Igor

As mentioned last year, I saw Michael Clark's Mmm... way back in the early 1990s. Likewise O, his version of Apollo, on a particularly unedifying evening at the Brixton Academy. Back then Clark's rock star persona was at its zenith and the show consisted of two acts about 15 minutes long each, with an interval of maybe 45 minutes and the whole starting a good hour after the advertised time. Naturally, the audience of stray St Martin's fashion students lapped it up, but the dance was frankly rubbish. It would have been pretty uninspiring even without the circumstantial annoyances and stands as emblematic of the enfant terrible's utter junkie unreliability.

Recalling this experience, I didn't bother with O in its Barbican revival a couple of years back, but now it's back again, presented as the first part of Clark's Stravinsky Project alongside a foreshortened Mmm... and a new work to Les Noces entitled I Do. In which company it still falls badly short, appearing as a tedious, affectless strut of almost Merce Cunningham abstraction to a score of utmost dreariness. It thoroughly ill-set the evening's tone.

Next up, Mmm... was much better, although it suffered greatly from the absence of its punky non-Stravinsky first act. The remainder, to a piano duet version of The Rite of Spring, seemed slightly anæmic, and was further diluted by the recasting of the final powerhouse solo in masculine guise, but remains a dazzling interpretation of an iconic ballet score.

Which leaves only the third, final and entirely new act to consider. I was previously unfamiliar with the music, so I've no idea whether it is always as spectacular as presented here by full orchestra, vast chorus, four pianos and four splendid vocal soloists. The staging foregrounded the singers, who were just fine; and the dancers were vibrant and plentiful.

Though Clark dispenses with all pretence of narrative, the basic nuptial theme remains, claustrophobically hemmed in by vivid tribal ballet. To begin, an en pointe bride is released from a lifesize Russian doll; by the end she has become a knitted dildo. Between, Clark plays always to the strengths of the score, in ways his younger self wilfully refused to do with The Rite of Spring. The result is a sometimes coarse, crowd-pleasing, invigorating and bleakly inspirational dance that meshes neatly with Mmm... and eclipses the obviously useless O. It rounds off an uneven evening with a satisfying bang and the reassurance that there's much more to Clark than mere recycling of youthful glories.

Now hopefully liberated from all this history, I look forward to seeing what the boy does next...
Posted by matt at November 9, 2007 11:11 PM