Ballet Boyz, Sadler's Wells, London<br/>Dance To Music By Steve Reich, Barbican, London
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Your support makes all the difference.As a title, Encore is misleading: the new show by the Ballet Boyz is a celebration rather than a repeat. William Trevitt and Michael Nunn have worked hard to bring modern dance to new audiences - helped along by their "Ballet Boyz" video diaries. This is the company's fifth anniversary, so you might expect a celebratory mood. Not quite. The new works are as dark and grainy as the video links.
On Classicism does look back. Will Tuckett made this duet for Trevitt and Darcey Bussell when they were at the Royal Ballet School. This revival, danced by Trevitt with Oxana Panchenko, is an act of affection and his steps are danced with frank simplicity.
Charles Linehan's Jjanke uses Balkan folk steps, with live accordion music. Nunn and Trevitt start out with traditional moves, but they never really get down to the dancing: it's all preparation.
Rafael Bonachela's Mandox, Bandox is self-consciously modern. A line of lights blazes from the back of the stage, changing colour. The steps are fast, athletic and empty.
Steve Reich's music is as popular with choreographers as it is with audiences. The Barbican's celebrations for his 70th birthday include three of them; here are the marvellous, the pretentious and the so-so, sometimes all in the same breath.
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, founder of Rosas, is a long-standing Reich fan. We see two movements from Fase, her 1982 breakthrough work. De Keersmaeker and Tale Dolven match the insistent pianos with repeated dance phrases. This is the most focused Rosas work I've seen.
In Richard Alston's appealing new work, three men dip and wind around each other, as upper bodies reach into arched, sculptural poses. It's graceful, but very modest. I want more colour, more bite, less beige.
Variations for Vibes, Pianos and Strings was commissioned for the London Sinfonietta and Akram Khan. Khan's steps are patchy; he catches the change and flow of this music, without building a structure. But I loved the contrasts of movement. The revelation is the South Korean Young Jin Kim. One pose is breathtaking: one arm raised, the other dropped, shoulders exquisitely slanted.
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