Any performance by the Rambert Dance Company is always expected to be nothing less than avant garde, pushing the boundaries of creativity both in music and dance, and the Comedy of Change tour is no exception. This is the thinking man’s ballet and the three pieces, Tread Softly, The Comedy of Change and Carnival of the Animals are an essay of different styles and interpretations of movement and rhythms.

Tread Softly’s title comes from a line of W B Yeats, “tread softly because you tread on my dreams” and as the piece opens the stage is bare and bleak except for a supine women who after a minute or so is joined by a man who materialises to gently place his foot on her stomach. The music is Schubert’s String Quartet in D minor (Death and the Maiden) and its spiky rhythm infects the dancers’ movements which are jerky and crooked, no toes are pointed and hard shapes are made. At the close, a woman gets to trip lightly over three men lying on the stage obviously trying not to dent their dreams.

The Comedy of Change is a piece created to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s The Origin of the Species and opens spectacularly with the dawn of the species, a collection of shimmering white cocoons on an all black stage, in silence they tremble imperceptibly and eventually a creature emerges. The costumes are amazing, full leotards, black at the back and white at the front which creates the feeling of change and evolution as the dancers sway and turn this way and that. At one stage a dancer is wrapped in silver foil to make a mould (I found this mightily distracting) which is then removed and placed on the stage like a glowing statue. The dancers change into all black or all white costumes which cover their heads also and at the climax of the piece the statue is squashed; presumably a comment on how life can be as easily snuffed out as it is born.

Carnival of the Animals is a different animal altogether and definitely my favourite piece. Saint-Saëns’s jaunty and tuneful music brings a progression of animals to life, kangaroos, birds, fish and even fossils. David Buckland’s set with a backdrop of a colourful jungle landscape (after Rousseau I think) perfectly brings the scene to life complimenting the dancers wearing white tails. All our sympathies went to the poor lovelorn cuckoo who despite his plaintiff calls was still rebuffed by his mate, two dancers played peek-a-boo behind enormous ostrich feather fans, fish gracefully waltzed together, and birds pecked and preened on an imaginary perch.

In all three pieces the dancers are amazing to watch, lithe but powerful bodies, moving with fluid grace, and even if at times I thought the music was not to my taste the visual content was astounding.

Jacquie Vowles