National Dance Company Wales @ Taliesin

I had the pleasure of seeing the dancers of National Dance Company Wales twice in the past two days. On Thursday I went to photograph the open class and today we saw a performance consisting of “Phantoms of Us” (chor. Eleesha Drennan), “B/olero & Black Milk” (chor. Ohad Naharin) and “The Grammar of Silence” (chor. Itzik Galili). It was interesting to see them in two different settings: the casual one, when they wore their own clothes, joked, goofed around and worked hard, and the professional, when they moved in unison, carried on by choreography, in costume, equipped only with a stage persona. (Note: my camera and I couldn’t deal with the open class. All I have is a blur, a collection of images in which you can only just see a perfect contour of the upraised arms, gracefully arranged fingers, a profile. It’s still beautiful.)

I enjoyed the performance very much – the music and the movement harmonised beautifully, the lighting was understated but clever, the intimate venue meant I heard the dancers’ quick breaths. My favourite piece was “Black Milk”, performed by five male dancers dressed in ecru garments reminiscent of the hakama. That created a religious, ritual, martial atmosphere, but there were moments in the choreography that had the pure exhilaration of children at play. “B/olero”, a duet of female dancers, was a very compelling contrast of lighthearted femininity and athletic, almost mechanical movement. Another moment that stands out: the dancers emerging from darkness and slipping first one hand, then the other, into columns of light (in “Grammar”). “Phantoms of Us” was very impressive; faced with the stark, almost naked figures on stage I had to marvel at the extremes a well-trained human body can push itself to. Funny, considering I was wearing shoes with heels so high I had to slip them off during the evening – clearly I need more training.