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.Draw a contemporary dance family tree and Pam Tanowitz and Jules Cunningham are very close relations. Tanowitz, the New York choreographer, was taught by one of Merce Cunningham’s original dancers and the Anfield-born Cunningham (no relation) performed with his company for more than a decade but the family resemblance expresses itself in very different ways. Both have just premiered new works in London in the Van Cleef & Arpels Dance Reflections season.Tanowitz was at the Royal Opera House on Tuesday afternoon with the premiere of Neither Drums Nor Trumpets, made for the huge glass Floral Hall, former home of the old Covent Garden flower market. Tanowitz’s splendid dancers surged gleefully back and forth across the space, movement motifs passing from one body to the next like a flow of electric current. The seven core performers, dressed in leafy green jumpsuits, relished the challenges, holding neverending balances on steely demi-pointes (© M Cunningham) or dashing off a few Italian fouettés with throwaway ease.The soundtrack blends a Caroline Shaw composition with extracts from Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony and a scratchy remix of Fanny Brice’s 1921 recording of “Second Hand Rose” that sounded like someone searching for the BBC Home Service on an old wireless set.The programme note talks of mining the hall’s “rich history” as flower wholesaler, scenery store, dance hall and hospitality space. The choreography doesn’t really reflect any of this — such rigorous, multi-layered movement scarcely needs a back story — but there were times when the building itself seemed to sabotage the dance. Tanowitz’s writing is difficult to absorb at one sitting and this is made harder still when the work is performed in the round in broad daylight. The surrounding audience (all wearing their earnest “listening to music” faces) were a constant distraction.★★★★☆Jules Cunningham’s double bill at Sadler’s Wells East, Crow/Pigeons, promised “a tender exploration and disruption of normativity”, drawing dubious parallels between marginalised people and unsanitary urban wildfowl. Crow was a short, shapeless duet set to a live mix by JD Samson of Le Tigre. At 45, Cunningham remains a powerful dancer with strong, sharp feet and Harry Alexander is blessed with an unforced elegance of line, who adds weight and drama to every touch, but the piece still felt overthought and undercooked. Early in the proceedings, the house lights came up and the trio stared furiously through the fourth wall at the (thinnish) crowd. “This is a relaxed performance” promised a notice in the foyer. Not from where I was sitting.★☆☆☆☆Pigeons was set to a recording of the four-piano version of Julius Eastman’s Gay Guerrilla, a minimalist response to Martin Luther’s hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”. Cunningham and four fellow dancers cluster and separate, “Mickey-Mousing” to the score’s insistent rhythms, but the movement adds little to Eastman’s music and, if anything, distracts from its power. Joshie Harriette’s exquisite lighting created ever-changing patterns on the bare floor but came perilously close to upstaging the figures dancing upon it. Cunningham’s years with Merce Cunningham are always apparent — the unwavering arabesques, the tireless tiptoe — but we miss the master’s sheer joy of movement.★★★☆☆dancereflections-vancleefarpels.com
