In the Making, Rambert, London, review: The dancers' technical polish demonstrated their dedication

When is an art work finished? When the lights go down and the applause starts? When the choreographer’s idea is realised through repetition in rehearsal? This is a particularly difficult question for dance. With this art form, the “finished” product is reinterpreted by different dancers subject to variation by error and shaped by the mood of the audience. Nothing is fixed: you never know what you might get.

Emphasizing this, Rambert has opened its doors to the public to reveal an earlier stage of the choreographic process: before the lights, costumes and applause.

Staged at its South Bank premises, the audience, moving from floor to floor, becomes part of the performance. For Luke Ahmet’s 7 in the Making, audience members directed the dancer by holding up cards. While the concept disrupted the piece’s pacing, Angela Towler’s highly disciplined and flexible body created an interesting contrast against the background of the static, seated audience members.

The cinematic melodrama of Pierre Tappon’s I Finally Woke Up saw Joshua Barwick writhe and swoon and swoop while audience members defined the space within which he could move. Miguel Altunaga’s Light Dial most effectively exploited the movement of the audience. Performing musicians led the audience into a room where two dancers were already at work. Structural chains of movements were performed and then reversed, giving the sense of time being rewound. An ambitious piece that might benefit from careful editing, it also provided a showcase for two outstanding dancers: Hannah Rudd and Antoinette Dayrit.

Altunaga’s dancers did not stop until the audience left the room. This image, of the dancers still dancing even when no one is watching, was a metaphor for an evening which revealed not only the energy and effort of creating dance pieces, but the unresolved nature of these works in progress. A few of the pieces will be developed further: Stephen Quildan’s Allow will be shown in finished form at Resolution 2017 at The Place. The already-finished Returning by Julie Cunningham will appear at the Barbican next year.

With three weeks to prepare and the need to fit rehearsals around the company’s main productions, the dancers’ technical polish demonstrated their dedication and proves that a company with a collegiate atmosphere creates a breeding ground for creativity. As part of the company’s 90th year celebrations, In the Making is a confident statement of belief in the future of dance in Britain.