Rewind Forward: Yorke Dance Project at The Mill Arts Centre, Banbury, 22 September 2016 – Maggie Watson reviews

Yorke Dance Project’s innovative programme at The Mill Arts Centre was an exceptional and exciting opportunity to see both new work and a rarely performed twentieth century ballet.

Sea of Troubles, inspired by Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which Kenneth MacMillan created for Dance Advance in 1988, has been reconstructed by its notator Jane Elliott and rehearsed by Susie Crow, who was one of the original cast. Breaking free from the constraint of strict narrative structure, MacMillan’s barefoot ballet explores the psychological trauma that lies beneath the surface of the play as Hamlet, an embodiment of the ‘outsider’, is tormented by the need for revenge. Dancers must turn on an emotional sixpence as they share roles, representing first one character and then another, to music that, unusually for ballets of the nineteen-eighties, ‘spliced’ together pieces by different composers (Anton Von Webern and Bohuslav Martinu).

 

Yorke Dance Project in Rewind Forward at The Mill Arts Centre Banbury, Thursday 22nd September 2016

Following a sold-out preview performance at the Royal Opera House’s Clore Studio earlier this year, dynamic Yorke Dance Project’s latest touring programme Rewind Forward (formerly titled Inspirit) will be touring this Autumn and in Spring 2017, and opens its tour with performance at The Mill Arts Centre Banbury on Thursday 22nd September as part of their current Season of Dance. Rewind Forward features work which crosses boundaries between ballet and contemporary dance, placing revivals of two masterworks from Kenneth MacMillan and Robert Cohan alongside three, stunning world premieres by Robert Cohan, Yolande Yorke-Edgell and Charlotte Edmonds.

The programme features a rare reconstruction of Kenneth MacMillan’s 1988 Sea of Troubles, a short work originally created for Dance Advance, an ensemble of former members of the Royal Ballet. In a programme note for the premiere MacMillan explained his inspiration: “I have taken as a starting point the effect of the death of Hamlet’s father without a literal telling of the play. With the appearance of his father’s ghost, and Hamlet’s realisation of the need for revenge, his tormented world became a nightmare”

Alongside MacMillan’s work is a revival of Robert Cohan’s Nympheas. Choreographed in 1987, Cohan’s serene duet is set to Debussy’s Clair de Lune.  The programme also includes the world premiere of Cohan’s newest duet, Lacrymosa, set to music by Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky.

For the second time, the company performs a world premiere by Charlotte Edmonds, currently the Royal Ballet’s Young Choreographer in Residence. With support from the PRS Foundation, YDP commissioned Edmonds and composer Donna Mckevitt to create a new work following their participation in the company’s 2015 Cohan Collective.  Self is inspired by the famous trio from MacMillan’s Manon. The programme concludes with the premiere of artistic director Yolande Yorke-Edgell’s Untethered, choreographed for the entire company to music by the string quartet Brooklyn Rider.

There will be an informal Question and Answer session after the show with company Director Yolande Yorke Edgell and Susie Crow, member of the original cast of Sea of Troubles.

Performance:  Thursday 22nd September 7.30pm

Venue:  The Mill Arts Centre, Spiceball Park, Banbury, Oxfordshire OX16 5QE

Tickets:  Tel: 01295 279002
Box office open Mon to Sat 10am – 8pm: or book online here

Find out more about Yorke Dance Project here