California Connections, Linbury Theatre Review ★★★★★

California Connections, subtitled Three Pioneering Women, is only incidentally about California, and certainly not about the clichés of the sunny, easy-living US state. The three women it honours – Martha Graham, Isadora Duncan and Bella Lewitzky – all lived in California, as did Yolande Yorke-Edgell, whose Yorke Dance Project has done more than many to bring key, but sadly under-represented works from the early days of contemporary dance to the stage.

The stand out piece of this programme, which marks Yorke Dance Project’s 25th anniversary, was Martha Graham’s Errand Into The Maze. Graham’s influence cannot be overstated: her unique style and the technique she created provided the foundations for the development of contemporary dance.

Errand Into the Maze, dating from 1947, is a two-hander based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur and set to music y Giancarlo Menotti. Here the Theseus figure is a woman, the mesmerising Abigail Attard Montalto; Edd Mitton danced the monster, his disfiguration represented by a staff held across the dancer’s shoulders and neck, his face head encased in a cloth.

Yorke Dance Project, Errand into the Maze, dancers Edd Mitton & Laurel Dalley Smith. Photo: Jimmy Parratt
There is tremendous power in their confrontation, their movements slow, staccato and earthbound. The woman stabs the ground with her feet as she walks the length of a coiled rope representing the labyrinth, her fists crossed over her solar plexus; the minotaur prowls around her, menacingly stomping on bent knees. It’s a breathtaking 15 minutes, and makes you wonder, not for the first time, why Graham’s is hardly ever performed in the UK.

The programme opened with a chamber version of Kenneth MacMillan’s Isadora, looking at the life and loves of the early 20th century pioneer of free dance Isadora Duncan.

Yorke Dance Project, Isadora, dancers Amy Thake & Eric Caterer Cave. Photo: Jimmy Parratt
Originally a two-act ballet set to a flowing score by Richard Rodney Bennet, the version seen here condenses the action in a sequence of scenes centred on the barefoot Isadora in her trademark Greek tunic and her lovers, steered by readings from her autobiography recorded by Rachel Handshaw.

In the performance I attended Amy Thake evoked something of Isadora Duncan’s joyous free dancing, but lacked the carnality she brought to her performances.

Yolande Yorke-Edgell premiered A Point of Balance, her own work for three women: a central character moving between a shadowy dark-clad figure that appeared to pull her down, and an upward looking lilac-clad figure. It was obviously inspired by Graham, with its use of deep plié in second and off centre balances, but felt a little longer than its 15 minutes.

Bella Lewitzky was perhaps the least familiar name in the programme, and her Meta 4 (pictured top) brought a much-needed playful note to the evening. A riff on the theme of four, reflected in Robert Xavier Rodriguez’s score, this 1984 work for two male and two female dancers, is full of intricate geometries, the connections between the dancers shifting restlessly throughout its four sections, and ending in the joyous mood of children in a playground.