I hadn't liked Christopher Wheeldon's Rush to Martinu's La Jolla Symphony. It was slight - and I wondered if Christopher Hampson would fare any better with another Martinu score Sinfonietta Giacosa, both scores touched by the New World (in the latter case, the anticipation of it).
The NY Times was warm about Sinfonietta when Atlanta Ballet danced it. Critics here were unkind - both to score and choreography - when ENB brought it to Sadler's Wells. As I was out of the country then, I only had a chance to see it at the Richmond Theatre, just a mile away from us. It's a difficult space, a small raked stage, which really cramped the dancers. Yet, I loved Sinfonietta. I thought the score was riveting, and the choreography really probed it with wit, sass, logic and invention.
All of which made me wonder about the spaces that frame dance. Was Sadler's Wells the wrong frame for Sinfonietta? It's a space that leaves me utterly cold. I dislike its postmodernity - and like most postmodernity, I find it dishonest (also, it's on the wrong side of London, temple to a suffocating PC etc etc - I just don't like it! Give me unyielding modernism every time; even the Barbican). I once worked in a sick building which I thought might be remedied by the attentions of an exorcist. But, SW, to my mind, is beyond exorcism.
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