This Is Rambert
Rambert, Festival Theatre Edinburgh
⭑⭑⭑⭑☆

THIS IS RAMBERT is a performance given in three parts by a dance company bearing the name and possibly the hallmark of the late Dame Marie Rambert. A mercurial figure, Rambert initiated a facility for the emergence and sustenance of balletic invention, with a new audience in mind and a sense of what could be germinated out of a tight ration of resources.

Her enterprise began 100 years ago. Comet-like, her initial ensemble of bright sparks forged a repertory that was by turns stylish, provocative, and profound. Some of that repertory is still danced. Subsequent work from the Rambert stable has also shone, ephemerally or otherwise.

I have been looking at the company for half its life. They have dependably marketed their anniversary every five years, as if to mask how their set-up has been convulsive. Ranks have swelled and diminished. Putsches and bold collectives have jostled with directorial fiefdoms and safe bets.

Anomalously, the outfit was still labelled Ballet Rambert long after they had gone modern. Catching up in the 1980s, they settled on Rambert Dance Company. The current one-word/don’t-mention-the-dancing formulation now hovers as a brand: a nebulous umbrella under which diverse things can happen. Lately, the group’s effusions include full-length dance works named after TV series. People have enjoyed their Peaky Blinders and look forward to their It’s a Sin. Do I smell fodder?

The offer of a centenary tour under the heading This Is Rambert elevates identity. Hence my preamble. With the notion of connection to a heritage of vivid dance-making planted in our heads, we get to impose this on the Rambert we now see.

Dame Marie’s original stage was a postage stamp and her production budget second-class. Her choreographers had to be inventive. Clever tactics are thankfully part of This Is Rambert right now, informing for example how an accumulating audience encounters a massive open theatre stage, pre-set with a space-reducing velvet drape, a cluster of serviceable chairs and a humble upright. While not a carbon copy of initial church-hall premises, the sepia-toned image hovers.

In this setting, a first dance, In Crimson, features a well-shod chamber ensemble making magic through a focused range of physical dynamics and interactions. Choreograper/directors Bobbi Jean Smith and Or Schraiber offer us quality time with each player. A pianist gives us a live medley. Somebody sings. Fascination and care graces peripheral figures, their composed stillness fostering expectation and the odd question mark. In Crimson’s depth and rigour encourages our own.

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Dance two is Hop(e)storm, team-choreographed by (LA)Horde for a large group of pairings who begin by hurling themselves at each other in primal ways, across a cavernous space now stripped bare. Collisions become manageably social. Music kicks in. Physical contact goes fractal. The plane the dancers inhabit seems to tip and rotate. This unfolds with inspired draughtsmanship and authenticity, but what should our investment be? As if to quell a gathering sense of voyeurism — of impotently watching the youngsters party — the quarter-hour of deft synchro bows out suddenly, to a well-earned ovation.

After the intermission, we journey into a world of misnomer with Gallery of Consequence, a dreamscape, choreographed by Emma Evelein, in which we witness how time spent in an apparent airport terminal could be stylish, especially if nobody seems to be working, hung-over, or dragging kids around. There’s a touch of surreal interaction, the odd meltdown, and a quasi-flashmob. Wheeled luggage appears pristine and empty. The cast’s clean travel wear is oddly accessorised with ankle socks. Given a surfeit of frictionless elements, audience purchase slackens.

More tangible by a measure was my surprise interval handshake with Christopher Bruce CBE, looking fit and ebullient, visiting Scotland to receive an honorary doctorate from Glasgow University. Formerly a dancer, choreographer, and artistic director at Rambert — certainly a priceless player throughout the troupe’s progressive middle years — Dr Bruce seemed content on this occasion to engage in chance chats and reunions in vestibules and on stairwells.

In a parallel universe, a convulsive history would momentarily resolve, with the elder honouree persuaded to take a specially announced onstage bow. Cosmically baffling, borderline ironic, but mostly poignant, this would have amounted to real theatre.

This Is Rambert is on tour to Salford, Norwich, Truro and London until September 19. For information see: rambert.org.uk