RCS, 15/11/2024

Glass : Metamorphosis I & II

Glass : Glassworks

Georgina Grecu, piano

Xiaodong Li, piano

BA Year III Modern Ballet

RCS Glassworks Ensemble

John Logan

This was the first time I've attended any of the Royal Conservatoire's dance programmes, and it was, of course, the choice of music that particularly attracted my attention to this one.  We did not launch straight into the dance, however, but first heard the first two "Metamorphoses", from Solo Piano, each with a different pianist.  These were originally written in 1988, it's Glass himself who plays them on the original album.  Six years later, he would begin to compose his Études, explaining that he wanted to improve his piano technique, which means that the technique required here is still relatively (and I stress, relatively) uncomplicated.  However, the difficulty with Glass's music at this stage in his writing is the surface texture, which needs to be extremely even.  While rubato can be heard in his own playing, on the whole it's like a swan gliding over a pond, a smooth, unruffled flow, skilfully concealing the frantic paddling beneath, and both of these young pianists today had a rather more peronalised take on this music.  Grecu (who had memorised her score) made "Metamorphosis I" her own, but Li, who was reading from a tablet, had a texture that tended to lurch a touch.  It wasn't bad, it just lacked a little cohesion.

For the performance of Glassworks, we had a 14-piece ensemble, and pianist Reese Manglicmot immediately demonstrated just how a Glass piano solo should sound, with "Opening" played in smooth, hypnotic waves.  Alas, the ending, leading into the next number, "Flow", immediately exposed the weaknesses of the horns of the ensemble, who had difficulty sustaining the long, held notes of their parts, a problem that inevitably recurred at the end of the work.  This was a proper, performing version of Glassworks, not the highly synthesised sound of the original album, and apart from the horns, the ensemble did well with the music's varying textures.

I'm assuming that we saw the entirety of the Year III Modern Ballet class before us, seventeen dancers, of whom only four were male.  The choreography was also by these young dancers, which rather blurred the issue somewhat; choreography by committee (like just about anything done by committee) lacks distinction.  The overall style, as the course name suggests, was certainly firmly rooted in classical choreography, the shapes and gestures clearly derived from the more familiar past, just (mostly) without pointe shoe work for the girls.  The dance area was also quite restricted; I would think it was probably smaller than their usual rehearsal room area, and wider than deeper, so the movement tended to stay close to the ground, with very little in the way of leaps or lifts.  

What did stick out, regrettably, to me, was the fairly poor synchronisation.  Yes, this is modern dance rather than classical ballet, it's not quite as critical, but in a piece which saw a lot of diagonal flows of small groups, it seemed clear that there should have been much greater coordination of the movement between the dancers.  It often came down to small things, like the exact position of the hand at the end of an extended arm; it sounds trivial, but it really stands out if one dancer keeps a nice line with the arm, while another breaks the line by bending the wrist too far.  Of course, this is not actually a dance company, where a ballet master/mistress would be sure to correct such matters in rehearsal, but it is something the dancers should have been aware of from the outset.  

That aside, it was a quietly pleasing, but undistinguished performance, with no visibly stand-out performances.  That said, I doubt the circumstances were entirely propitious for anyone to distinguish themselves, and these young performers did, on the whole, make a favourable showing.

[Next : 10th December].  I'm going to say provisionally.  For various reasons, I have not committed myself too far in advance to many performances, but am taking things as I find them.  You may therefore (as this week) occasionally find extra performances cropping up as and when things take my fancy!