UFO Info Week-End

Some of those girls were squealing

Some of those girls were squealing.
It helps, of course, that Mike and Billy had already established their credentials as “the ballet boyz” on Channel 4, leaving no doubt about their street cred. What no one could guess, though, was how they would contrive to weave that video-diary chattiness into their stage show. “Hi,” says a stubbly Michael Nunn filmed outside the very theatre we’re sitting in “It’s 10.30am as I’m saying this. We’re just about to rehearse, so I’d better go and have a shave. See ya later.” Cheerful video scraps of rehearsal – including, endearingly, bits going wrong – are liberally dropped in between polished live performances.

The effect is that you feel a) that the dancers could be and may soon become your very best mates, and b) doubly awed by their skill in negotiating some extremely demanding choreography. William Forsythe’s Steptext – almost a company trademark after a year on the road – has the kind of glamour, aloofness and limb-wrenching risk-factor that could make you doubt the dancers were fully human had you not just seen them on video snatching a ciggie. The addition of strong, leggy Leire Ortueta (another Royal Ballet refugee) to the team adds a thrilling Amazonian quality to GPD’s already scorching attack in this modern classic.Even more impressive is the way Nunn and Trevitt hold the stage on their own. In Torsion, the long duet Russell Maliphant made expressly to exploit their special partnership, the pair come over so unflinchingly blunt and male that you might take them for a couple of plumbers.

Yet there is a fine equilibrium in their muscular interlockings. One minute Nunn is toting Trevitt’s body like a machine gun, the next their torsos are braided together like steel rope.Not surprisingly, neither of the tour’s two newer pieces reaches anything like this pitch. Where Charles Linehan’s offering looks merely pale and flat alongside, Other Men’s Wives, by Matthew Hart, strikes me as seriously odd. Tipping expectation on its head with a quaint little story complete with mime and pretty costumes could have been effective done with more swagger. But Hart’s response to Benjamin Britten’s “Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard” is too mimsy for words.The work’s one redeeming feature is Cathy de Monchaux’s set, an objet d’art in itself, which takes the form of a large, hinged, jewel-encrusted box, also giving service as palace doors, a bed, and a coffin. While I applaud the choreographer’s nerve in trying to swim against the abstractionist tide, he will have to come up with something spunkier than this.Rambert’s Christopher Bruce is an old hand at feeding the appetite for stories without seeming retrogressive.

Were he a greater egotist, he could have made an entire evening of his own golden oldies for his final London season as artistic director. As it was, Grinning In Your Face, set to finger-picking guitar arrangements by Martin Simpson, was the single Bruce item – a pity, since nothing else was nearly so jolly.Best of a gloomy bunch was PreSentient, the new commission from Wayne McGregor, urged on by the London Musici’s thrillingly energised string playing in Steve Reich’s Triple Concerto. Yet for all the choreography’s turbo thrust, and deft deployment of large forces, the piece had none of the jagged daring you get when McGregor himself performs.j.gilbert independent.co.ukGeorge Piper Dances: The Point, Eastleigh (023 8065 2333), Wed & Thur; Theatre Royal, Bath (01225 448844), 24 Nov Rambert: Theatre Royal, Plymouth (01752 267222), 27-30 Nov. Macbeth

The stupendous thunderclap that opens Edward Hall’s West End staging of Macbeth – starring Sean Bean – nearly made me jump out of my seat and over the Royal Circle’s balcony. Actually, such a plummet into the pit might have been considered a fitting response to this woeful tale of a monarchy plunging into hellish chaos. Hall’s production is, certainly, awash with Christian allusions to the heavenly and the infernal.
Firstly, one spies a crucifix dangling from the neck of Bean’s Macbeth when he returns home after battling valiantly for HRH Duncan – a fond and courteous Julian Glover.