Ghost Dances - Rambert, Alhambra, Bradford

My dear old mum always used to say of ballet: “It was very nice (pause) and I enjoyed it, don’t get me wrong (pause) but it would’ve been nice if there’d been a bit of talking.”

Last night there was a double dose of talking at the Alhambra, one was the muted chatter of excited 14-year olds desperate to see two of their GCSE dance studies texts come to life, and the other was a Cuban TV commentator assessing the emotional state of the on-stage dancers!

Rambert’s unique triple bill – Christopher Bruce’s Ghost Dances, Itzik Galili’s A Linha Curva and Ben Duke’s humorous piece, Goat, was a breath of fresh air on a cold November night.

However, it was the works of Bruce and Galili that led the evening as this stunning troupe burst onto the stage promising at the outset, an evening of passion, power and grace.

Ghost Dances was first created in 1981, and A Linha Curva when the majority of the audience was barely out of nappies.

And yet both were as fresh as the flowers that drank the blood of General Pinochet’s innocent victims during the Chilean dictator’s 17-year reign, the original inspiration for Bruce’s powerful and incredibly visual piece, Ghost Dances.

An evocative tribute to the victims of political oppression in South America, it tells stories of love and compassion, as death – in the form of the iconic “ghost dancers” – interrupts the daily lives of a series of ordinary people. Visually referencing celebrations of the Day of the Dead, and driven by the bewitching rhythms of traditional Latin American songs, it’s a moving, intensely human work.

In contrast A Linha Curva was a riotous explosion of colourful, samba-fuelled dance, heavily influenced by contemporary technique.

But Ben Duke’s Goat, the evening’s final offering and set to the music and lyrics of Nina Simone, was a hybrid of humorous banter and enigmatic dance, propelled forward by one of the company doubling as a TV reporter complete with cameraman.

In a way that 70’s popstars look to their back catalogue to play the public’s favourites in 2017, so Rambert has trawled its archives to paste together this patchwork quilt of popular pieces.

And it was all done on the doorstep of Northern Ballet and the Northern School of Contemporary dance!

But Rambert pulled it off and this is one of the finest dance shows I have seen in a while, even if its core was inspired by an earlier generation of choreographers. As for mum, I think she would have loved the talking, “It just breaks it up a bit. Smashing!”

Bradford Alhambra
Until Friday 17th November