This event finished on: 9 February 2012
Richard Alston’s iconic Roughcut, made in 1990, is probably his best-loved signature piece. It is danced to Steve Reich’s shimmeringly beautiful New York Counterpoint and Electric Counterpoint, played live by clarinettist Roger Heaton and guitarist James Woodrow. This is a rare chance to see one of the defining classics of British Dance. “Fills the stripped-back reaches of the stage with a mercurial joie de vivre that makes you grin in the dark.” The Herald
Also on the programme is Alston’s recent Unfinished Business, danced to the beautiful, lucid and flowing music of Mozart – the two movements of an unfinished piano sonata, Opus K533, played live. To these, Alston has added an extraordinary arrangement of Mozart’s brilliant Gigue in D by the Italian virtuoso Federico Busoni, creating a third movement and bringing things to a rousing close.
The evening’s triple bill is completed by Alston’s latest work, A Ceremony of Carols, choreographed to Benjamin Britten’s masterpiece for boys’ voices and harp, sung and played live by the Canterbury Cathedral Choir conducted by David Flood and harpist Camilla Pay. The music is of magisterial simplicity, conjuring up a rich world of rapt, devout adoration; the dance is a celebration of a sheer surge of breath, a pure stream of sound.
A Ceremony of Carols was co-commissioned by The Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, Sadler’s Wells and Peak Performance @ Montclair State (NJ).