The Talent (tour –Arts Theatre, Cambridge)
There are pluses and minuses with an all-male dance company. The pluses include apparently boundless energy, giving the male dancer a proper place in the forefront of the action (which, of course, is not always the case with the classics) and a definite appeal to younger audiences. The minuses include a lack of contrast, both in actual movement and in the possibility of on-stage relationships.
The central work is Alpha, where Paul Roberts’ choreography and Keaton Hensen’s music for guitar and voice wraps itself around a pattern of shapes and a suggestion of the wilfulness of a seafarer’s life. Shelina Somani’s costumes reinforce this sense of timelessness. Alpha is preceded by Russell Maliphant’s Torsion, all pull and push with earth-grounded turns and right-angled lifts.
All the performers are young and they come from many dance disciplines. So you see academically pointed feet and the ball-of-the-foot pounce associated more with hip-hop and break dancing. There is no attempt to disguise the physical effort involved in these three pieces – as with the overall sense of managed conflict, it’s a case of the survival of the fittest. It’s also effective theatre.
