Linbury Studio Theatre, London
To say Cathy Marston runs Bern:Ballett with a fearless spirit is only half a compliment. The work she programmes is serious, impassioned and different – resisting the generic gloss of much contemporary ballet – but it does make very few concessions to its audience.
Marston's own Clara, an impressionistic portrait of Clara Schumann, exemplifies her quest for originality. The choreography that introduces Clara's musical background is shaped, inventively, around a variety of pianistic motifs: the vertical rhythmic moves of the chorus, which evoke the thundering of piano keys; the braced, piano player's arm position, with which Clara's father controls her in duets.
Tracing Clara's impassioned relationships with Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms, Marston strives for detail, intimacy and truth in the dancers' dazzled glances and questing hands. Admirable, too, are her attempts to choreograph conflicted emotions – the rocking, lullaby ensemble that frames Clara as she sleepwalks into a flirtation with Brahms. But, vivid as these individual images are, there is an underlying introversion, a monochrome quality to Marston's style that restricts the liveliness of the dancing and its narrative impact. Coupled with the unvarying grey of the stage design and lighting, it makes the work's 50 minutes feel much longer. Marston mistakes doggedness, sometimes, for depth.
Andrea Miller's Howl takes hard work to a different level, its 12 dancers orchestrated into a bedlam. Bodies thud to the floor, jumps ricochet crazily, limbs are stretched on a rack. This is dance as violence and punishment. Yet while it has some ferociously clever moments, Howl is a bludgeoning piece. By the end of this long evening, generic gloss has a certain appeal.