Neither Drums nor Trumpets vacillates between the narrative and abstract in a playful, exuberant piece that captivates, keeps the audience on their toes and fills the vast, glassy space of the Paul Hamlyn Hall at the Royal Opera House with lunchtime joy.
A blast of spring is offered up before our very feet—quite literally—in a mash-up of contemporary and balletic movement that flows in all directions, building layer upon layer of imagery that bursts forth like green shoots on a warm spring, then reflected by the fabulous costumes—green with tortoise-sheen jumpsuits (Maile Okamura).
As part of the Van Cleef and Arpels Dance Reflections Festival, the piece is performed by seven of the dancers from Tanowitz's company (Pam Tanowitz Dance) accompanied by ten students from Rambert School. Tanowitz’s dancers are powerful and versatile movers, holding poses in mid-air stillness for what feels like an eternity, then rolling to the floor in dynamic expressivity, jumping high up to the glass roof, only to land effortlessly and softly within a hair’s breadth of my handbag. The piece is visually stimulating, rich and varied, expanding fully into its 45-minute run.
Neither Drums Nor Trumpets will be Tanowitz’s fifth piece to be danced at Covent Garden. The first, Everyone Keeps Me, formed part of the Royal Ballet’s Merce Cunningham centenary tribute in 2019 (Tanowitz was a student of Viola Farber, a founder member of Cunningham’s company).
Cunningham is at the core of her movement language, but she playfully weaves in balletic and jazz gestures that counterbalance the pure lines of contemporary in a contradictory, quirky fashion. Things are never quite what you expect. A head roll, an arm nonchalantly cradling another dancer, the relationship to movement and music, everything is slightly skewed in Tanowitz vision. You have seen it all before, but never quite in this setting.
In true Tanowitz style, she has blown up the fourth wall, so dancers can be viewed from everywhere, including, it turns out, the public escalators and the giant glass viewing box hovering over the Paul Hamlyn Hall. I am watching the performance during the busy lunchtime rush. It’s a stark bright day. There’s no hiding. There’s no time to slumber in a darkened auditorium as you are likely to find a dancer practically on your lap.
The audience is visible as well as the dancers. You can feel their physicality scream out within inches from your feet. Every nuance of movement is expressed and felt in full intensity. You can see the dancers’ limbs quiver and their cheeks flush as they collapse by your feet or swerve into a lift or fall. You can hear their endeavour and breath, yet the brilliance of it all is that the dancers remain casual, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world to be performing within such close contact. Nothing phases them, and this rubs off on the viewers, who remain wholly in their grip for the entire piece.
In an imaginative use of space, the central bar of the hall had been removed to create a dance floor. The audience is situated in two rows of seating around the edges of the space. Dancers, when not centre-stage, sweep off and wait in the sidelines in casually formed groups. Some lean up against the pillars, others have arms nonchalantly draped round each other as they observe as well as perform.
It could have played out otherwise, as there are many distractions. The Paul Hamlyn Hall is a mostly reflective glass structure bringing the outside in. During the performance, whilst the intensity of the dancers is visceral, especially for those perched in row A, there’s a backdrop bustle of activity from the general public going about their day. At one point, a serving wagon is wheeled in on the first floor level.
Yet throughout, the dancers remained deeply embodied in the work, impressively never once distracted by the commotion surrounding the show. It only serves to embolden the sheer joy and effortlessness in movement that Tanowitz’s choreography allows for the dancers to fully breathe and expand into each intention.
The piece opens with Rambert students neatly presenting clipped, disciplined steps in a clear and clean structure, matching their ballet class outfits. They perform several sequences in haphazard directions at the same time. At other times, they sweep onstage in single file, ending in something that resembles a grand defile, drawing beauty and depth out of a simple selection of movements of tilts from side to side.
Two Royal Ballet figures, Deirdre Chapman and William Bracewell, stand peering over the balcony dressed in black. I wonder what they are doing there? Are they enjoying a lunch hour watching? Turns out they are part of the action, and they glide down, donning aprons, dancing momentarily, then head upstairs to a table adorned with flowers, where they sit on the sidelines. It feels a little mannered and silly, but at the same time, it weirdly fits into Tanowitz's imagery of familiar yet unsettling.
The score, with music by Caroline Shaw alongside Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony no. 6 performed by the Knights, bathes the afternoon in a springiness and lightness of sound that only serves to add to the dancers’ clarity of movement.
Tanowitz’s curious choices in Neither Drums Nor Trumpets often rub up against each other to allow for an air of mystery and confusion, but such strangeness is part of the work's charm. It feels like you are watching something totally new, even though the steps in her choreographic repertoire hail from a familiar movement canon.
“Part of my work is pushing and pulling against tradition,” says Tanowtiz, and this is exactly what makes her work endlessly interesting to watch.