Night of 100 Solos review: Merce Cunningham would have approved of this dance celebration

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Emma Byrne18 April 2019

Yesterday, on the night Merce Cunningham would have turned 100, 25 performers from across the UK gathered on the Barbican stage to celebrate one of modern dance’s most visionary choreographers.

It proved no ordinary birthday party. Not for Cunningham a limp showcase of gala-friendly extracts or big-name superstars, but an evening of scale and ambition that offered a fresh take on nearly six decades of convention-breaking work. You just know Merce would have approved.

Not that the big names weren’t there, mind – once you got past the gaudy bodysuits and occasional props including an umbrella, chair and white overalls, there were stars of the Royal Ballet and Rambert, both BalletBoyz, Olivier award-winning Jonathan Goddard and Siobhan Davies. (Similar shows in Los Angeles and New York, live-streamed around the world on the same night, featured equally starry US casts.) Rather it was the 100 solos themselves, taken from 54 works created by the choreographer between 1953 and 2009, just months before his death, that took centre stage.

Several works were danced side by side, creating a mesmerising collage of sweeping limbs, bouncing jumps and precise geometric stillness; at other times a performer simply went it alone. A few programme notes aside, there was no indication who was dancing what or when, with John King’s atmospheric electro soundscape (an ear-splitting burble of white noise if you’re feeling unkind) and Richard Hamilton’s shadow-like graphics and garbled sayings only adding to the confusion.

But playing spot the solo was to miss the point: this was an evening about reassembling old work to make something new. Much of this freshness was created by the dancers themselves, with various ages – from 20-year-old Nathan Gracia to Siobhan Davies, 68 – body types and dance disciplines all represented. And though Cunningham’s detractors have often been quick to throw labels like ‘cold’, ‘unemotional’ and ‘clinical’ at his choreography (a Rambert dancer once told the critic Ismene Brown that dancing his pieces felt like assembling furniture from instructions), it’s clear that this new generation have found real emotional resonance in his work. So, The Royal’s Francesca Hayward, resplendent in salmon pink, brought an elegant depth to her flicking, controlled tendus, Goddard an intensity to punches and sunken pliés, and William Trevitt even managed to pull off a jumpsuit covered in tin cans.

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