Choreographics, Sadler's Wells, review: New York story sticks in the mind

Programme features a lively range of approaches and two real hits

Anjuli Hudson in traumA by Fabian Reimair. (Photography by ASH)

Choreographics, in which the dancers of English National Ballet create their own works, is a place for experiment. This year’s programme, which took post-war America as its theme, had a lively range of approaches and two real hits. Fabian Reimair and Stina Quagebeur both dig into complex relationships; both show distinctive theatrical voices.

Reimair’s traumA shows Anjuli Hudson as a widow remembering. Three soldiers stand behind her, picked out in spotlights. They twitch, flicker and fall, vanishing out of the light, only to reappear and fall again.

One soldier, Ken Saruhashi, dances with Hudson, but he’s remote and robotic, something she can’t grasp. Then traumA shifts ground, the couple responding to each other, allowing her to move on. The second half is more conventional, but it’s the crackling memories that stick in the mind.

Quagebeur’s A Room in New York was inspired by the painter Edward Hopper’s love-hate marriage to Josephine Nivison. Crystal Costa and James Forbat are divided against themselves, every move conflicted. Quagebeur builds emotion and tough personality into her steps.