In the run-up to their 80th anniversary, Rambert have raided their back-catalogue and revived two 1930s antiques and a gorgeous Michael Clarke ensemble piece from 1986. The opener is Judgement of Paris, a short burlesque dance originally intended as an appetiser to a Gogol play. It's more sketch than dance; three aging prostitutes strut their stuff for a dead-drunk client to a persistent backdrop of Kurt Weill played on a jangly piano. The humour arises from watching elegant, athletic dancers put on pantomime ineptitude. Unfortunately, the usual problems of parody apply, and while the feigned amateurishness never actually seems amateur, the affectation of a professional dancer struggling to do the splits quickly becomes grating. Also, as you might expect from an ephemeral 1930's vignette, the humour is somewhat unreconstructed. Mikaela Polley's Momenta is an unexpected bonus, a restful piece of safe, pretty dancing to pleasantly melodic music, heavy on the flute and harp. It's restful, natural and pleasantly sub-aqua, but not very involving; there's a comfortable detachment about it, more like watching the random skittering of microscopic pond-life than the interactions of people. Then the main attraction: Anthony Tudor's Dark Elegies. This version of the 1930s masterpiece is more re-enactment than re-interpretation, with dancers in peasant costumes whirling hypnotically in from of a sinister Goya-esque backdrop. This exploration of grief, bereavement, and sudden disaster could happily have taken a contemporary spin, but the style and setting keep it safely in a rather dated indeterminate rural past; beautiful, but a museum piece nevertheless. Thankfully the final dance of the evening, Michael Clarke's Swamp, hasn't been in the archive long enough to lose its sparkle; a confection of glistening costumes and exotic movement set to rich layered sound and a throbbing beat, it ends the evening on a soaring high point. 

Jeremy Dennis, 28/04/2005