Dancing to music is one thing; music making you move is another. This abstract hour by Benjamin Millepied, in the 10th anniversary year of his LA Dance Project, subtly explores the difference between the two. At times, notes seem to sound directly through the dancers’ bodies, the esoteric instrumentation propelling them to convulse, spin and swoop.
The bulk of the evening is set to selections from Andy Akiho’s intricate concept album Seven Pillars for Sandbox Percussion, played on crotales, marimba, drums, wood blocks and found objects including metal pipes, glass bottles and a cigar box. These pieces are smartly matched to an opening accompanied by Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte. Modelled on a minuet and trio form, it was originally written for quartet and is performed by four female dancers who are practically summoned by the minuet to find their formations before plucked strings launch them into a series of jumps and shimmering kicks, each as gentle as the other. When the formality of the music fractures, their moves become looser, with a sense of questing in their quirkiness.
Breezily done, it benefits hugely from the up-close intimacy of the LADP HQ, where the first row of the audience can’t risk stretching their legs out, beads of sweat are visible, and the floor’s squeaks and vibrations are just more soundscape.
An athletic vibe is established not just by the women’s circular sprints and a sense of competition and camaraderie but also by their shorts and sheer vests. And the five men who take the stage next are dressed similarly. Akiho’s Pillar I sends them on restlessly jagged paths until, joined by five women, they divvy up for duets to the insistent plinks and thunderous klang of the music – as if limbs are another piece of the percussion.
Akiho’s composition intersperses the ensemble’s seven movements with superb solos for each member of Sandbox Percussion. The fourth and longest pillar has been cut for this programme, as have three of the four solos, disrupting the palindromic effect of the full work. The remaining one is Amethyst, for vibraphone, which fuels an otherworldly duet.
Daphne Fernberger is given the particularly challenging task of wresting control of the music in her solo, building from subordination to the sounds around her to a rebellion in which she harnesses the percussion to empower her. Elsewhere, charismatic performers such as Nayomi van Brunt (megawatt smile, elegant port de bras) typify the ensemble’s blend of rapturous force.
Vertical bars on each side of the stage illuminate Millepied’s more balletic phrasings and Michael Rathbun uses other lighting sources, from above the stage and behind the audiences’ bleachers, to add a palette of orange and green. The sense of suspense created by Akiho’s music could be more fully exploited and in its last stretch the performance peters out rather than building to a grander culmination. But this preview of a work destined for a fuller production at Paris’s Châtelet, where the music will be played live, is a stirring, close-quarters encounter with a magnetic company.