Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.London’s Van Cleef & Arpels Dance Reflections festival has cast its net very wide, embracing neoclassical ballet, brand-new(ish) contemporary work and generous helpings of good old-fashioned “modern” dance. This week sees revivals of two late Merce Cunningham masterpieces, meticulously staged and impressively performed by the Lyon Opera Ballet at Sadler’s Wells.When Cunningham died in 2009 at the age of 90, his wishes decreed that his company should be wound down. After a two-year world tour of farewells, the troupe was disbanded and the repertoire archived, held in suspended animation in notations and on video, ready to be brought back as and when required.The Lyon double bill begins with 1991’s Beach Birds, one of Cunningham’s “nature studies” for 11 barefoot dancers whose moves suggest — but never imitate — the mysterious doings of a colony of wildfowl. Designer Marsha Skinner bathes the bare stage in warm, “golden hour” sidelights against a prismatic backcloth that washes almost imperceptibly from rose to cobalt to cantaloupe like an ever-changing seaside skyscape. Skinner’s elegant white unitards with their black shoulders, sleeves and gloves hint at the sleek plumage of puffins or penguins while the smoothly curved arms conjure wings.The Lyon dancers have been touring Beach Birds since 2008, and are clearly at home with the flickering changes of direction, unwavering balances and tip-tilted torsos demanded by Cunningham’s choreography. Swizzling spins and frisking jumps are delivered with minimal preparation and the softest possible footfalls, every body a coiled spring of potential energy.The score, by Cunningham’s partner and regular collaborator John Cage, is a beguiling composition for piano, violin and rainstick all played live in the Wells pit by five musicians including 82-year-old Gavin Bryars, composer of the evening’s second piece (sadly, he and his musicians declined to take a curtain call).Biped premiered in 1999, a bold co-commission by London’s Barbican Theatre. The 45-minute work boasted a bespoke score that combined sampled recorded sound with live keyboards (Bryars again) and strings. For Cunningham, music was never the driver of the dance but a separate work of art that could play out alongside it. In Biped, the movement must also coexist with computer-generated dancers projected onto the gauze frontcloth that echo and deconstruct the live performance.Biped’s visuals were created by Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eshkar using the (then) highly experimental LifeForms technology. The dancers’ bodies were studded with sensors and filmed with a dozen or more heat-sensitive cameras. The data was then processed by the motion capture software to create skeletal stickmen, untrammelled by the laws of physics (or normal muscular constraints). These exquisite ectoplasmic figures could have risked pulling focus from the live dancers but in the end they only serve to enhance and amplify reality, exploring the infinite possibilities of dance itself.There are constant shifts of scale, with a duet suddenly multiplying into an ensemble as more dancers manifest magically from the upstage gloom. The groups slot into an unfussed unison, each artist remaining a personality, never a mere component and all watched over by the digital ghosts of Cunningham’s sublime original cast.★★★★☆To March 20, sadlerswells.com
