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Dance review: Stuttgart Ballet, Sadler’s Wells, London

 

Zo Anderson
Tuesday 19 November 2013 17:53 GMT
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German audiences must have more stamina. Stuttgart Ballet’s Made in Germany presents 13 works created for the company, including seven UK premieres. The dancers are strong and individual, but the evening becomes a slog – so many excerpts, so much whimsy, so many dancers in their pants.

Stuttgart has an impressive history of discovering new choreographers, but this showcase piles up too many flimsy works. It starts with quirky numbers, followed by romantic duets and ending with pure dance.

A bare-chested Friedemann Vogel twitches his pectoral muscles, in Marco Goecke’s Fancy Goods, surrounded by pink feather fans. There’s angstier chest-twitching from the charismatic Marijn Rademaker in Goecke’s Äffi. In Little Monsters, Elisa Badenes and Daniel Camargo love and lose each other to Elvis Presley, dancing Demis Volpi’s teasing steps with charm.

Maria Eichwald is fluent in Cranko’s Initials R.B.M.E., despite the work’s many tangling lifts. Rademaker and Sue Jin Kang make the best of a crass duet from John Neumeier’s The Lady of the Camellias. There’s more bite in Itzik Galili’s Mono Lisa, with a swaggering performance from Alicia Amatriain and Jason Reilly. Reilly and Amatriain also enjoy the slapstick of Christian Spuck’s Le Grand Pas de Deux, pratfalls and all.

Until 19 November. Stuttgart season continues until 23 November. Box office 0844 412 4300.

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