A latter-day exercise in Dada: Nature Theater of Oklahoma reviewed

Spectator

17 hours ago

What to make of the Nature Theater of Oklahoma, which this week made its British debut at the Queen Elizabeth Hall? The bare facts indicate that it's a 'crazy shit' performance group of some repute, the brainchild of Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper, established 19 years ago, based in New York, its weird name taken from Kafka's unfinished novel Amerika. Beyond that, it's an enigma.
The title of its current show, No President, could suggest that satire of Donald Trump is intended, but if so, quite what is being implied remains obscure to me. All I can tell you is that to the accompaniment of recordings of The Nutcracker and Adele's 'Someone Like You', a deadpan narrator with a florid vocabulary relates the story of Mikey, a hapless security guard who, like Candide, undergoes a picaresque succession of trials and misadventures in search of love, happiness and success, pursued by demons and haunted by his venal lusts.
This tale is enacted by a troupe of a dozen or so mute dancers in gym kit, on top of which they adopt dressing-up-box disguises. Prancing and jogging through parodied balletic manoeuvres, they convey their emotions through exaggerated cartoon gurning. Limp phallic prostheses and dry humping enhance some descents into sophomoric obscenity, and mysterious references are made as to what lies behind the red velvet curtain at the back of the stage.
The show is probably best categorised as a latter-day exercise in Dada: wilfully silly, momentarily funny and rather too pleased with itself. The excessive length – two-and-a-half uninterrupted hours – may be part of the joke, but it's not a very good joke; there's so much repetition and the plot takes so many pointless shaggy-dog turns that I was on the verge of screaming for it to stop. The cast, to be fair, deliver it all with flair, and although a fair percentage of the audience walked out, those who persevered gave it an enthusiastic reception.
With a sigh of relief, I turn to the less esoteric pleasures afforded by the Royal Ballet School's annual matinée at Covent Garden. This is always an important occasion: the future of classical dance is on show and at stake here, as controversy over the curriculum and teaching methods constantly agitate the profession. How can one justify putting children through a training so arduous and perilous? And what happens to the rest of their academic education?
On the evidence of this performance I think we can rest assured. Nobody, at least, is wasting their time. In an exemplary programme embracing several genres, the school's 200-odd pupils between the ages of 11 and 19 did themselves proud – a tribute to expert coaching and perhaps some fresh air introduced by the new artistic director Iain Mackay. It seems invidious to pick out individuals when the overall standard is so high, but I'll be surprised if we don't hear more of Aurora Chinchilla, Tristan-Ian Massa and Wendel Vieira Teles Dos Santos.
Opening the show was 'Aurora's Wedding', a conflation of the prologue and final scene of Petipa's The Sleeping Beauty. One can't expect teenagers to dazzle in this repertory, but I would mark their collective effort as cautious and scrupulous, with nice attention paid to the plastic movement of head, neck and shoulders, and the right ideas about precise footwork, clean body line and elegant partnering. Much more fun followed with Ashton's early masterpiece Les Patineurs, an adorably witty and choreographically ingenious picture of Victorian skaters, danced here with bags of charm
A third section brought opportunities to let rip in five shorter works in jazz, modern and ethnic idioms, seized with style and gusto. Finally came the grand parade or défilé in which all the school's pupils assemble, year by school year, culminating in a magnificent kaleidoscopic tableau – a cue for wild cheers and moist eyes.