Dance

Does size matter?
One size definitely does not fit all. Dance fans understand this and we adjust our sights accordingly. Where you end up sitting in any theatre determines not only what you’re able to see but also influences how engaged you’re likely to become in what’s happening on the stage.

The same thing occurs from the other side of the footlights as well. A dance that a choreographer has created for the 300-seat intimacy of The Place may end up vanishing when it is transferred into the 1,500-seat Sadler’s Wells. In contrast, classical ballet can appear far too strenuous, even forced, when viewed at close quarters.

Scale is an issue that audiences and artists attempt to sort out together, but it doesn’t always work out to everyone’s advantage. Several successful dances, notably duets, which were first performed in the Linbury Studio Theatre down in the basement of the Royal Opera House have lost their zest when they’ve been shifted to larger venues. It’s not anybody’s fault, certainly not the dancers’. But audiences who have encountered some of these highly enjoyable works only in larger situations, end up dubbing them damp squibs.
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Earlier this month Tanja Liedtke’s stupendous trio ‘Construct’ had its world première in the small 300-seat Purcell Room. I can’t help thinking that it simply wouldn’t have worked nearly as well if it had been moved into the larger Queen Elizabeth Hall. Much of its impact depended on being up close and personal.

That’s not to say that solos and duets aren’t able to fill a large stage. Sylvie Guillem and Russell Maliphant’s multiple award-winning duet programme, ‘Push’, proves that. Created in 2005, it has already had three sold-out runs at Sadler’s Wells. It will be intriguing to see how ‘Push’ fares next year as the smallest of the four companies in the month-long ‘Spring Dance’ season at the Coliseum. At 2,358 seats, and with a stage that’s 55 feet wide, it is London’s largest dance venue.

There’s a theory within the profession that dance companies gradually accrue the right to proceed to larger spaces as they become more accomplished. It strikes me that this notion can’t actually be sustained. One of our greatest choreographers, Siobhan Davies, has created works for virtually every venue in town. She has had successes in most of them, but it is in small, even site-specific, venues where Davies has achieved her finest triumphs. The same is true of Jonathan Burrows. He is the very essence of low-key, low-tech creativity – the wry subtlety of his approach is dependent on an intimate exchange between viewers and performers.

Other artists, such as Wendy Houstoun and Charles Linehan, are natural-born miniaturists who shouldn’t be pushed to think large. This is no reflection on the size of their talents. But look at what happened to Lea Anderson, founder of The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs – so adept at vignettes, she swamped herself when she tried to fulfil a Sadler’s Wells commission last year. The result, ‘Yippeee!!!’, turned out to be exaggerated and bloated and seemed to build a barrier between performers the audience.

Artists such as Siobhan Davies, brave enough to take a stand against the notion that the number of bums on seats is the ultimate barometer of success, are few and far between. That doesn’t negate her power, indeed it enhances her validity. We must never let statistics replace any artist’s notion of their place in the scale of things.
Allen Robertson