You let me down, Brandstrup: Life is a Dream at Sadler’s Wells
Life is a Dream
Rambert
Sadler’s Wells
Second Circle SG1, £12
26 May 2018
Sadler’s Wells page
The stage was set for Kim Brandstrup in Life is a Dream. Amazing, emotive, atmospheric music by Lutosławski. Wonderful Rambert dancers. Intriguing, allusive designs by the Quay Brothers. A source material that promised themes of guilt and retribution and man’s capacity for wrong, all rich fodder in Brandstrup’s previous works. Life is a Dream has almost all the attributes of a dance work worth watching – with one very important exception. Brandstrup has assembled the best collaborators he could wish for, but his own contribution is absent.
It pains me to say this, as until now I have had a great deal of respect for Brandstrup. His Ceremony of Innocence for the Royal Ballet was a wistful and sensitive setting of Britten’s Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge. His choreography in Deborah Warner’s production of Death in Venice amplifies the music more than any other production I’ve seen. His trapeze dance was pretty much the only good thing about Tansy Davies’s horrendous Between Worlds. Everything I’ve seen of his has been thoughtful, closely considered, elegiac of something that cannot be expressed, conveying through beauty of movement ideas beyond words.
This is not what Life is a Dream does. Life is a Dream is the kind of work that can make music lovers despise dance. I would have enjoyed the event far more if I’d just been able to watch the Lutosławski, surprisingly well played by the scratch orchestra, on its own, without having to worry about all the other bodies involved. If I didn’t know better I would feel Brandstrup had disrespected the music. The disrespect is there but it extends just as much to the dancers and designers as it does to Lutosławski and the musicians. Brandstrup’s previous works tell me he is not disrespectful, so the source here must be accidental, unwanted, unexpected, perhaps inevitable. But that doesn’t lessen its impact.
My instinct is to attribute this accidental disrespect to writer’s block. I’m armed in part by the synopsis Brandstrup gives himself. I quote from the cast sheet: ‘in a derelict rehearsal room… a director drifts off to sleep. Images of the day’s rehearsal of Life is a Dream are revisited as different performers replay the roles… The director assumes strange and supernatural powers to orchestrate events…’. It’s practically a cry for help! What it reflects is repetitive choreography that aimlessly doodles around, churning through clichéd ideas abandoned in embarrassment only to be replaced with others more banal. Lutosławski deserves better. Rambert deserves better. Brandstrup deserves better. I deserve better!
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