‘Dance Me’ with Leonard Cohen | evaluate

Phrases by Bengi-Sue Sirin. Carried out at Sadler’s Wells on 7 Feb.

We’re so fortunate to have had Leonard Cohen. As human beings, creatures who expertise feelings and passions, few artists evoke extra of our multitudes of emotions.

For those who select one emotion, there’s a Cohen tune to match it. Nervousness, ache, love, grief… like a real poet, he bared all of it. His music, typically thematically darkish, comprises multiplicities, dancing the road between easy and sluggish melodies and intensely significant lyrics.

Cohen type of feels like gravel, but by some means additionally born with the present of a golden voice; he’s the depth of a burning violin, a canine in warmth, however on the identical time he’s tea and oranges that come all the best way from China; his religion was robust however he wanted proof, and he tried, in his means, to be free; he has his very personal breath of brandy and dying; he’s what occurs to the guts, to giggle and cry and cry and giggle about all of it once more; sincerely L. Cohen.

Canada – particularly his birthplace of Montreal – is rightfully very proud, therefore the nation’s newest homage from Montreal’s main firm, Ballets Jazz Montreal. Ballets Jazz Montreal has simply celebrated its 50 12 months firm anniversary, having been based in 1972 by Genevieve Salbaing (simply after Cohen launched the superb, Well-known Blue Raincoat-wielding album Songs of Love and Hate). Ballets Jazz Montreal started getting ready Dance Me with Cohen’s approval earlier than his dying in 2016, underneath the inventive route of Louis Robitaille. The premise may be very a lot tribute to Cohen, via the lens of three choreographers: Adonis Foniadakis, Ihsan Rustem and Annabelle Lopez Ochoa. It premiered in 2017 and has proven at numerous worldwide venues, however that is its first go to to London.

Arriving at Sadler’s Wells on opening evening, I sense that this viewers has lengthy been anticipating Dance Me. I embrace myself on this – I’ve been a Leonard Cohen fan since I first ever ‘Felt Issues’ as a teen… It’s possible you’ll spot some lyrical references sprinkled all through this piece, and I make no apologies for it. There’s a buzz within the air, a mixture of followers young and old, of first-time dance-goers and seasoned attendees. It’s a testomony – Cohen speaks to so many individuals, brings all of them collectively. As I take my seat, I really feel in secure arms, for what higher inventive medium than dance to attract feeling from music, particularly when that music’s soil is so fertile, a thousand kisses deep?

And so we start. Homage is straight away evident, for the dancer strolling onstage is Leonard-esque in silhouette, black fedora and turtleneck in addition. Early within the present is considered one of my favorite Cohen songs, Lover Lover Lover, choreographed by Ihsan Rustem. It opens with a male dancer embodying the myriad tones inside Cohen’s voice: pressing, craving, in swirls. 5 extra equally outfitted and impassioned males be a part of him. I really feel that I’m seeing what I think about of this passionate Leonard in technicolour, a sextet of passionate, romantic males, all embodying the necessity of the tune, ribs naked, coronary heart thumping beneath. The piece makes virtually sole use of unison, a strong selection for such an announcement of a tune. Lover Lover Lover confirmed Cohen’s passionate aspect actually.

The subsequent piece, once more by Rustem, takes a equally literal angle. Dance Me to the Finish of Love, the present’s eponymous startpoint, opens with its crooningly acquainted “Laaaaa-la’s”, and one other Leonard-like man (Andrew Mikhaiel) takes centre stage, in black in fact. A girl joins him, to be lifted like an olive department, with gentle mild bounce and many wide-legged kicks. As the primary verse slides into the second, she leaves, changed by a brand new lady. They duet in a lot the identical fashion, with lifts that painting Mikhaiel/Cohen as having all the ability, but being gently charming. This sample continues; a brand new lady for a brand new verse, till a person comes as an alternative. The male-male duet is my favorite; extra unctuous and melted, exhausting to inform the place one ends and the opposite begins.

Dance Me to the Finish of Love is on Cohen’s album Varied Positions, one thing I really feel Rustem’s choreography takes relatively actually. I prefer it, however discover it barely apparent. It might have been attention-grabbing to painting the well-known supply of inspiration for the tune and its ‘burning violins,’ the horrifying juxtaposition of the Nazi’s forcing string quartets to play apart from the dying chambers of their fellow prisoners. That darkish level of historical past discovering its means right into a tune reveals us, Cohen is rather more than a womaniser.

In a later piece, Rustam higher demonstrates the total and extremely fulfilling extent of his choreographic vary. It’s to a different of my favorite Cohen tunes, the cheeky and charming Tower of Track. Written from a vantage level of age-acquired wit (as proven in its brilliantly acerbic opening strains: “Nicely, my mates are gone and my hair is gray/ And I ache within the locations the place I used to play”), Tower begs to be interpreted with tongue in cheek.

It begins with a lady strolling throughout a line of what appears to be like like white chair bins in time with the beat. They mild up at every step, revealing themselves as televisions on seats. Two heads poke down beneath, cheekily coming from nowhere. Then a canon show of legs. At this level, we’re at Tower’s post-verse piano tinkle, and picture in case you can a unison leg sequence of pointed limbs in direct sync with the keys, in ironic sync with Cohen’s severe tone. It’s fabulous – all of us chuckle, delighted that this aspect of Cohen is paid its due. Extra comedian highlights embrace a Rocky Horror Image Present cum Rolling Stones tongue and lips brand backdrop mouthing the ‘Doo-dum-dum-dum’ of the backing singers. Different reviewers have rightly in contrast Rustem’s piece to Busby Berkeley. That is simply the type of choreography I like, a tinge of humour to attract the very best out of the dancers.

I need to point out one other of Rustem’s choreographies, to Cohen’s stunning Suzanne. In distinction with the opposite items of his I’ve talked about, he makes use of solely two dancers for the entire tune. They’re BJM Principal Yosmell Calderon Mejias and Tuti Cedeno, and so they have the very best dancer chemistry I’ve seen in a very long time. Suzanne begins with Mejias holding Cedeno safe whereas she ronde jambes her pointed leg in sluggish, measured winds. Every so often he transfers her to a different a part of his physique, and by no means as soon as does she contact the ground. It’s mesmerising; liquid molten clean, oozing maple syrup… There isn’t a pressure in Mejias’ physique, and no distrust from Cedeno’s, solely a river-like duet of platonic love, assist and solicitude.

For me, Rustem’s choreography stands out because the strongest amongst the items of Dance Me. It’s a problem to choreograph to the comparatively shorter music lengths of well-liked songs, for six minutes will not be lots of time to ascertain an thought of types, and to complement it past merely ‘dance routine’ stage. I discovered a proportion of the present to not fairly accomplish what Tower of Track and Suzanne managed, maybe leaning too closely into simply representing the sound of the music. The dances that transcended this had additional depth and their very own distinct flavour.

I need to point out a chunk by Andonis Foniadakis that additionally had this excellent edge, his interpretation of the dramatic and really 80s First We Take Manhattan. Its Pet Store Boys-esque synth sound calls for aggressive, space-consuming choreography to match, and Foniadakis ensures that with this ensemble piece. It’s comprised of marvellous travelling sequences with leaps that might sure one first from Manhattan, then to Berlin. The dancers run throughout the stage in what resembles the strains of streets, and thrust ahead in a way evocative of the enduring stances in Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake. Manhattan as a tune offers loads of extremity, and I’m glad that this upbeat, placing aspect of Cohen has had its second.

And so it goes! Dance Me got here to an finish, 80 minutes of homage to Leonard Cohen, the various sides of the person rotated and proven by the extremely expert Ballets Jazz Montreal. Not every bit was a success, however those who have been have embedded themselves onto my consciousness, without end to be related to mentioned tune. There was undoubtedly one thing for everybody. I can consider no higher means to attract this evaluate to an in depth than to return to his lyrics; the motive for the piece; the ambition of Louis Robitaille’s preliminary inventive imaginative and prescient again in 2016; and what I feel, in the end, BJM achieved: ‘Present me slowly what I solely know the bounds of/ Dance me to the tip of affection.’

Leonard Cohen Playlist – operating order of the present & to your private enjoyment!