Not Only Opera

The Wayniest thing ever: Tree of Codes at Sadler's Wells

Tree of Codes
Paris Opera Ballet and Company Wayne McGregor
Sadler's Wells
5 March 2017
Second Circle B2, £16
http://www.sadlerswells.com/whats-on/2017/company-wayne-mcgregor-paris-opera-ballet-tree-of-codes/

There's a massive screen in my office which almost continuously shows a low-resolution, near-live, silent video of what's happening on the main stage. I'm not fully sure what it's there for, but it undeniably comes into its own when a Wayne McGregor ballet is being rehearsed. The fuzzy stage fills with tiny spindly creatures who move determinedly through inhuman postures, occasionally coalescing in clusters but otherwise all acting independently. It is always delightful to watch, regardless of how the finished ballet turns out.

There are plenty of people who decry McGregor's method (or habit, depending on your opinion) of creating highly detailed, hyper-extensive, high-speed movement without necessarily investing it with meaning. Sometimes I agree: the second half of Multiverse had dancers McGregoring all over the place in a way that looked bewildering and felt empty. But sometimes, regardless of meaning, I think it works as a celebration of what these extraordinary bodies can do, as in Woolf Works, or as an exuberant expression of physicality and the joy of movement, as in Carbon Life. Maybe I would disagree if I knew more immediately how painful it is to be a dancer. But as it stands, I have a lot of time for McGregoring.

Tree of Codes is full of McGregoring, and sometimes I was at sea. But in this long work there is much that works tremendously well, in satisfying congruence with artist Olafur Eliasson's ingenious stage designs, and Jamie XX's entertaining and inventive score. And – as ever – McGregor certainly couldn't have wished for better dancers, with his own Company Wayne McGregor joined by dancers from across the ranks of the Paris Opera Ballet. All were amazing, but McGregor creates a number of principal roles in which CWM's James Pett and Jessica Wright shine, alongside the wonderfully tall POB dancers Lucie Fenwick and Marie-Agnès Gillot. Gillot, as in McGregor's Alea Sands for POB, should be singled out for the magical things she achieves, sweeping her long limbs with merciless control and impossibly elongated lines to achieve a powerful expression – a Tree of Codes solo towards the end, full of despair and power, is almost unbearably intense, and utterly thrilling.

Gillot and the other dancers are mostly aided by Eliasson's designs, which in the ballet's final two thirds settles into a joyous exploration of colour and mirrors that crescendoes in near-perfect tandem with the movement and music.* The first third is less secure, with a series of ideas that begin well but which tire quickly. The ballet starts with the auditorium in complete darkness – something which I have to say I always find very exciting (and, cards on table, it is probably the thing I most enjoyed about Haas's in vain). It stays that way for a while, as dancers appear on stage, visible only by little lights on their bodies at irregular intervals. It's fun to think of McGregor exploring the individual body signature and how that can be seen through motion capture. But after not too long I was losing interesting and gaining annoyance at the way some of the lights went out on their own accord; surely this is cheating. There then followed a section where the dancers stood in a long line with one arm stretched towards the audience pushed through a reflective cone, with the whole lit such that it looked like a row of bizarre arm-flowers. A very charming effect to start with, but quickly messy-looking: these highly individualist dancers don't have the discipline (or the inclination?) to move precisely as one. There then followed an ensemble and pas de deux in front a curved mirrored hemisphere, which I might have got more out of had I been sitting lower down.

So not everything lands; but does that matter? In this ballet I couldn't help but admire McGregor's ambition, his energy and his imagination. Tree of Codes is in no way the ballet to convince McGregor's detractors. But for everyone else, this is a very successful work, and it sent me out full of gratitude that McGregor is around and creating.

*To be honest, I probably didn't get the full effect of the mirrors, sitting up and out of the way of being able to see myself looking back at me looking at me etc – perhaps I would have been less of a fan if I'd been confronted with it head on.