The week in dance: Nelken; Dark With Excessive Bright; São Paulo Dance Company – review

‘A tightrope between innocence and threat’: Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch’s Nelken. Photograph: Oliver Look

Pina Bausch’s Nelken (Carnations) opens with a breathtaking image, as dancers in evening dress wade through a field of 8,000 pink carnations, standing tall and lovely. They sit in chairs, basking in the beauty. By the close, the artificial flowers lie trampled and tattered, but the dancers reassemble, arms curved over their heads in balletic attitude, an image of order amid the chaos they have wrought.

In between, in just under two hours, Bausch conjures scenes that dance along a tightrope between innocence and threat, using her unique blend of words and movement to create a collage of a society fractured by fear and violence yet full of the possibility of hope. Nelken is full of indelible pictures. Guards with German shepherd dogs patrol the field where men in dresses bunny-hop like kids; a bedraggled line of childish dancers play a game of grandma’s footsteps where no one is sticking to the rules. A man repeatedly demands to see people’s passports, forcing them into humiliating actions. Scaffolding towers are wheeled on; suddenly, shockingly, men jump into a heap of cardboard below as a woman screams. Love and sadness are constantly intertwined.

This is the first time this masterwork, made in 1982, has been seen in the UK since Bausch died in 2009. A new group of young dancers are fitting themselves to roles created by performers that Bausch herself had chosen. They dance with precision and incredible commitment, making the long lines of repetitive, synchronised movement that punctuate the piece gleam. But they don’t yet show the force behind the steps; they are as striking as the carnations but fail to capture the sickly smell beneath.

As part of its Festival of New Choreography, the Royal Ballet is showing Dark With Excessive Bright by Robert Binet, a young Canadian choreographer who is fascinated by immersive works that plunge the audience into the heart of dance. It thrillingly transforms the Linbury theatre by removing the seats, revealing a dark void in which Shizuka Hariu has built three stages, with cantilevered wires rising into the air.

The music, by Missy Mazzoli, is played live in one corner, and viewers are invited to walk, getting into the centre of a piece whose nominal theme is the idea of creating the chaos of the world in human form. It’s conceived in 45-minute sections; viewers buy a ticket for one cycle. If you go twice (I did), you get a sense of a structure that unfolds in random patterns over three iterations. Some movements are repeated, others take on different configurations.

It’s interesting and the dancers excel. But there are logistical problems moving round the space (though there are some seats above), and the innovative nature of the idea is undermined by costumes that look old-fashioned and mimsy, and by movement that is too polite and controlled.

The dancers of the São Paulo Dance Company, currently touring the UK for the first time, are also struggling to find work that gives full scope to their exhilarating skill. They are supple and strong, with astonishing power to lift themselves into the air. A triple bill with works by Goyo Montero and Nacho Duato is stylish and never less than watchable, but only Agora, a carefully crafted examination of rhythm by the Brazilian choreographer Cassi Abranches, really takes the breath away. One bold jump actually made me gasp out loud. These performers feel like a rich addition to the international dance scene.

Star ratings (out of five)

Nelken

★★★★Dark with Excessive Bright ★★★São Paulo Dance Company ★★★