CHOREOGRAPHY
The Rambert Flair
Music, humanity, brevity, character, even charm - these are essences long overdue for a comeback in modern dance.
As a choreographer newly turned artistic director of Britain's oldest dance company, Mark Baldwin is learning fast. "The first thing I had to get used to was stop saying 'I' and start using 'we'. Corporate language, you see. "Things you don't want to blame Rambert for, you use 'I'. Anything you don't want to blame yourself for, you use 'we'." He chuckles engagingly. Baldwin has always shown a humorous streak, both as the elegant star dancer of '80s Rambert and then as a fine choreographer. With the Mark Baldwin Dance Company, and ballets for the Royal Ballet, Scottish Ballet and others, he built up a twin reputation for his rare musical expressiveness and for the mischievous tone that might creep into a serious piece (death by gunshot intruded into an iridescent Ravel dance, for instance). His self-deprecation misled some into believing that he wasn't ambitious - until at 49 he landed the top job at the Rambert Dance Company. People regularly demand the impossible of Rambert: to show the latest young thing in dance, to bring a conservative public flooding to see it, and to be the world's main ambassador for British dance creativity. Baldwin's first season - a triumphant Sadlers Wells awards and nominations this spring for dancers, choreography and musicians, new works coming in from leading native talents - is indicating that this is the man for the job.
Photo: The Rambert Dance Company. Photo credits: Anthony Chrikmay.
He won it without saying something melodramatic and headlining, such as that Rambert needed a revolution - even though it was looking rather tired by the end of Christopher Bruce's directorship. "Evolution, not revolution," says Baldwin. "Everyone wanted change. Some wanted it radical; others wanted change within what Rambert does. And that's what I understood." Baldwin is treading on eggshells here, because Rambert has spent almost its entire existence struggling to be brilliant and innovative, as it was when Marie Rambert started it all in the '20s, and yet a box-office-safe financial operation - something that Madame Rambert never prioritised. His predecessors as director, Richard Alston and Christopher Bruce, were both choreographers. Alston's abstract modernism alienated regional audiences in the '80s; Bruce's task was to save Rambert from closure by recovering people-friendliness in the '90s. Both men over-programmed their own pieces, which waned under the administrative stresses. Baldwin, too, is a choreographer, but he has decided to put his own choreography on the back-burner for a year and study Rambert's possibilities with an impresario's eye. "I think we have a very strong brand at Rambert. People come to see something fun, something challenging and new, something that maybe has some good music, and some fabulous dancing." Then he adds, intriguingly: "But these things change. I told the board that what I would like is to try to make new works about the times we live in, as well as support it with bits of our history." Wryly he points out one major sign of the changing times - that Rambert's popularity among younger audiences has brought an unforeseen problem." They scream and shout at each other when the dancing's going on because they think they're watching TV, which is rather lovely in a way, but we're having to put out etiquette guidance.
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