in pointe shoes, without taking off screaming into the London night, you will be rewarded with a good, at times thrilling, second half of actual dance. Hang in there.

So, let’s start with the second half. It opened with Concerto by the American minimalist choreographer Lucinda Childs.Set to Henryk Górecki’s harpsichord concerto, it’s a piece for seven black-clad dancers which, like so much of Childs’s work, relies on the repetition of a number of gestures and steps: an arm raised above the head in fifth position, a small controlled jeté. In a flow of continuous movement, these steps combine in ever more intricate ways, and dancers join the flow or abandon it to stand briefly on the sidelines, creating ever shifting, yet meticulously placed, groupings.

It represented nine minutes of pure, clean dance and I found its mathematical, split-second precision exhilarating.

Next came Les Indomptés (The Untamed) by choreographers Claude Brumachon and Benjamin Lamarche.

Ballet National de Marseille, Les Indomptables. Photo: Blandine Soulage
This is a gripping piece for two men, set to music by Wim Mertens and cogently danced by Jonathan Myhre Jorgensen and Titouan Crozier.They started facing forward, sharp movements precisely coordinated, before slowly facing each other (their mutual gaze a central part of the choreography) and going through a courtship that evolved from physical confrontation to a sensual melding onto each other. They were beautiful.

The final piece was set for the whole company of 12, and brought the vitality and rebellion of youth to a stage that became the street. An extract from the longer Room With a View, danced to pounding, marching music by Rone, it combined street arm and hand gestures with rhythmic stomping, the group gradually acquiring the dynamics of a gang. Choreographed by LA(HORDE) it was perfect for what is a young, vibrant company.

The less said about the first half, the better.The lamentable first piece, by Cecilia Bengolea and François Chaignaud and entitled Grime Ballet (Dance Because You Can’t Talk to Animals), was a dispiriting affair, made more cringe-making by the fact that the four male dancers wore pointe shoes but could hardly step on them, their feet appearing flat and tortured. The point of it escaped me (pun not intended).

LA(HORDE)’s Weather is Sweet was billed as an exploration of narcissistic love, but was in effect a tiresome continuum of pelvic thrusts, in twos or threes or more.

Oiwa by the Belgian dance-theatre company Peeping Tom could have been interesting at half the length. A smoke machine in overdrive covered the stage with a massive cloud from which there emerged an entangled couple.

Ballet National de Marseile, Oiwa. Photo: Thierry Hauswald
To Atsushi Sakai’s hypnotic music the woman was slowly, yearningly lifted and twirled in ever more acrobatic ways. It had its own kind of beauty, but seemed to go nowhere at great length.

In short, very much a game of two halves.