New Wimbledon theatre, London
A change of stage can do surprising things to choreography. Two of the works in the Richard Alston Dance Company's current tour were created for closeup viewing – with the audience seated on all four sides of the space. Now transferred to the proscenium stage, Alston's Out of the Strong gains clarity but feels diminished in its emotional resonance, while Martin Lawrance's Lie of the Land looks more powerful in every way.
Out of the Strong (formerly titled Even More) showcases Alston's effortlessly musical powers of composition. In one teasingly asymmetric ensemble, movement phrases are shuffled along a line of dancers, creating a ripple of light and air across the closing section of Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No 6. Effects such as these come into clearer focus with a conventional staging, but what register less forcefully are the smaller, interrogative, expressive details. Abrupt pauses, like sharp, angry intakes of breath; tiny embellishments where a dipping movement of the head gives an extra, lavish impetus to the music's flow feel diminished by distance.
Distance however, only amplifies Lawrance's excellent work. The vocabulary here is more full-bodied – fierce exclamation marks of dance that maximise the careening urgency of Ned Rorem's String Quartet No 4. Not only does the visceral force of the dancing survive transition to the larger setting, it acquires extra impact – as we see more clearly how the bodies thrust, tilt and tumble within the space.
Completing the programme is a revival of Alston's Roughcut set to Steve Reich's New York and Electric Counterpoints. At moments the (very young) cast lack the physical stretch and scale to fill the dimensions of the choreography. But they have energy in spades, exulting in the flickering speed of Alston's movement so that the dance almost levitates on the pulsing momentum of the score.